The (S8) unveils the full programme and puts the carnival mask to the lucky cat
The fifth edition of Peripheral Film Festival brings to A Coruña the newest of Spanish expanded cinema from the hand of Esperanza Collado and Colectivo Crater, Jodie Mack’s recent work -the queen of filmic collage- and a selection of films from the famous Canadian film festival Media City to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. The programme is completed with a wide range of parallel activities. For professionals, there are conferences and workshops from the hand of Zemos98 and its European Souvenirs project at Contemporary Art Museum Gas Natural Fenosa; for kids, the Mini (S8) with the Action! Film Workshop; and the exhibition Lost&Found. Arquivos (Re)Colectados (never before exhibited in Spain) to be installed at NORMAL University of Coruña. The final touch will be a meeting of film laboratories such as LaborBerlin, L’Abominable from Paris, Double Negative from Canada and Worm-Filmwerkplaats from Rotterdam.
GALICIA – JAPAN CULTURE FUSION. POSTER OF THE FIFTH EDITION
Between Galicia and Japan, the myth is the underground thread that leads the fifth edition of (S8) this year. You can see a maneki neko with a carnival mask on the poster for this edition. A cultural nod whose meaning goes actually along more leafy paths. Here the mask does not work as a way to hide the identity but recovers its original use. The “peliqueiro” (traditional Galician carnival mask) can be seen as an entrance for making up the maneki neko (symbol of good fortune and wealth). Both elements also reflect the ideal of cinema that the Festival defends, which like myth, is a representation of the inexplicable, of what words or reason cannot understand. The ties between the two cultures, Galician and Japanese, reach even geography itself. The Mount Louro and Mount Fuji, source of legends, are not as far as one might think. There are also similarities in music, percussion -leading to trance- which accompanies the carnival dance, for example, and is not very different from the sound of the Japanese taiko (drums).
Thus you can see, digging beneath the surface, the underground currents that connect both sides of the planet. The undeniable relationship with nature in the work of Takashi Makino, Rei Hayama, Teruo Koike and Saïto Daichi links, along winding roads, to Eloy Domínguez Serén’s homesickness or Lois Patiño’s connection with the landscape, for instance. The dissolution of the individual “I” of the “peliqueiro” also has to do with Iimura’s identity questioning. In A Page of Madness the Japanese mask acts as the carnival one, releasing those who carry them from the neuroses of civilization. And the oral tradition, on the roots of the Galician ancient culture, is what caught the early Japanese film by means of the katsuben.
SPANISH EXPANDED CINEMA: ESPERANZA COLLADO AND COLECTIVO CRATER
The fifth edition of (S8) brings a representative sample of the recent work in the field of Spanish expanded cinema to A Coruña. On Thursday night, June 5, we will have the performer and also expert in avant-garde cinema, Esperanza Collado and the members of Colectivo Crater Luis Macías and Adriana Vila, from Barcelona. At the Luis Seoane Foundation venue, Collado will show We Only Guarantee The Dinosaurs, a performance in which the film is linked with sculpture and dance in a process that involves 16mm screenings in combination with elements like a red carpet, a flashlight, a palm tree, 20m red lace and a raincoat. The aim is to tackle the film issue while the space between the screen and the projector is explored.
Then, on the patio, we will enjoy two works by Colectivo Crater: Reels and Lights (2012) and 3QUIN0X (2013). The group, formed in 2010, explores the possibilities of the screening as an event, taking advantage of the qualities of the analog format. Even their performances are an important spur for the senses they are also supported by a precise formal and conceptual search and make use of resources ranging from the strobe, the phantasmagoria of found material, the use of color, the film manipulation and the constant rupture of conventions concerning the screening identity.
However, expanded film will also use the bridge given by the Dual Year between Spain and Japan so that we can enjoy the artistic show by the legendary Takahiko Iimura with his video installation As I See You You See Me, which, according to the artist, is “the premiere of this work in a film festival.” On Friday evening, June 6, back to the patio of Luis Seoane Foundation, the audience will enjoy a double film + performance session with the young filmmaker Takashi Makino. The screening of the movie 2012 will be the prelude to the final cosmic storm with the work Space Noise 3D.
