The audio of the films was live streamed in the internet, thus allowing for the possibility of creating a different way of experiencing the films, at a distance, through aural experience only, without the corresponding images.
a selection of films from the archive of destruction #1
A selection of films focusing on radical experimentation that questioned established filmic language, ranging from destruction of conventional narrative lines to films that break, or do away with, the traditional relations between image and sound
HURLEMENTS EN FAVEUR DE SADE [HOWLINGS IN FAVOUR OF SADE]
Guy Debord, 1952
B&W, 63 mins., sound
French w/ English subtitles
Film stripped bare of everything that is accessory, and reduced to its most basic constituents, to such a point that connections with Malevich’s Black Square painting can be imagined.
With this film, composed of textual collages spoken over white screens alternating with moments of silence over black screens, Debord operates one of the most radical assaults ever perpetrated against filmic conventions.
“Cinema is dead. No more films are possible!”
TOWERS OPEN FIRE
Anthony Balch & William S. Burroughs, 1963
B&W, color, 9 mins., sound
English
“Look at this image. Does it seem to be persisting?”
A collaboration between writer William Burroughs and film director Anthony Balch, transposing to film the same processes of cut-up and collage that Burroughs developed with Bryon Gysin and which marked a clear break with linear narrative editing, in his writings.
TRAITÉ DE BAVE ET DE ETERNITÉ [ON VENOM AND ETERNITY]
Isidore Isou, 1951
B&W, 120 mins., sound
French w/ English subtitles
Isou, a member of the Parisian avant-garde group the Lettristes, directs what was to be the movement’s first film. Working both as a manifesto, making public the group’s ideas, as well as a provocation on the audience, the film also purposefully operates a discrepancy
between the soundtrack and what is being shown in the images, introducing a significant and influential formal innovation in film, by destroying the direct relations between film’s basic elements.
“Dear spectators, you are about to see a discrepant film. No refunds will be given.”
BRANCA DE NEVE [SNOW WHITE]
João César Monteiro, 2000
color, 72 mins., sound
Portuguese w/ English subtitles
Departing from Swiss writer Robert Walser’s version of the Snow White story, filmmaker César Monteiro’s approach highlights the textual element in the film, thus preserving the most of its literary character. Strangely enough, this brings an even greater importance to
the sparse images that compose the film.
Almost 50 years after Debord’s Hurlements en Faveur de Sade, and in spite of its more conventional narrative structure, this film still proved able to constitute a c hallenge and provocation towards the audience of a small country in Europe.
“How presumptuous of the prince to have disturbed Snow White in her beauty sleep, to
have kissed her and removed her from her glass casket in order to restore her to life, i.e.
in order to possess her in the flesh…”
a selection of films from the archive of destruction #2
A selection of films that celebrate architecture as an inextinguishable source of joys.
DIE SCHÖPFER DER EINKAUFSWELTEN
[THE CREATORS OF THE SHOPPING WORLDS]
Harun Farocki, 2001
color, 72 mins., sound
German w/ English subtitles
SEOUL TOURS
Park Eunseon
color, HD video, 8mins., sound
Korean and English subtitles
vimeo link
PLAYTIME
Jacques Tati, 1967
color, 118 mins., sound
French w/ English subtitles
a selection of films from the archive of destruction #3
concentrationary space
concentrationary space
EL ÁNGEL EXTERMINADOR [THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL]
Luis Buñuel, 1962
B&W, sound, 84 mins.
Spanish w/ English subtitles
Luis Buñuel, 1962
B&W, sound, 84 mins.
Spanish w/ English subtitles
In an upper-class mansion, the preparations for a dinner party see all the employees and servants leave the place without much explanation just before dinner starts, leaving its owners and their guests by themselves. As the night unfolds and the dinner comes to an end, the guests find themselves unable to leave the place, in spite of the inexistence of any physical barriers that would prevent them of doing so.
“ - When they think back on their conduct, they'll be ashamed.
- True and I wish to spare them that embarrassment. Let us go down to their level to attenuate their incorrectness.”
“ - When they think back on their conduct, they'll be ashamed.
- True and I wish to spare them that embarrassment. Let us go down to their level to attenuate their incorrectness.”
one fragment of
FRAGMENTOS DE UM FILME-ESMOLA [FRAGMENTS OF AN ALMS-FILM]
João César Monteiro, 1972-74
B&W, sound, 2'48''
Portuguese w/ English subtitles
One isolated fragment taken from a film shot during the last years of the Portuguese dictatorship, and composed of autonomous fragments that consciously disregarded conventional narrative structures.
In this fragment one can listen to a voice-off recitation of French poet Francis Ponge’s description of the properties of an orange.
“The orange has better taste but is too passive, and its fragrant sacrifice is surely too considerate of the oppressor.”
SNAFU – Situation Normal: All Fucked Up
Jae Yong Park, 2010
color, sound, 14 mins.
Korean, English w/ English subtitles
Filmed and edited with an urgency to respond to recent events that took place in Korea in 2009 and, most especially, to not allow them to fall into oblivion, this short video documentary traces a disturbing impression of a narrowing and enclosing of the social and political space in Korea, that finds perhaps a fitting visual - and physically real - translation in the images of the City Hall’s siege with
police buses.
“The Head of Seoul Metropolitan Police : ‘Some say that it’s rather cosy to have police buses surrounding the place.’”
vimeo link
KYNODONTAS [DOG TOOTH]
Giorgos Lanthimos, 2009
color, sound, 92 mins.
Greek w/ English subtitles
A married couple and their three young adult children, a son and two daughters, live in a large compound with a garden and a swimming pool. Through the control and manipulation of both language and interpretation of signs of the exterior world, the siblings are kept in total isolation and unawareness of everything that happens outside the walls of their property, their constructed reality thus becoming a claustrophobic physical and psychological space.
In the microscopic scale of the affective relations inside the family, power and oppression structures that organise and maintain ‘social order’ are reproduced.
“ - Shotgun.
- ‘Shotgun’ is a beautiful white bird.”
a selection of films from the archive of destruction #4
BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
Chatterbox Audio Theater, 2007
Chatterbox Audio Theater, 2007
dir. by Robert Arnold
sound, 47 mins.
English
A NOUS LA LIBERTÉ
René Clair, 1931
B&W, sound, 83 mins.
French w/ English subtitles
sound, 47 mins.
English
A NOUS LA LIBERTÉ
René Clair, 1931
B&W, sound, 83 mins.
French w/ English subtitles
