The 9th edition of (S8) starts with the lyrical mysticism of ‘Voices of Light / The Passion of Joan of Arc’

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Last night the Teatro Colón of A Coruña hosted the inauguration of the (S8) 9th Mostra Internacional de Cinema Periférico, which will run until June 3, 2018.

The Passion of Joan of Arc, by Carl Theoder Dreyer, is one of the most indisputable masterpieces in the history of cinema and during the inauguration of the (S8) 9th Mostra Internacional de Cinema Periférico, which took place last night at the Teatro Colón de A Coruña, captivated the public thanks to the opera / oratoire of Richard Einhorn, Voices of Light / The Passion of Joan of Arc, and the precise direction of Fernando Briones orchestrating the powerful interpretation of Gaos Choir and Orchestra.

Coro e Orquestra Gaos

Once again with Quico Cadaval as master of ceremonies, the inauguration gala of the (S8) 9th Mostra Internacional de Cinema Periférico was attended by Goretti Sanmartín, Vice President of the Provincial Council of A Coruña, José Manuel Sande, Councilor for Culture of the City Council of A Coruña, Alberto Lema, Councilor for Tourism of the City Council of A Coruña, Lanzada Calatayud, Tourism Manager of the Council of A Coruña, Guillermo Escrigas, CGAI Director and on behalf of AGADIC – Xunta de Galicia, Silvia Longueira, Director of the Fundación Luis Seoane, Beatriz Aller, responsible for the headquarters of Afundación in A Coruña, among others, in a breathtaking and alchemical evening, through the sum of the beautiful and exciting close-ups of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s film with the lyrical mysticism of the score by Richard Einhorn.

Quico Cadaval

The gala Voices of Light / The Passion of Joan of Arc is the start of ten days of the best international avant-garde cinema. Philip Hoffman, Frield vom Gröller, Pablo Mazzolo, Scott Stark, Chris Kennedy and Maria Ruido, among others, will visit the (S8) to present their artistic work. Cinema conferences, film performances, projections of the invited guests, workshops and professional meetings complete the rich program of the ninth edition of a Mostra that one more year will make A Coruña the epicenter of artistic creation.

Open call for Philip Hoffman’s workshop: Film Farm on the Road

Imagen: S8

Every year in summer, between the greenery and the rivers of Mount Forest (Ontario, Canada), a unique retreat for filmmakers, created and promoted by Philip Hoffman, has taken place since 1994. In the Film Farm, a sort of summer camp for handmade cinema, people film, process and share their knowledge during a week, in an open context where self-sufficiency prevails, back to mainstream laws and supporting the peripheral creators. In this edition of (S8) the Film Farm travels to Coruña with Hoffman, who will give a four-day workshop under the philosophy of what he calls the Process Cinema. With 16mm film as guide medium, and processing with ecological materials such as wildflowers and seawater, we will enjoy some unique days hand in hand with one of the essential figures of Canadian artisanal and diarist cinema.

 

Venue: La Nautilus (Plaza de Azcárraga 7, ground floor, A Coruña)
Dates: from June 5 to 8
Timetable: from 11 to 14 and from 15 to 20 hours
Number of seats: 8
Price: 150 (all the material included)
Requirements: the workshop will be held in English. Participants are asked to bring, if possible, their laptops with editing softwar
Registration: until Monday, June 4 at [email protected]

 

SCHEDULE

June 5 Tuesday
11am to 2pm
Intro to Process Cinema: collect, reflect, revise
(According to Hoffman, Process Cinema “explores a creative tradition in alternative filmmaking that is improvisational and interactive. Through this process-driven methodology, the screenplay as governing document is replaced by a fluid integration of writing, shooting and editing, not necessarily in that order.This way of working ‘through’ process has a comparative body of work in music, through jazz, in art, through ‘action painting’, in the performative aspects of the sketchbook or through ‘spontaneous prose’ in beat poetry.”)