JODIE MACK: COLLAGE, FABRIC PIECES AND A COLOURFUL WORLD IN STOP MOTION
On Saturday June 7, the closing night, the British Jodie Mack will orchestrate a session with her latest work, on which she will play in real time with songs and music in “Let Your Light Shine”, a compendium of her recent works carried out for the 43th edition of the famous International Film Festival of Rotterdam. By bringing into play discards from the mass production culture, from cliché and popular design, Mack blurs the thin line between art and everyday life, turning scraps of wallpaper, t-shirts, postcards and gift bags into movies that combine the most accurate formal experimentation with visual enjoyment and also some sense of humor.
Crazy stop motion collages, strobe inventories of prints, vaporous and kaleidoscopic choreographies of light, lysergic journeys and unpublished sensory experiences make up a programme with a structure of rock show where we will see the most abstract animation, a kind of 16mm tribute, singing live, to a dying posters store (Dusty Stacks of Mom). Quite a festival of light and color.
FROM SOUTHERN ONTARIO TO THE NORTH OF GALICIA: 20 YEARS OF MEDIA CITY FILM FESTIVAL
In Windsor, the city from which you can see Detroit skyscrapers, a place of extreme weather, endless straight roads and post-industrial air, there takes place one of the most exciting, special and relevant events concerning experimental cinema: the Media City Film Festival. Media City, created in 1994, will be 20 years in 2014, and thanks to a brilliant and daring programme with a life of its own it has become one of the most appreciated art festivals in the world.
Oona Mosna and Jeremy Rigsby, the current directors and programmers, will visit the (S8) to provide a sample of fascinating and unique films that define the spirit of the Canadian festival. Some of them are: Lunar Almanac (Malena Szlam, 2013), Passage Upon the Plume (Fern Silva, 2012), Florence (Peter Hutton, 1975), Menschen am Sonntag (Friedl von Gröller (Kubelka), 2006-2011) and Quartet (Nicky Hamlyn, 2007).
MINI (S8): ACTION! FILM WORKSHOP
ACTION! With this word, which makes us travel to ancient times in the history of cinema, we want to start the Action! Film Workshop that this year we propose for the youngest at the Mini (S8). The Peripheral Film Festival of A Coruña triples their educational film proposal aimed at children. Color, sound and motion, interactive and performative cinema make up three sessions where various possibilities of film language will be explored, in this case by the action of the participants.
Young filmmakers will crowd Kiosko Alfonso the morning and afternoon of Saturday June 7, and on Sunday morning 8 action will move to Luis Seoane Foundation. Participants will learn to play with the basic tools of film language, to dance with the movies, to explore hidden spaces and discover that you can also make films without a camera, without film or display, but with color, sound, body and movement.
LIVE CINEMA, ARCHIVE AND REMIX. EUROPEAN SOUVENIRS OF ZEMOS98
European Souvenirs is a creative project about European identity that the group from Seville ZEMOS98 has been carried out since 2012 in collaboration with Doc Next network, a group of producers, filmmakers, educators, programmers and cultural researchers. ZEMOS98 Festival, now in its fourteenth edition, is the most known face of this group from Seville whose work reaches research, production, creation and communication of critical content about the social and cultural impact of media on thinking and contemporary narrative. With wide international recognition, ZEMOS98 makes extensive use of audiovisual archives, and remix and VJ culture is one of their main exploration routes.
Contemporary Art Museum Gas Natural Fenosa will hold not only the presentation of European Souvenirs project, but also a performance, a lecture and a workshop for artists interested in discovering the secrets of film archive and remixing. Live Cinema in its full potential, and with important people such as Pedro Jiménez Álvarez and Benito J. Jiménez Álvarez, ZEMOS98 leaders.
