Recent Spanish Experimental Cinema: Inner Geography
Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 19:30h
Pacific Film Archive Theater
2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, California, USA
Introduced and curated by Garbiñe Ortega
Laida Lertxundi in person
Garbiñe Ortega is an independent curator who works and lives in both the U.S. and Europe. She was a PFA curatorial intern in spring 2010.
In these recent experimental films and videos from Spain, exterior landscapes describe emotional states while inner landscapes speak about the physical world. Two Super 8mm cameras, in an improvised game, follow Michael Snow’s “path” in Albert Alcoz’s Forth and Back and Forth. Inspired by Bruce Baillie’s All My Life and a song by Hoagy Lands, Laida Lertxundi’s My Tears Are Dry is at once bright and melancholic, but ultimately about moving forward. The camera tenderly reveals all the possible stories between two people in Theory of Bodies by Isaki Lacuesta. In The Fence, a group of fishermen and their net beautifully fill the frame as they try to dominate nature. Víctor Iriarte’s The Sea is a diary of a city that you can swim through—or a map of childhood memories. Fernando Franco creates an essay about the use of space and time in Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman in his Les variations Dielman. In First Person, León Siminiani records his feelings and thoughts in a touching metacinematic notebook.—Garbiñe Ortega
- Forth and Back and Forth (Albert Alcoz, 2007, 3 mins, B&W)
- My Tears Are Dry (Laida Lertxundi, 2009, 4 mins, Color, 16mm)
- Teoría de los cuerpos (Theory of Bodies) (Isaki Lacuesta, 2004, 5 mins, B&W, 35mm)
- El Cerco (The Fence) (Ricardo Iscar & Nacho Martin, 2005, 12 mins, Color, 35mm)
- El Mar (The Sea) (Víctor Iriarte, 2010, 22 mins, In Spanish with English subtitles, Color)
- Les variations Dielman (Fernando Franco, 2010, 12 mins, In French with English subtitles, Color)
- Límites: Primera Persona (First person) (León Siminiani, 2008, 8 mins, In Spanish with English subtitles, Color)
(Total running time: 66 mins, Beta SP, From the artist, unless indicated otherwise)
The series continues with a second program, co-curated by Gonzalo de Pedro, at Artists' Television Access on Sunday, November 14 (for further information go to atasite.org) and a third program at San Francisco Cinematheque on Wednesday, November 17, presented at the Victoria Theater (for further information go to sfcinematheque.org).