Visionary Film

25/11/2023, 02:45 VISIONARY FILM
The End (2006-2021)

Visionary Film is over. The truth is that, during the last few years, its existence no
longer made much sense. It began to disseminate a barely known cinema, film and
videographic practices that lacked online windows. Nowadays it is undoubtedly true
that this is no longer the case; the Internet is flooded with pages and platforms
dedicated to promoting the practice, exhibition and knowledge of cinema and video by
artists. It is true that Visionary Film had gone from being a blog that reported on
current events in experimental cinema and video creation, to concentrating on
recommending personal projects (announcing screenings such as those of CRANC,
adding written texts for media such as A * Desk , Xcèntric sessions or promote film and
visual arts festivals in which I had the opportunity to participate).
Visionary Film started on May 6, 2006 – curiously, the same day that Marcos Ortega
started his blog Nitrato Lírico which, in a way, would lead to the reference
website Experimental Cinema –. One didn't really know where he was going when he
started this project. Initially it served to share film concerns that fostered a network of
contacts and friendships, of people with similar tastes. The numerous comments
written in the entries from the first years attest to this. Little by little, as one's career
has become more professional (what a horrible word!) through teaching and research,
the blog has declined. The desire to continue it, too.
In May 2021 he turned 15 years old. This September 18, 2021, she ends his journey with
a brief entry that turns out to be number 1200. It is said quickly: 1200 posts! All content
can be intuited through the tag cloud on the left side (where "Screenings" total 122
entries and "Festivals" 155, for example). I always found it funny to check the number of
posts each year; It demonstrated the variations relative to the enthusiasm for
promoting these audiovisual manifestations (123 entries in 2012, only 19 in 2020). All
of them will remain available as long as the domain http://www.visionaryfilm.net/ is
active. The other, much more personal ( http://www.albertalcoz.com/ ), will continue
adding publications as it finalizes films, programming, articles or books.
www.visionaryfilm.net 1/55
Finishing Visionary Film is a bit sad, it has been many hours invested. In any case, it is
necessary to turn the page and change things. Filming again and writing to publish on
paper are more stimulating actions than ever!
Posted by Albert Alcoz 3 comments
September 7, 2021
Self-portrait for FluxClub
This summer I was commissioned to make a self-portrait for FLUX , the Author Video
Festival that will be held in December 2021 at the Arts Santa Mònica facilities in
Barcelona. Shortly after accepting I thought that the most ideal thing would be to make
a piece in super 8 format. I remembered that years ago I filmed myself in front of a
mirror, playing with the mechanisms of a Sankyo camera, changing the focus and
activating the zoom. Recovering that reel, I decided to intersperse dozens of film
fragments from other old reels that had been left in the drawer. To proceed with the
assembly of a job that should not exceed 10 minutes, I decided to use an Apefoto
moviola and join the different cuts with tape. Throughout the last week of August I have
been finalizing a film to which the title must still be added. The thing is, this time I will
film them in black and white. And here is the big question, how to title a self-
portrait? Initially I thought of titles like "Self-portrait in super 8", "Silent self-portrait"
or "Self-portrait without sound" – I ruled out the possibility of adding voices, sounds or
music. Afterwards I have been thinking about other types of less obvious titles but they
don't convince me either. Suggestions are accepted via comments. Although it is also
true that nothing has been commented on this blog for a long time. Basically, this text
was an excuse to upload these four photographs – I am still surprised by the definition
of the image on the screen – and to activate a website that, from now on, I believe will
allow more personal and lighter comments because, of course, In fact, he stopped
reporting a long time ago.
July 26, 2021
Sporadic Music / Sporadic Music

Within the CCCB's Breus collection, Música esporádica / Sporadic Music has just been
published , an essay written in the first person that offers a sonic itinerary through the
Xcèntric Archive. Written in Spanish and translated into English, the text focuses on
the music of a set of films that stand out for their sound section. Starting from five
personal experiences related to listening and cinephile devotion, I propose an auditory
tour through a wide list of international experimental films.
Castilian:
“Elucidating the most avant-garde and experimental musical dimension of a series of

films belonging to the Xcèntric Archive is the objective of this writing. Drawing lines of
agreement that invite us to perceive the acoustic and visual aspects of film
manifestations in an integral, balanced and simultaneous way is the purpose of a text
punctuated by the memory of a set of personal experiences. Recalling lived situations, a
journey is articulated made of sonic reasoning that offers tools to contribute to
evaluating and debating the role of music in this contradirection cinema.”
English:
"The aim of this text is to describe the most avant-garde and experimental musical
dimension of a series of films belonging to the Xcèntric Archive. Punctuated by the
memory of a series of personal experiences, it hopes to sketch lines of concordance that
invite comprehensive, balanced, and simultaneous perception of the acoustic and visual
aspects of filmed manifestations. Recalling lived experiences, it sets out a path
consisting of sonic reasoning that offers tools to contribute towards valuing and
discussing the role of music in this countercurrent cinema."
Languages: Spanish / English