FOCUS ON ARTIST-RUN FILM LABS
In February 2011, the artist Tacita Dean published in The Guardian an article, almost a manifesto, entitled “Save celluloid, for art ‘s sake”. There, worried about the disappearance of film laboratories, she wondered why it was not possible the coexistence of analog and digital. Given the uniformity raised by the business system of capitalism, the existence of film laboratories can almost be seen as an act of resistance. Fortunately, today the sharing of tools and knowledge has generated a number of independent laboratories worldwide.
With names like LaborBerlin, L’Abomibable (Paris), Worm-Filmwerkplaats (Rotterdam), Double Negative (Montreal) which cluster around filmlabs.org network, these spaces become, in turn, platforms that produce and support the work of new filmmakers and artists. In this session representatives of some of these ‘labs’ will share their experiences with us, they will discuss the way they operate and show a sample of their work, besides discussing the current situation where film (celluloid) is.
NORMAL, A NEW VENUE ON THE FIFTH EDITION OF (S8)
In this edition, NORMAL joins the other collaborating venues of (S8), as a cultural agent in the city at the height of Novacaixagalicia Foundation, Contemporary Art Museum Gas Natural Fenosa or Luis Seoane Foundation. This year part of the Festival programme moves to the venue of cultural intervention of University of Coruña with an exhibition project to be opened on 30 May and entitled LOST&FOUND. Arquivos (Re)Colectados.
On this occasion we will have Munemasa Takahashi, promoter of the archive Lost & Found. The exhibition is completed with the intervention and artistic reinterpretation of images rescued by a large group of Galician artists covering a wide spectrum of disciplines such as painting , film and dance. More information on the presentation that will take place on May 30 at NORMAL.
LILA FOSTER AND THE FESTIVAL CURTA8 IN BRASIL, LUXURY OBSERVERS
The Brazilian ‘film curator’ Lila Foster, festival programmer of Curta8 in Curitiba, will travel to A Coruña to attend the fifth edition of (S8) with the aim of discovering novel expressions of Galician avant-garde film and Spanish film art performance. Foster is an expert in Brazilian amateur film and much of her work is dedicated to the research and preservation of Super 8 experimental production. Since 2010 she has coordinated the activities of Home Movie Day in Brazil, an international initiative focused on small format home movies.
Her visit is supported by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and their PICE Visitor Program (Program for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture) with which AC/E strengthens the internationalization of Spanish film abroad.
(S8) Peripheral Film Festival celebrates its 5th Edition with a special programme, part of the activities of the Spain – Japan Dual Year
Takahiko Iimura, considered the father of Japanese avant-garde cinema, will lead the programme of a Special Edition that brings together to Corunna a group of renowned filmmakers including Daïchi Saïto, (+) art collective founders Takashi Makino, Rei Hayama and Shinkan Tamaki, and the hidden gem of Nippon Super 8, Teruo Koike.
Katsuben – Benshi: ‘Narrators of Silence’. This Japanese silent cinema old tradition will be presented in Spain for the first time in our opening ceremony.
SPAIN – JAPAN DUAL YEAR 2014
For its fifth edition, the (S8) Peripheral Film Festival has selected Japan as the guest country because it owns one of the most suggestive and important filmographies in the history of cinema. This Special Edition will be part of the activities that are taking place in our country in 2014, within the Dual Year Spain-Japan. The city of Corunna will become during the dates of the festival the main focus of this international event celebrating 400 years of relations between the two countries.
In this Special Edition Japan (S8) addresses the past, present and future of Japanese film culture, developing a comprehensive programme ranging from its origins to the present day, with particular emphasis on the avant-garde, new expressions and young Japanese filmmakers that will be present at the Festival.
KATSUBEN – BENSHI. ‘NARRATORS OF SILENCE’
Corunna will have the privilege of hosting for the first time in our country one of the most representative narrative arts of the origins of Japanese cinema, which is also globally unique. The performance will take place during our opening ceremony in the afternoon of the 4th of June at Teatro Rosalía de Castro. In collaboration with Japan Foundation and thanks to the work of the expert Nieves Moreno, the (S8) and the city of Corunna, through its Department of Culture, make possible this tribute to the early twentieth century Japanese cinema.
