The Invisible Cathedrals of Joseph Cornell
By Jonas Mekas

How to write about the movies of Joseph Cornell? Where can I find such lightness and grace and unpretentiousness and directness? My typewriter is here, in front of me, very real. The paper, the keys. I’m searching for words, letter by letter. To pay a tribute to a unique artist.

One amazing part of Joseph Cornell’s film work –and he is the first one to stress this and remind us of it- is that a number of other people have been involved in the making of his films, either in photographing them or editing them. But when you see them (nine were shown at the Anthology Film Archives weekend before last), the same unmistakable Cornellian qualities mark them all. I spoke with Stan Brakhage, who did camera work on a few Cornell movies, and he said, yes, I held the camera, but I was only a medium who followed every indication, every movement, every suggestion that Cornell made: Cornell didn’t touch the camera, but he made my every movement, he took every shot. Rudy Burckhardt, who photographed a good number of other Cornells, relates the same experience.

Yes, the invisible spirit of a great artist hovers over everything he does; a certain movement, a certain quality that he imposes upon everything he touches. When in contact with people, this quality rises again from the work, like a sweet mist, and it touches us, through our eyes, through our mind. Cornell’s mist (art is the opiate of the people…), Cornell’s fragrance is at once unique and at the same time very simple and unimposing. It’s so unimposing that it’s no wonder his movies have escaped, have slipped by unnoticed through the grosser sensibilities of the viewer, the sensibilities of men who need strong and loud bombardment of their senses to perceive anything. What Cornell’s movies are is an essence of the home movie. They deal with things very close to us, every day and everywhere. Small things, not the big things. Not wars, not stormy emotions, dramatic clashes or situations. His images are much simpler. Old people in the parks. A tree full of birds. A girl in a blue dress, looking around, in the street, with plenty of time on her hands. Water dripping into the fountain ring. An angel in the cemeteries, sweetest face, under a tree. A cloud passes over the wing of the angel. What an image. A cloud passes, touching lightly the wing of an angel. The final image of Angel is to me one of the most beautiful metaphors cinema has produced.

Cornell’s images are all very real. Even when they are taken from other movies, as in Rose Hobart, they seem to gain the quality of reality. The Hollywood unreality is transported into Cornellian unreality, which is very, very real. Here is an evidence of the power of the artist to transform reality by choosing, by picking out only those details which correspond to some subtle inner movement or vision, or dream. No matter what he takes, be it a totally “artificial” reality, or bits of “actual reality, he transforms them, bit by bit, into new unities, new things, boxes, collages, movies, with no other thing on earth resembling them. I have seen some of these movies in process of assembling themselves in Cornell’s studio during the years, as they were put together, or maybe as they were putting themselves together from earth’s dream matter, from things that people usually either throw away or don’t pay attention to or pass by without looking, taking them for granted –be it a flock of birds, or an angels’s wing, or a melancholy looking doll in a store window- people are always interested in important matters…

Ah, but do not get misled, either by my writing, the way I’m writing about Cornell’s little movies, nor by the seeming simplicity of the movies themselves: Don’t assume for a moment that they are a work of a “home” artist, a dabbler in cinema. No. Cornell’s movies, like his boxes and his collages, are products of many years of work, of collecting, of polishing, of caring. They grow, like some things of nature grow, little by little, until the time arrives to let them out. It’s like all things that Cornell does. Like his studio, like his basement. I stood in his basement and I looked in amazement at all kinds of little things in incredible number, frames, boxes, reels, little piles of mysterious objects and parts of objects, on walls, on tables, on boxes, and on the floor, in paper bags, and benches and chairs –wherever I looked I saw mysterious things growing, little by little. Some of them were just at the stage of birth, a detail or two, a fragment of a photograph, a toy’s arm; other things in further stages of growth, and still others almost completed, almost breathing (on the table there was a pile of objects a little girl who was visiting the studio months ago spilled out, and he didn’t touched them, he thought the creation was perfect)- the entire place looked like some magic hothouse of buds and flowers of art. And there was Joseph Cornell himself, walking kindly among them, touching one, touching another, adding some detail, or just looking at them, or dusting them off –the Gardener- so they grow into their fragile, sensitive, sublime, and all-encompassing perfections.

Once I was foolish enough to ask Cornell about the exact dates of the completion of his movies. When was Cotillion made? When was Centuries of June made? No, said Cornell, don’t ask for the dates. Dates tie things down to certain points. Yes, when was it made?… Somewhere there… many years… So there I was, a fool, asking a foolish question. The dates! Cornell’s art is timeless, both in its processes of coming (or becoming) and in what it is. His works have the quality –be they boxes, collages, or movies- of being located in some suspended area of time, like maybe they are extensions of our “realness” into some other dimension where our reality can be fixed. Our dimensions come and go, Cornell’s dimensions remain and can always be touched again by sensibilities of those who come and look at his work. Yes, spaces, dimensions. No great surprise to find in Cornell’s work so much geometry and astronomy. It has something to do with retracing our feelings, our thoughts, our dreams, our states of being on some other, very fine dimension from where they can reflect back to us in the language of the music of the spheres.
Or like the girls, the timeless girls of Cornell’s art, they are either angels or children –in any case they are at the age when the time is suspended, doesn’t exist. Nymphs are ageless and so are the angels. A girl of ten, in a blue dress, in a park, with nothing to do, with plenty of time on her hands, looking around, in a timeless dream.

