OFFoff Cinema: Night of Experimental Film

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Promedio: 3.6 (22 votos)

This event takes place on location:  019 - dok noord 5L - 9000 Gent. 

On our yearly event on location 019 - dok noord 5L - 9000 Gent, 'Night of Experimental Film', we focus on the sensual experience of historical film on the big screen in combination with the radical music of today. The programme is preceded by Young Vagrants: a selection of the best entries we received from young talents in the experimental field. We end the night with a big party with dj's. The Ghent based record label B.A.A.D.M. (Mathieu Serruys and Joris Verdoodt) presents three exciting international live acts: Loke Rahbek, Erik Enocksson and the duo Opéra Mort are all central figures in contemporary experimental music.

Curator Sofie Verdoodt was inspired by the oldest imaginable principle: the inseperable connection between love and death, 'eros and thanatos'. Sometimes literal, as in Yukoku: The Rite of Love and Death (1966), the only film of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, sometimes interpreted somewhat more veiled as the instinctual as in Sidney Peterson's surrealist work The Potted Psalm (1947). Death and Love are extreme oppositions but they are still complementary in a Freudian way, think for example of the orgasm that is compared to a 'little death'. Peter Tscherkassky and Takahiko Iimura translated these concepts to a formal level into images that are rich in contrast and rituals. In their formalist films Dream Work (2001) and Ai/Love (1962-1963), the body is presented as a 'pars pro toto': fragmented and alternating between zoom in and zoom out. In Fuses (1965), Carolee Schneemann also plays a game of appearing and disappearing. Just like Mishima she acts in her own film and thus raises the stakes, because her 'sex tape' is turned into a meditation on the medium with as much lyricism as a craving for destruction. 

Programme:

Young Vagrants Selection 2016
- Horses (Jelle Hermans, BE, 2015, 5', colour, digital)
- Schuld sind Alle (Viktor Dill, DE, 2014, 5', colour, digital)
- Lines Postfixal (Christine Lucy Latimer, CA, 2013, 4'30", colour, digital)
- Pearl Pistols (Kelly Gallagher, USA, 2014, 3', colour, digital)
- Her Silent Seaming (Nazli Dinçel, USA, 2014, 10'30", colour, digital)
- Man facing a Wall (Mit Borrás, ES/DE, 2015, 3', b&w, digital)
- OX (Asha Tamirisa, USA, 2014, 7', colour, digital)
- Be (w)here (Traci Hercher & Michael Wawzenek, USA, 2015, 6', b&w, digital)
- The three Spirits (Olga Guse, DE, 2015, 6', colour, digital)
- Under the Heat Lamp an Opening (Zachary Epcar, USA, 2014, 10', colour, digital)

Curated by B.A.A.D.M. & Sofie Verdoodt

Is love a repetition for death?
- The Potted Psalm (Sidney Peterson & James Broughton, US, 1947, 25', b&w, 16mm)

- Dream Work (Peter Tscherkassky, AT, 2001, 11', b&w, 35mm)

Live music: Opéra Mort (BE/ FR)

Sidney Peterson is a 'beat poet', painter and a well-known name in American avant-garde. As an aficionado of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali he confuses the viewer with his frisky and absurd use of montage. Weird masked figures, tombstones and sculptures appear in the silent short film The Potted Psalm (1947), for which the scenario was provided by poet James Broughton. This allegorical film with slow motion and overlapping images has fetishist twist to it and it fits within the tradition of the psychodrama. Funny and provocative cinema!

Peter Tscherkassky (°1958) is an Austrian avant-garde filmmaker and theorist who uses found footage only. All of his works consist of film-images that are adapted in the dark room without using computer editing. The result is very intense and dynamic. Dream Work, a study of film as a way of collective dreaming, constantly refers to Man Ray and his surrealist imagery and techniques. Dream Work is the closing piece of Tscherkassky's pulsing Cinemascope Trilogy(the other titles are L'Arrivée and Outer Space). Musicians Jo Tanz and Laurent Gerardtogether form the French duo Opéra Mort. Their electronic rhythms spread a raw, nervous energy that balances somewhere between post-techno and avant-garde experiment. Their musical legacy allows no room for doubt, knowing they released two records with Ghédalia Tazartès with their former project Reines d'Angleterre.

- Yukoku (Patriotism/Ritual of Love and Death) (Yukio Mishima, JP, 1966, 30', b&w, digital)

Live music: Croatian Amor (DK)

Love and death, eros and thanatos, find each other in the romantic and rarely shown cult film of the Japanese writer Yukio Mishimi. The enigmatic author committed ritual suicide (seppuku) in 1970. Five years earlier he rehearsed this event in the short film Yukoku, based on his novelPatriottisme. Mishimi himself plays the young officer who takes his bride with him into death in this sensual Kammerspiel, inspired by the Noh theatre. Within the static and theatrical setting of a bedroom we follow the last minutes of love and the death of the couple. Even the film is made in black and white, the bloody apotheosis is still impressive. The film is usually accompanied by the 'Liebestod' from the opera Tristan & Isolde by Wagner, but this piece of music was not originally recorded with the film. Protagonist of the Danish experimental music scene Loke Rahbek is a part of Lust for Youth, Damien Dubrovnik, Vår and other 'split personalities' of the ultrasexy label Posh Isolation. His soundtrack for Yukoku is a product of his project Croation Amor and it is proof of his long lasting fascination for Mishima. It is rather seldom that this short film is to be seen on a big screen!

- Fuses (Carolee Schneemann, USA, 1965, 18', colour/b&w, 16mm)

- Ai (Love) (Takahiko Iimura, JP, 1962-1963, 10', b&w, 16mm)

Live music: Erik Enocksson (SE)

Fuses is one of the most important statements in feminist cinema. Film-maker Carolee Schneemann filmed herself having sex with her then partner and unleashed almost all possible experimental techniques on the footage. Different layers of images were manually altered an painted over, resulting in a wondrous tactile effect. She literally lets the energetic sensations of the body shine through the roll of film. Takahiko Limura made experimental films in the 60's in Japan. He was inspired by American underground and evolved from poetic, surrealist cinema to conceptual art and abstract film. In the astoundingly beautiful Ai (Love) we see a couple making love. The camera glides over the seemingly merging body parts in extreme close-up, and then switches back to sensuous long shots of the couple. Limura avoided censorship en was internationally praised for this graphic film. Both films are a reflection on the 'fragmented' bod, but most of all they explore the sensual possibilities of the medium. Erik Enocksson a frequently asked for Swedish film composer. Reflective and lyrical at the same time, hearing his live music is a physical and staggering experience. He plays in Body Sculptures together withLoke Rahbek. His LP Apan was rereleased on his label Posh Isolation.

Fechas: 

Viernes, Abril 15, 2016 - 19:30

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