The role of benshi or katsuben was instrumental for Japanese cinema and an example of the wide variety of the narrative arts featuring Japanese culture. The so called ‘silent film’ era was a rich stage in experimentation in the use of various sound techniques inherited from the oral and theatrical tradition. Although Japanese cinema from its beginnings was never completely ‘silent’, the image was always accompanied on stage with a narrative element and live music performances.
For the representation to be held at the opening ceremony, the (S8) will have the presence of benshi Raiko Sakamoto. This Japanese silent film narrator belongs to Matsuda, the most prestigious school in Japan, which has been responsible for keeping alive until today this old profession. The soundtrack will be played live by Joichi Yuasa with a shamisen (the most famous Japanese stringed instrument). We have selected for the screening the film Jirokichi the Rat (1931), the only fully preserved silent film by the legendary director Daisuke Ito.
On June 2nd the expert on this first Japanese cinema genre Nieves Moreno will give a lecture in Corunna on the tradition of silent films in Japan as a prelude to the screening Katsuben – Benshi that opens the programme of our fifth edition.
Nieves Moreno has a degree in Asian Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. With the support of Japanese public institutions, she was a researcher at the Department of Cinema and Theatre at Waseda University in Tokyo for a period of three years. At the moment she is finishing her doctoral thesis about the origins of cinema in Japan at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where she is a researcher in training.
TAKAHIKO IIMURA: FLUXUS, YOKO ONO AND CULT CINEMA
The (S8) Peripheral Film Festival will have de honor to receive the visit of one of the greatest experimental international masters: Takahiko Iimura. Member of a selected group of renowned filmmakers along with Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow or Jonas Mekas, Iimura is considered, as them all in their own countries, the father of avant-garde cinema, in this case in Japan.
Our visitors and accredited press will have the chance to enjoy a season including several of his most celebrated films, a selection made by the author himself on his 16mm work. Furthermore, between the 4th and the 8th of June our audience will have free access to the video installation ‘As I see you, you see me’ that the artist will be activating with an artistic intervention at certain moments of the festival. The programme will be completed by the performance ‘White Calligraphy, Re-Read’ (in 8mm) and a questions and answer session moderated by Esperanzo Collado, a curator specialized in avant-garde cinema.
Famous for exploring materials, the conceptual and intellectual rigor with touches of humor, Iimura met Jonas Mekas in 1964 at Brussel’s International Independent Film Festival where he won a Special Award for his film Onan (1963). Following this meeting, Mekas asked Yoko Ono to promote some of Iimura’s work in New York, which she did. Although the relationship with Ono goes back to 1962:
“I don’t consider myself as part of Fluxus, but a friend, although I was involved by way of making recordings of their events. I have worked with Yoko Ono too, whom I met back in Japan when I used to frequent her performances. I showed her my films and she made the soundtrack of Ai/Love in 1962. Nine years later in 1971, I made a film of her exhibition Yoko Ono: This Is Not Here, with John Lennon too”. (Takahiko Iimura, interview with Esperanza Collado for BlogsandDocs, February 2010).
Furthermore, in 1985, Iimura published one of the first authorized biographies of Yoko Ono.
‘THROUGH A REARVIEW MIRROR’: SPECIAL PROGRAMME ON THE HISTORY OF JAPANESE AVAN-GARDE CINEMA CURATED BY DAÏCHI SAÏTO.
If Takahiko Iimura is thought to be the ‘father’ of Japanese avant-garde, Daichi Saïto would be the ‘son’. Originally from Japan, but after studying literature and philosophy in the United States, Saïto lives in Montreal where he is co -founder of the art collective Double Negative dedicated to the exhibition, distribution and production of experimental cinema. In 2010, his film Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis won the top prize of the 48th Ann Arbor Film Festival, one of the most prestigious avant-garde cinema competitions worldwide. That same year Saïto won the Grand Jury Prize at the 16th Festival of Media City in Canada.