So where was I? I was talking about the movies of Joseph Cornell. Or at least I thought I was talking about them. I will be talking about them for a long time. There aren’t many such sublime things left around us to talk about. Yes, we are talking about cathedrals, civilization. What’s his name? Professor Clark? The cathedrals of today, wherever they are, are very unimposing, very unnoticeable. The boxes, the collages, the home movies of Joseph Cornell are the invisible cathedrals of our age. That is, they are almost invisible, as are all the best things that man can still find today: They are almost invisible, unless you look for them.

8 super 8: DVD + book, past, present and future of the cinematograph you can carry in your pocket

8 super 8 super 8 super 8 super 8 super 8… The year of the loop of infinity, the 8 years that super 8 celebrates are those which have motivated this publication that we launch with great joy, remembering the past editions, and thinking of those that will come. 8 super 8 is a special publication of (S8) that continues and expands a line already present in some past editions, thanks to which we published fanzines like Una tarde con Caldini, New Paintings by Ken Jacobs ant the translation of Daïchi Saïto’s book Moving the Sleeping Images of Things Towards the Light. . This time the publication consists of, on the one hand, a DVD with the portraits of many of the artists and programmers who have been at the festival, made in super 8, and which will be shown for the first time in a special edition for the occasion. From the first edition at the Prison to the year 2016, we have been collecting memories and impressions in super 8 of many of them, making the same act of portraying also a gesture of intimacy with the portrayed. It is, therefore, a beautiful collection of memories captured in the best way we can imagine, far from the rush and immediacy, and close to chance, patient work and the action of the photochemical stock.

On the other hand, there is a book, in which people who work or have worked in (or about) super 8 have been invited to collaborate. An invitation to write, draw or express in frames a kind of love letter to this format, and the relationship of each of the collaborators with it. This is how the publication collects from personal and vital stories to examples of automatic writing, collections of quotes, drawings, collages, recovered texts (such as George Kuchar’s manifesto) or small private tributes (that is why the book closes with 4 frames of Zulueta’s Rapture). From people who have been at the festival, to others we would like to have here in the future, or authors who, although they are no longer among us, we wanted to show the impact of their work in our lives. A colorful mosaic of unique, special, and 90% unpublished impressions, which together with the DVD are for us a particular memory as well as a stimulus for the future.

8 super 8 can be purchased at our headquarters during the days of the festival (at a special price), and then we hope to get it on sale through the internet and selected bookstores in the country.
Publication presentation Wednesday, May 31 at 1:00 pm in the Press Room of Afundación.

With Murnau on the Set

Lotte Eisner compiled for her book on Murnau the impressions of Robert Herlt, who was (along with Walter Röhrig) the designer of sets for Faust. Here we selected a few excerpts that give an idea of the fascinating personality of the genius.

One day I got a note inviting me to go and see Murnau. who was then making a film in the studio at Tempelhof, near Berlin. When I entered the studio I was very much surprised at how quiet it was. For in the days of silent films it was the custom to build sets while the shooting was actually going on, while there was usually a crowd of people talking at the tops of their voices. people who were there simply out of curiosity and had nothing to do with the actual shooting. But here there was no one to be seen but the cameramen and one of the actors, Alfred Abel and also, standing in the dark out of the way, a tall slim gentleman in his white work-coat, issuing directions in a very low voice. This was Murnau.

(…)

There is one thing Murnau said that I shall never forget. ‘Art,’ he would often repeat, ‘consists in eliminating. But in the cinema it would be more correct to talk of “masking”. For just as you and Röhrig suggest light by drawing shadows, so the cameraman ought to create shadow too. That’s much more important than creating light!”
And when Carl Hoffmann lit the first set for Faust, Murnau said: ‘Now how are we going to get the effect in the design? This is too light. Everything must be made much more shadowy.’
And so all four of us set about trying to cut out the light, with screens 23 cm wide by 50 m high. We used them to define the space and create shadows on the wall and in the air. For Murnau the lighting became part of the actual directing of the film. He would never have shot a scene without first ‘seeing’ the lighting and adapting it to his intentions. Hoffmann has made masterly use, ever since, of what emerged from a single one of Murnau’s experiments.