Screenings  & Discussion

3pm to 8:00pm
Intro to Bolex 16mm camera handling
Lighting & exposure
Hand processing techniques (conventional & `green processing’)
Test shooting in groups with the Bolex
Processing Workshop
Transfer from 16mm test film to digital

June 6 Wednesday
11am to 2pm
Screening: previous day shooting
Celluloid as a canvas: tinting/toning & painting on found footage
Image manipulation
Screenings and discussion on films

3pm to 8pm
Distribution of equipment
Shooting projects
Film processing
Film tinting/toning & painting
Transfer from film to digital

June 7 Thursday
11am to 2pm
Screening of participants’ in-process films

3pm to 8pm
Shooting of projects
Film processing
Film tinting/toning & painting
Transfer from film to digital
Projects edition

June 8 Friday
11am – 2pm
Meeting to plan presentation
Screening of films in process

3pm to 8pm
Film tinting/toning, painting and manipulation
Transfer from film to digital
Final editing of projects

FINAL SCREENING

*Schedule does not include all activities and content

 

Open call: Experimental Film Critique Seminar

Image: A Cuarta Parede

Experimental Film Critique 

Experimental cinema is the freest expression of the seventh art, so at the time of reviewing these movies, sometimes we face the blockage of the blank page. It is necessary for us to get free from preconceptions and surrender ourselves to some films that provoke, raise or formulate ideas and images impossible to conceive if it is not from the absolute freedom of format.

The seminar will feature three sessions given by professional film critics. In addition, it will be complemented with the masterclass and other activities organized by (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico.

Students will have the possibility to publish their written and audiovisual texts at A Cuarta Parede and will be supported to publish them.

CALENDAR

May 26
1st theoretical session. 10:30 – 12:00 p.m. (Afundación Press Room)
Given by Alberte Pagán
The history of cinema is not something static, but a cultural construction. The Film Academy has ignored experimental cinema, so at first experimental film directors had to manage their own reviews and histories. If, at the beginning, in the first decades of this invention, an inclusive history of cinema was possible, nowadays, with a territory in continuous expansion, we can see the impossibility of a (unique) history.

2nd theoretical session. 12:30 – 14:00 p.m. (Afundación Press Room)
Given by Fernando Algarín
Some films seem to process their own history, their fractual starting point. At the same time, when watching these same movies, we have the impression that it is at the table and montage where everything is encouraged, as if the promise of the film that is about to be born springs from the convergence of force lines of certain elements. It is said that some filmmakers in this session, such as Michael Snow, James Benning, Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, Bruce Elder and Joyce Wieland, discovered their films between these two twin moments: observing the concordance of disparate elements and the meetings of the coils. In both cases, this is a kind of magnetic resemblance. It is enough to feel, in each rotation, what the orientation of each element involves.

16: 30h – 17: 30h (Luis Seoane Foundation)
Guided visit to the facilities of María Ruido, Ernie Gehrand the exhibition ‘Cinema of paper’.

6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. (CGAI)
Screening of María Ruido’s film ‘L’oeil impératif’

May 31
12: 30h – 14: 00h (CGAI)
Illustrated talk by Fried Vom Gröller

June 1
10: 00h – 11: 30h (CGAI)
Illustrated talk by Ernie Gehr

June 2
Practical session 10:00 – 11:30 (Afundación Press Room)
Given by Mónica Delgado
How to make critical texts about experimental cinema? In this session, we will see different examples of critical written and audiovisual texts, on experimental criticism. In addition, students will have the opportunity to begin the elaboration of their texts that, later, will be published at A Cuarta Parede.

12:00 – 13:00 (Afundación Press Room)
Masterclass by María Ruido

16:30 – 18:00 (Room S8 Palexco)
Illustrated talk by Nicky Hamlyn on the work of Kurt Krent

TEACHERS
Alberte Pagán, filmmaker and writer, his works have been exhibited in festivals around the world, in 2016 he was awarded the Galician Critics’ Prize. On his website albertepagan.eu he carries out research and film criticism that combines with his film activity.

Francisco Algarín Navarro, film critic, is one of those responsible for Revista Lumière, a paper and online publishing, which usually pays  attention to the most peripheral cinema. Among the most recent works of Fernando it is the book ‘Jeanette Muñoz. El paisaje como un mar.’

Mónica Delgado, film critic and director of Desistfilm, one of the most important independent film websites today. Mónica also collaborates with Fandor, where she publishes her video-essays that revolve around classic authors such as George Cukor or new filmmakers such as Juan Daniel Molero.

Deadlines and registration
The number of students will be limited to 25, having priority those who complete the registration fee in the bank account of A Cuarta Parede.

The price to participate in the seminar attending all the sessions will be € 30. These students will receive a welcome kit from the (S8) as well as an accreditation for assistance to all screenings. The fee for students who are only interested in attending the 26th of May will be € 18.

To make the registration, students must write to [email protected], including in the subject field of the e-mail “Seminar S8” and in the body their full name and ID card number.

The enrollment period will be open until May 23.