(S8) Peripheral Film Festival has commissioned Daïchi Saïto a special programme on the history of avant-garde cinema in Japan for which the artist has selected those films he considers to be indispensable for a better understanding of what was and what is done nowadays by experimental authors in Japan. Real family situations registered in bucolic spaces , work on the relationship between material reality and the represented reality, a kaleidoscopic portrait of Andy Warhol, films about film, are the contents and intentions of works such as A Woman with Two Heads – A Shadow Film ( Shuji Terayama , 1977) , Drill ( Takashi Ito , 1983) or Andy Warhol : Re – reproduction ( Toshio Matsumoto, 1974).
Furthermore, the (S8) Peripheral Film Festival will show a selection of DaÏchi Saïto’s work, films that have travelled through the most important festivals, galleries, museums and cinematheques.
[+ ] TAKASHI MAKINO – REI HAYAMA– SHINKAN TAMAKI
The future of Japanese avant-garde cinema runs through the impulse of the work of three young filmmakers that together have founded the art group [ + ], one of the main channels of creation and dissemination of experimental cinema in Japan. This platform of innovating arts is led by Takashi Makino, an internationally renowned filmmaker whose work is usually programmed by reputed film festivals such as Ann Arbor, 25FPS Zagreb and International Film Festival Rotterdam. Makino states that his films are “imagination generators”. Around this concept there spins the organical abstraction, a direct relationship between the film and the spectator through the stimulation of personal memories and sensations, a mix of digital and analogic images where the music plays a fundamental role. Makino has collaborated with musicians such as Jim O’Rourke, Tara Jean O’Neill, Colleen, Chris Corsano and Lawrence English.
The (S8) Peripheral Film Festival will offer two Makino programmes. The first one will be the Spanish premiere of his most recent film Phantom Nebula (2014): a juxtaposition of images reaching sometimes 10 thousand layers. With the second our visitors will be able to watch the film 2012 and experience the effects of a ‘cosmic noise storm’ in the performance ‘Space Noise 3D’, 30 minutes of video and 16mm with the impulse of a mesmerizing sound.
Rei Hayama, who will be attending the festival, is also a co-founder and member of the [ + ] group in Tokyo. With an eye on nature -animals, plants- in contrast and opposition to human creations, her movies condense the purest and most primitive state of vision. With a work that very often starts from the hand processed, re-filmed and manipulated celluloid, Hayama unearths the hidden power in certain images to build films on the verge of an abstract narration.
Shinkan Tamaki is the third of [ + ] group co-founders that will visit Corunna during the first week of June. High contrast, the distinction between figure and ground, folds, shadows, negative and positive image, experimenting with the possibilities of the light spectrum, traces and marks left by analog processes: these are some of Tamaki’s film resources. Games of perception supported on the human vision failures, Shinkan Tamaki’s pieces have a high pedagogical component in order to educate the eye of the viewer.
Shinkan Tamaki and Rei Hamaya will have both a video installation open to the audience of the festival at Fundación Luis Seoane building.
CELLULOID ECOSYSTEMS. TERUO KOIKE, THE HIDDEN GEM OF JAPANESE SUPER 8
With the secret dedication and the care of a naturalist (botanist, geologists and entomologist at the same time), Teruo Koike has dedicated himself for the last three decades to the meticulous task of creating his own personal planet. A task that could also be approached as a vegetal, mineral and animal inventory printed on celluloid, produced to be the content of a time capsule. Koike has created more than twenty of these particular ‘ecosystems’ in which he studies the behavior and functionality of those groups of organisms in different environments. The programme that will be shown in Corunna includes three of these ecosystems, filmed and screened in Super 8. A sample of a very singular and unique work, so quiet but at the same time so dazzling, of a hidden master that was rediscovered two years ago by International Film Festival Rotterdam.
The selection of films includes: Ecosystem 10 – A Dripping Moss (1996), Ecosystem 6 – A Sort of Mycelium (1989) and Ecosystem 5 – A Tremulous Stone (1988). In total more than 40 minutes of film in Super 8 with the musical live accompaniment of Teruo Koike’s self-built Japanese wooden flute.