(…)

Though he was not a technician himself, Murnau, a ‘Raphael without hands’, knew that it was possible to achieve. And all that was done was done simply because he insisted on it, and because he stimulated us into being capable of it. I think his imperturbable calm in the studio was due not only to a sense of discipline, but also because he possessed that passion for ‘play’ itself which is necessary and essential to any kind of artistic activity. For instance, I’d made a steam apparatus for the heaven scene in the Prologue to Faust. Steam was ejected out of several pipes against a background of clouds; arc-lights arranged in a circle lit up the steam to look like rays of light. The archangel was supposed to stand in front and raise his flaming sword. We did it several times, and each time it was perfectly all right, but Murnau was so caught up in the pleasure of doing it that he forgot all about time. The steam had to keep on billowing through the beams of light, until the archangel –Werner Fütterer– was so exhausted he could no longer lift his sword. When
Murnau realized what had happened he shook his head and laughed at himself, then gave everyone a break.

I have never known anyone else who enjoyed the strange business of filmmaking so much as Murnau, although he took his work intensely seriously.

Opening Night
Murnau’s Faust with live soundtrack by the Galician Symphonic Orchestra

Faust, the last film made in Germany by F.W. Murnau, in a new print restored by Luciano Berriatúa, will be the masterpiece opening the 8th edition of (S8) next Friday May 26th in the Palacio de la Ópera. The live soundtrack will be performed by the Galician Symphonic Orchestra, that in 2017 is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The Orchestra will be directed this night by José Ramón Encinar, and it will feature the soprano Ilduara Perianes and the mezzosoprano María Rivera. They will perform the score written by Jesús Torres, awarded with the Spanish National Music Award in 2012, and whose works have been in prestigious venues all around the world.

Under the Shadow of Mefisto
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau is the author of some of the most incredible works not only of silent cinema, but of film history. His are Nosferatu, The Last Laugh, Sunrise and Tabu, as dissimilar as pioneers in their aesthetic ambitions, as was Faust, his last film made in Germany. In a Germany plunged into crisis, Faust was a blockbuster made from money overseas at a time when the Europeans who had emigrated were building Hollywood, the factory of myths and dreams. An adaptation of the popular myth (sifted by Goethe) of the sage who sells his soul to the devil, which hid a fierce social critique among his folds. The impressive images are the fruit of the chiaroscuro of photography, the mastery of the framing and the pictorial illusion and the expressionist theatrical illusionism, that evokes the time of Murnau in the company of Max Reinhardt. The acting is a highlight: one of the greatest German actors, Emil Jannings (The Blue Angel) as the iconic Mefisto, the legend of the Swedish theater Gösta Ekman as Faust, and stars like William Dieterle, Camilla Horn and the dancer of the Moulin Rouge, Yvette Guilbert, immortalized by Toulouse-Lautrec.

The Multiple Faust’s Faces

Luciano Berriatúa (in a collaboration of the Spanish Cinematheque with the Federal Film Archive of Berlin, the German Institute for Film Studies and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation) was responsible for this restoration, the fruit of a thorough research and a rigorous look. At the beginning of the process, Berriatúa found several versions of the film from eight different negatives, a consequence of a standard practice in the superproductions of the time in which it was usual to shoot with several cameras at the same time to have several negatives and thus to provide prints to the international market. The restoration was made from the shots and the frames with which Murnau made the edition released in Germany in 1926.

Listening to Faust

Fausto will be given a live soundtrack by the Galician Symphonic Orchestra, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2017. On this occasion the OSG will be directed by José Ramón Encinar and the singers will be the soprano Ilduara Perianes and the mezzosoprano María Rivera. The score that the Orchestra will play is the one composed by Jesús Torres, winner of the National Music Award in 2012, whose works have toured the most prestigious institutions and festivals in the world. A score released in 2009 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, which is a creative work by right, beyond the simple underline and incidental music whose ambition equates it with an opera or a symphony. Torre, who structures his piece in nine movements, uses strategies such as contrast, an ascending structure and a special use of the human voice to give a personal and autonomous dimension to his work, which manages to offer a new aesthetic experience and open a new dimension in Murnau’s film.

DATE: Friday May 26th. 8:30 pm. Palacio de la Ópera, Glorieta de América s/n, A Coruña.
DURATION: 119 minutos
TICKETS: Online via the ticket service of //ABANCA (entradas.abanca.com) or via telephone in the 902 43 44 43 until 24 hours before the show, from 8 am a 10 pm from Monday to Saturday. The box offices in the Plaza de Orense, from Monday to Friday, except holidays, open from 9.30 am a 1 pm and from 4.30 pm to 7.30 pm. In the Palacio de la Ópera box offices you can buy your tickets the day of the show from 11 am a 2 pm and from 5 pm to the beginning of the show.

Objects and Apparitions: Special Found Footage at the (S8) 2017

The Midnight Party, by Joseph Cornell

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.

Sodom, de Luther Price

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.

La Pêche Miraculeuse, de Cécile Fontaine

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.

Song for Four Hands, de Barbara Meter, cortesía de la artista

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.

Engram of Returning, de Daichi Saito

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.

Potamkin, de Stephen Broomer

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.

EXPO LIO 92, de María Cañas

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.