Voices of Light – The Passion of Joan of Arc, opens (S8) 9ª Mostra de Cinema Periférico


THE MOVIE
Joan of Arc’s tremulous, judged and condemned face (the only appearance of the actress Renée María Falconetti in movies) in The Passion of Joan de Arc is perhaps one of the most magnetic and iconic images in the history of cinema. In the year 1928, Dreyer premiered a pure and decesive movie whose refined visual language has meant the most absolute modernity. Composed of close-ups and extreme close-ups, unusual framings, almost schematic film sets and crystal clarity (photograph by Rudolph Maté), the movie relies on the power of editing and gesture (without makeup, breaking with the tendency of the time) to tell the story of the young French Catholic woman who in the fifteenth century was accused of heresy, judged and executed. Dreyer relied on the transcripts of the trial for his film, which is played by Antonin Artaud in the role of Dean of Rouen, one of the inquisitors of the saint. Considered today a masterpiece of cinema, it was also the first great work of the Danish Carl Theodor Dreyer, which would be followed by others such as Vampyr, Ordet or Gertrud, in which the conflict between flesh and spirit is also present.

Image: Carl Theodor Dreyer

THE RESTORATION
Despite its indisputable condition as a film masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc was shown incomplete until 1981 because of a series of bizarre vicissitudes. After its premiere in April 1928 in Copenhague, the film’s release was delayed in France, where the archbishop of Paris demanded numerous censorship cuts. Shortly after, the laboratory where the original negative of the film had been deposited burned. After this Dreyer took advantage of the cinematic discards to reconstruct the original editing from shot to shot. This negative also burned and the film disappeared until 1951, when this second version was found by the historian Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. Lo Duca modified the print, added subtitles instead of intertitles, and replaced some of these with text on stained glass. This was the most widespread version of the film (the one Anna Karina sees in Vivre sa vie). It was not until 1981, when after doing a cleaning in a closet of a mental institution in Denmark there appeared a few cans of film that turned out to be the original version of Dreyer’s editing released in April 1928. In 2015 Gaumont scanned that negative and created a DCP that has facilitated the film exhibition in optimal conditions until then had been rarely shown in all its splendor on account of the few existing 35mm screening copies.

Imagen: The Passion of Joan of Arc

THE MUSIC
Unlike many films of the time, The passion of Joan of Arc was not released with a score of predefined music, a lack that many musicians have corrected over time. On this occasion there was chosen the brilliant Voices of Light, by the prestigious American composer Richard Einhorn: a score for choir and orchestra in which visions, fantasies and reflections from various sources are interwoven, especially from medieval mystical female texts that draw the spiritual climate in which Joan of Arc was conceived. Overwhelming and elegant music, rich in textures and melodic and emotional nuances, which comes together under equal conditions with Dreyer’s work. On this occasion, the Einhorn’s score will be performed by the Gaos Choir and Orchestra, a project whose name pays homage to the composer from Coruña who emigrated to Argentina, Andrés Gaos, a musical group that has welcomed the young Galician musical talent since 2009.

Image: Gaos Orchestra

Inaguration Gala
(S8) IX Mostra de Cinema Periférico

VOICES OF LIGHT / A PAIXÓN DE XOANA DE ARCO

Opera/Oratorium

Music: Richard Einhorn
Film: Carl Theodor Dreyer (1928)
Restored Version

Interpretation:
Orchestra and Choir Gaos
Director Fernando Briones

Dates: May 25th 2018. 20:30h.
Teatro Colón. A Coruña

Tickets:
Through Online Ticket Service Ataquilla.com, 24 hours a day, at 902 504 500 from 8 to 22h Monday to Saturday, until 24h before each show.

Tickets can also be purchased at:

Sede Afundación de A Coruña, located at Cantón Grande 8 Monday to Saturday  (festivities included) from 9.00 to 21.00  h
Sede Afundación Santiago de Compostela, located at Rúa do Vilar 19
Sede Afundación Vigo, located at Policarpo Sanz 26
Sala de Exposicións Sede Afundación de Ourense, located at Playa Mayor 4

And also at Teatro Colón box office, from Monday to Sunday (please check open hours  in their web): http://www.teatrocolon.es/entradas).

