Objects and Apparitions: Special Found Footage at the (S8) 2017
The 8th edition (S8) is specially focused on found footage and appropriation, drawing on the American surrealist Joseph Cornell, and focusing also on leading figures such as Luther Price, Cécile Fontaine and Barbara Meter, as well as the filmmaker Cornell, guide and “patron saint” of this edition.
“Objects and Apparitions” is the title of a poem by Octavio Paz dedicated to Cornell, of which we quote some fragments:
Hexahedrons of wood and glass
Scarcely bigger than a shoebox
With room in them for night and all its lights.
(…)
Slot machine of visions,
Condensation flask for conversations,
Hotel of crickets and constellations.
(…)
The reflector of the inner eye
Scatters the spectacle:
God all alone above an extinct world.
The apparitions are manifest,
Their bodies weigh less than light,
Lasting as long as this phrase lasts.
The programming embraces several aspects in order to spread the idea of the meeting by chance to several fields of action when working with appropriate foreign material. Within this block, of course, a showing will be devoted to Cornell’s found footage work made between the 30s and 40s. From the work that is considered pioneer of found footage, Rose Hobart, to the films finished by Larry Jordan (who was his assistant since the late sixties) and which dive into the world of childhood, one of Cornell’s favorite subjects.
But there are more. Luther Price will be in Spain for the first time with two showings of his films and an exhibition. Price, with a hazardous life marked by misfortune, has been dealing with violence and trauma in his movies since the 1980s. A controversial author (one of his films even provoked the dismissal of a programmer) that melts sordidness and beauty in super 8 and 16mm films that he re-edits, paints and even buries for months in his garden to play with the effects of decadence, using found materials such as surgical operations films, porno films or domestic and institutional films. Due to his particular way of working there are no prints of his films: there are only the originals, which he himself brings and projects, and that we will see for the first time in Spain exclusively at (S8). Luther Price’s exhibition will consist of his collages, mounted on slide frames, including pieces of film, paint, dust and even insects, which are his current line of work.
Cécile Fontaine will also be part of this special edition “Objects and apparitions”. The French filmmaker (born in the overseas department of Réunion Island) studied in the United States, where she began to work in the 80s. Using all kinds of domestic resources (from adhesive tape to bleach, soaps and sharp objects), Fontaine makes film collages in which, under different themes, she works with the color and graphic properties of 16mm and super 8 film strip. Her films are an invitation to travel: there are maritime themes, about Japan, microscopic beings, waterfalls, familiar meals. Using domestic films (of others and her own) and advertising films of all kinds, Fontaine makes visually stunning collages. In addition to the showing dedicated to her films, we will also see film strips of one of her original movies, through which we will understand and appreciate her work methods.
This special edition comprises not only found images but found sounds. In that sense, the Spanish filmmaker and curator –who lives in New York- Mónica Savirón retrieves and shows the work of the Dutch Barbara Meter (whose films will be seen for the first time in Spain). Meter has been a key player in the Dutch avant-garde, with works in which appropriated sounds are fundamental. Sounds of nature, voices of actors taken from movies, music or radio recordings (which she mixes and manipulates) populate her films, whose images are composed of own footage, family photos and documents that Meter processes with the optical printer (a system of film re-photographing and copying). Her films, recently restored by the EYE Film Institut (the Dutch film archive) will be screened in 16mm and 35mm, in a showing closed by Savirón’s two works in which she uses found materials and sound plays a crucial role.
Under “Objects and Appearances” there will also be two showings devoted to recent works of found footage, in a double program called Lost Porperty Office. Authors such as Dianna Barrie, Daïchi Saïto, Janie Geiser, Pere Ginard and Sebastian Wiedemann, among others, compose the varied selection, showing very different ways of working with found materials, in film and video.
The block “Objects and appearances” is completed with the world premiere of Potamkin, by the young Canadian filmmaker Stephen Broomer (to whom we devoted a focus last year at the festival), a biography by the film critic of the early twentieth century Harry Potamkin through the films he wrote about, which Broomer manipulates with various chemical and printing processes.
In addition, as regards exhibitions, this theme will be also reviewed with works by Cécile Fontaine, Luther Price and María Cañas, who will bring her video installation Risas en la oscuridad, which includes a series of triumphant femmes fatales, as well as some of her recent videoguerrillas. The so-called Archivist of Seville, through an apocalyptic cascade of images, is the leader of what she calls “risastencia” (laugh + resistance), in a work as combative as excessive, with a characteristic and very black humor.