During the fifth Night of Experimental Film Art Cinema OFFoff again combines avant-garde (silent) film with innovative experimental music based on an overarching theme. This year the night flirts shamelessly with romanticism. The great feelings like Weltschmerz and Sehnsucht, individualism, and the longing for the unknown are back in contemporary alliances between musical impulses and cinematic desires.
Art Cinema OFFoff’s curator and record label B.A.A.D.M. composed a programme which breathes new life into romanticism. The night starts with Derek Jarman’s The Angelic Conversation, an Odyssey alongside longing and yearning amidst picturesque and barren landscapes. Next up is Matthias Müller’s Sleepy Haven in which an amalgam of his own shots and found footage appear, projecting a sea of eroticism and destruction. The first part of the night ends with Sequences’ audiovisual, experimental performance.
A double bill of two short films follows. The first screening is Lost Avenues of Bill Morrison, known for its approach to found footage. Due to the degeneration of old nitrate film, historical shots automatically appear in new, surprising configurations. Distortion, abstract spots and stains construct the poetry of nearly lost frames in films which emit melancholic feelings of loss and decay. Secondly Philippe Cote explores the Wanderer in Les Ombres Aquatiques, on super-8. Afterwards there is room for contemplation during Tom James Scott’s meditative and serene musical intervention.
The final film is Peter Hutton’s Skagafjörður. The film documents the breathtaking landscape in a series of desolate vistas, shifting from black and white to luminous colours. The result is a beautifully filmed investigation of reflections and mirages, jagged mountain tops and plumes of smoke, thick cloud fields and vertical shafts of light. Hutton’s films lack soundtracks. Timo van Luijk and Andrew Chalk – known as the duo project Elodie – therefore regard the film as an invitation, not merely to add sounds to the landscapes, but to join them in the natural mystery.
All films are shown in their original formats. The night ends with an afterparty, hosted by B.A.A.D.M.
––––––––––20:00Derek Jarman — The Angelic Conversation (GB, 1985, 78’, colour, sound, digital)––––––––––21:40Matthias Müller— Sleepy Haven (DE, 1993, 15’, colour, sound, 16mm)Concert: SEQUENCES (BE)––––––––––22:30Bill Morrison— Lost Avenues (VS, 1992, 7’, colour, sound, 16mm)Philippe Cote— Les ombres aquatiques (FR, 2016, 11’, colour, silent, digitaal)Concert: TOM JAMES SCOTT (GB)––––––––––23:30Peter Hutton— Skagafjörður (VS/IS, 2004, 28’, colour, silent, 16mm)Ciné-concert: ELODIE (Andrew Chalk + Timo van Luijk) (GB/BE)