Further information: www.s8cinema.com

Maria Ruido. The image that thinks

María Ruido

La voz humana (1998). María Ruido

Audiovisual arts as a tool of thought, editing as a form of elaboration of a critical and combative discourse: these are (some) of the weapons of María Ruido, a creator and researcher from Galicia who already has over 20 years of cultural production experience behind her. Precisely because of her rich and multidimensional work, (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico of A Coruña is devoting a programme to her that goes beyond the days of the festival, starting on April 21 with the inauguration of an exhibition dedicated to her work at Luis Seoane Foundation (day on which there will also be screened La memoria interior (2002) and Lo que no puede ser visto debe ser mostrado (2010)). It will reach its highest point during the festival with the premiere of Mater amatísima and a meeting with the artist.

Over the years, in María Ruido’s films and installations there have come together strategies such as found footage (which more than “found” is searched, recovered and put in value), the arquive itself, interviews, testimonies and personal documents, the texts of a heterogeneous list of thinkers and even, in some of her works, performance. Each work by Ruido is an investigation and a search, a collage of images and sounds that generates ideas and reflections that attempt to question what is established from the multiplicity of voices and points of view, and rethink the images to which we are exposed every day. The work, the bodies, the construction of the memory and identity and the elaboration of the history are some of the thematic lines of Ruido, who dynamites the media discourse to drink from the personal and collective experience in a political work from its foundations.

In the extensive programme (S8) is devoting to her, there will be shown films that respond to many of her main concerns. This is the case of her look back to the discourse of historical memory, with special emphasis on the Transition with works such as Lo que no puede ser visto puede ser mostrado (2010). This movie brings forward the militant cinema made in Spain over the 1960s and 1970s, and Plan Rosebud 1 / Crime Scene (2008) and Plan Rosebud 2 / Calling the Ghost (2008), which, from the social discussion on the so-called Law of Historical Memory, disproves a series of common places that generate “heroic narratives” (from the monuments to the hegemonic speeches generated by the media and the cinema).

The field of intimacy, the analysis of family ties are reviewed from different perspectives: La memoria interior (2002) is an immersion in the family’s past of the author, which seeks to unravel -from the personal- dynamics and policies of work and migration, and the meaning of belonging to the working class. On the other hand, Mater amatísima (2017) describes, in its subtitle, the direction of her research: it is a review of the imaginary and discourse on motherhood in times of change, starting from the idea of ​​motherhood as a construct and tool of social control.

The (non-neutral) look of Europe on Africa, colonialism and waves of migration from the south to the north are themes that converge in Le rêve est fini / The dream is over (2014) and L’oeil impératif / The imperative eye (2015). In the first, the personal circumstance of Ruido is interwoven with the surrounding political climate, in the scenario of the Tunisian Lampedusa: symbol of the tomb in which the Mediterranean has become for thousands of Africans looking for that dreamland of Europe. A dream that is dying in front of what seems to be the revolution yet to come, the uprising in Africa that seemed to ignite the Arab Spring. On the other hand, L’oeil impératif / The Imperative Eye (2015) is a revision of colonialism, which is no longer based on a political or economic power, but a “hierarchy of thought”, an “epistemological hegemony”. A work that Morocco takes as a case study, to try to imagine new ways of constructing renewed visual genealogies.

To complete the journey through the work by Ruido we find the exhibition “Le paradis”, which takes its title from the homonymous self-portrait prepared by the author that revolves around the idea of ​​the “paradise” of childhood. In addition to this work, the exhibition includes works from the late 1990s such as Ethics of Care (1999), Hansel y Gretel (1998), Cronología (1998) and La voz humana (1998), in which she talks about the construction of identity (especially women identity) since childhood and the policies of the body, in many cases using the body itself as a tool of expression and performative action.

María Ruido is an artist, director, researcher and teacher. She currently lives in Madrid and Barcelona, where she is a lecturer in the Department of Art and Visual Culture of the University of Barcelona. Since 1998 she has been developing her audiovisual work that has been shown in cultural and art centers such as the CGAC, in Santiago de Compostela, the MACBA, the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica and the CCCB, in Barcelona, La Casa Encendida and the MNCA Reina Sofía, in Madrid, the Kunstverein, in Munich, the Cervantes Institutes of Sofia, Milan, Berlin and Prague, the CCEBA, in Buenos Aires, and the Film Archive of the UNAM, in Mexico, among others. Her works have also been at festivals and events such as the FID Marseille, DocumentaMadrid, the Mostra International de Films de Dones in Barcelona, Zemos, Márgenes, Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin / Madrid, and Art Basel Hong Kong, among many others. In addition, she has written for various books and publications, and is the author of a book about Ana Mendieta.