On November 4, 2001, the first session of Xcèntric took place, a regular program of screenings dedicated to experimental cinema and artists unpublished in the city of Barcelona. Just 20 years later, we celebrate the anniversary of Xcèntric with a set of screenings, performances and talks that make up a tribute to cinema as a collective experience, to the survival of the photochemical film and to the job of the projectionist, in addition to a necessary reflection on the present and the future of cinema in the digital age.
Magnum Begynasium Bruxellense presents itself as a living chronicle of the inhabitants of the Béguinage neighbourhood in Brussels, an old, poor neighbourhood, stuck between the old docks of the port and the main shopping avenues of the centre. In spite of recent plans for renovation, its existence is threatened sooner or later.
Designed as an encyclopaedic inventory, the film is made up of thirty something chapters, overlapping one another like so many pieces of a puzzle. The film unrolls in the space and cracks of a day, beginning at dawn to finish at night.
“Having reached an age at which you think about getting your bags ready for the next world, I’m about to burn my life, to throw away all I’ve collected and accumulated for over half a century. Books, clothes, films, everything must, will disappear, in ashes and smoke. Funeral (on the art of dying) presents itself as the ‘last’ episode of my auto-cine-biographic work Babel, which covers over thirty years of my life. Funeral will bring this narration of life to its end. It can be considered as my last movie, as a will.” (Boris Lehman)
Dates:
Saturday, January 14, 2017 - 20:00 to Sunday, January 15, 2017 - 19:55
Taking photos and making films are two ways of touching people. People have become the main subject of my collections. Collecting is much like an act of faith. It is a creative act, a chance to discover oneself, while at the same time participating in other's passions.
My photographs -and my films- seek out human contact, and they find it.
"'My Seven places' starts at the moment I was evicted from several places which are dear to me. They served me well as homes, both as place for living and working. This was the start of my urban wandering, which would take me ten years - a journey of 300.000 kilometers - before returning just about to my starting point. The adventure was both physical and metaphysical.
Next Sunday February 7 Xcèntric screens two films by Boris Lehman for the first time in Barcelona. The NOOK-Poble Sec association and the Cinema Anèmic screening series want to take this opportunity to project the next day, on Monday February 8, three more short pieces in 16mm, presented by the director himself.
Programmed by Boris Lehman:
- Muet comme une carpe / Silent as a fish / Belgium-RFA / 1987 / 38’ / 16 mm / colour
This documentary diary was shot between 2005 and 2009 on four different continents, as a subjective journey into the universe of experimental cinema. It is an exploration of the many alternative film forms developed by innovative figures such as Jonas Mekas (USA), Peter Kubelka (Austria), Guy Sherwin (UK) among many others. These paths of discovery lead us to encounters with numerous production and distribution institutions created specifically for experimental films.
Belgian experimental film festival L’Âge d’Or comes back next October 3-10 with the second edition of its new run. 2015 celebrates the 50th anniversary of Super 8 and so for its second edition, the Âge d’Or festival has chosen to pay homage to the work of the fiercest advocates of this format, too often denigrated and considered ‘amateur’. A format however that has been, and sometimes still is, the terrain of innovative cinematic experiments, full of the constraints that only it can create.
Dates:
Saturday, October 3, 2015 (All day) to Saturday, October 10, 2015 (All day)
Microscope is thrilled to welcome back independent Belgian film-maker Boris Lehman to New York to premiere his latest film Mes Sept Lieux (My Seven Places).
The more than 5 hour long work, filmed by Lehman from 1999 to 2010 shows the artists returning to his seven previous homes to record old places and friends, remember and reflect upon his life from past to present. The work consists of 10 parts and incorporates fragments of the documentary, fiction, personal diary, and bed-side table notes within. Mes Sept Lieux (My Seven Places) was shot on 16mm film but exists only as a digital work.
Dates:
Saturday, June 20, 2015 - 18:00 to Sunday, June 21, 2015 - 17:55
The story of my hair can be told in two lines. My hair was long and black. It has turned white. It hasn't been cut since 1982, almost thirty years ago. Story of my Hair is a journey, both in space and in time. Anyone looking for truths, whether geographical, scientific or historical, will be disappointed. After looking at real events and real places the film very soon distances itself from them, preferring poetry and fiction. In his own fashion the auteur has combined the story of Samson and Delilah, the journey of those condemned to the death camps, the science of hair and a few thoughts about the meaning and fragility of life.
