2016 (S8):
The New Impressionists

BROUILLARD – passage #14, Alexandre Larose

“Impressionist”: the source of this word was a derogatory term coined by an art critic to discredit the work of Monet and such. It is unlikely that the critic could imagine that this name would be associated to the discussion of one of the most revolutionary artistic currents of history, the one that left behind the imitation of life and the ways to try to capture -in its purity- light with a brush. “New Impressionists” is the name with which (S8) has christened this special edition this year. Emerging and veteran filmmakers will converge to experiment with light and film pictorial qualities, for whom this is essential. Probing the limits of sensory perception and subjectivity, this group of filmmakers signed some of the most visually overwhelming works in recent years. This is the case of Jacques Perconte, one of the most popular French artists today, who brings an exhibition, a live soundtrack performance and the international premiere of his latest film, Save my Heart from the World to (S8). Using digital video, and exploiting all the plastic possibilities called glitch (ie, the image disturbances caused by code handling), Perconte opens doors to impossible landscapes of colors and unusual shapes. Perconte, whose work has been seen in the most prestigious galleries, institutions and festivals in the world, has collaborated with artists such as Leos Carax (in Holy Motors), Jean-Benoît Dunckel (duo Air) and Jeff Mills.

Stephen Broomer is also visiting Spain for the first time. He is a young and yet already acclaimed Canadian filmmaker, curator and theoretician. Broomer, whose films have been seen at Views from the Avant-Garde (New York Film Festival), the Wavelengths section of Toronto Festival and Berlinale, will bring his 16mm works to Coruna. Those are films in which colors and textures evoke the work of the first impressionists, in a formal search whose intoxicating result also brings him close to other impressionists: the abstract.

The section devoted to Impressionism is completed with a selection of recent works by artists such as Jodie Mack, Pablo Mazzolo, John Price, Robert Todd, Charlotte Pryce, Alexandre Larose and Eva Kolcze, and a session dedicated to Germaine Dulac, a pioneer of film and part of the avant-garde stream of the 1920s called “French impressionists”, to which also belonged Jean Epstein, Louis Delluc and Abel Gance. Dulac’s work will be screened in film format, with the recent 35 mm restorations of Étude Cinématographique sur une Arabesque and Thèmes et Variations.