Publication year: 2021
Pages: 80
Measurement: 13 × 17 cm.
ISBN 978-84-09-30098-3
CCCB Edition
July 14, 2021
Recommendations for today
In the images, book covers: Curtis, David and McQueen, Steve (2021) Artist's
Film . New York: Thames & Hudson ; Starr, Cecile (2021) Cecile Starr and
Experimental Animation . Paris: Paris Experimental ; Tremlett, Sarah (2021) The
Poetics of Poetry Film . Bristol: Intellect and Bell, Natalie; Kidner, Dan and Ther, Milan
(2022) Leslie Thornton . Cambridge: The MIT Press .
June 17, 2021
Blue hour (2018-2021)
Blue hour ( work in progress , Barcelona 2018-2021)
Photographic project structured around various urban walks taken during the blue
hour. Practice developed to document bordering spaces, places where the city ends and
the forest begins. They are locations where nature and the city establish dialogues that
point out the idiosyncrasy of the borders between what is artificial and what is organic,
between private property and public space, between night and day. Walls, bushes,
sheds, trees, stairs and bushes are framed under a special light, which marks the end of
the day. Artificial lighting intersects with natural light, determining particular
chromaticisms of practically nocturnal settings. These landscape photographs
capture terrain vagues without people. The trace of the human being is identified by
the buildings and electric lighting. They also record a search process synthesized in
dissident walks focused on exploring poorly conditioned urban areas, enclaves of the
city where the unforeseen makes an appearance. The Creueta del Coll park, the Turó del
Carmel and the Guinardó park are the three geographical axes developed during the
project.
May 3, 2021
HAMMOCK Screen: Media Archeology
Notes on habitability in A Barca (2019) Cinema Semente
HAMMOCK screen
Media Archeology: Analog Sounds and Photochemical Images in Digital Support
"Media archaeology" can be defined as an interdisciplinary area focused on unraveling

the history of knowledge processes that are articulated through the media. Based on the
analytical methods developed by the French theorist Michel Foucault in his treatise The
Archeology of Knowledge (1969), this theoretical concept encompasses the different
investigations that convey the use and abuse of technological devices. The technical
conditions, aesthetic proposals and ideological strategies that determine the influence
of the media in society are the object of analysis in a relatively recent discipline that
includes cultural studies, film history and communication theory, among other
specialties. .
If we focus on the audiovisual field, we see how the notion of “media archaeology” is a
useful tool to question the systematic abandonment of analogue tools in favor of digital
ones. It offers a theoretical scaffolding that reveals how devices condition the
transmission of knowledge, delimiting the exposition of reasoning. It also serves to call
into question the notion of progress under which all technical innovation is
based. Reviewing the different layers that make up certain technological developments
allows us not only to understand their relevance in a given historical context but also to
glimpse their validity. Pointing out their economic interests or perceiving their
sociological consequences are operations that reveal the epistemological foundations
that lurk behind every medium. Understanding how knowledge is configured around
them allows us to detect both their seduction mechanisms and their shortcomings.
When the term "obsolete" is used to describe certain audiovisual technologies that are
no longer in use, it is inevitable to refer to them. It is necessary to rethink its
relevance. Within artistic practices, this attitude is a consistent act of resistance that
seeks to globally understand a phenomenon as complex as that of the moving
image. Fostering a critical spirit regarding the incessant technological innovation
provided by capitalism helps to awaken curiosity regarding the usefulness of past
tools. Recovering audiovisual creation devices prior to the consolidation of the digital
age is a gesture against the current. Activating the potentialities that they store is one of
its logical consequences. What is considered by the RAE as "outdated or inadequate to
current needs" encourages an attitude contrary to the hegemony of novelty.
In the cinematographic and videographic fields, it is illuminating to observe how

digitalization welcomed by the omnipresence of "new media" entails a neoliberal
discourse that relegates the analogical to ostracism. In experimental practices, the fact
of recovering old cameras, film, tapes and other artifacts of audiovisual production
demonstrates the desire to expand knowledge. They are not nostalgic attitudes related
to a past that has not even been witnessed; They are personal concerns or collective
initiatives related to the development of methodologies located outside the
system. Fleeing from the vicissitudes dictated by the industry – with its large
technology companies obsessed with improving the definition of image and sound –
leads us to investigate a past that, when revisited, points to new vanishing points. It is
necessary to subvert the causal story that describes the progressive advance of
audiovisual media to make other paths visible; cyclical itineraries with temporal
fissures introduced in their future.
In the article “Media Archaeology: A Viable Discipline or a Valuable

Symptom?” theorist Thomas Elsaesser specifies that it is necessary "to discover various
narratives of the origins of the moving image that are not necessarily related to
photography." He also states that "a debate not focused on this rupture that opposes
analogue to digital" should be encouraged. In the five projects discussed below, both
supports inevitably coexist, giving rise to multifaceted works that concern the ontology
of the image. Remote analog sound retrievals; recent filming on photochemical
support; an imaginary essay on photography raised with computer-generated images,
are the technical decisions that guide the form and content of the selected pieces. Some
of them intertwine documentary positions with fictional features. They demonstrate the
illusionism of their constructions without abandoning their testimonial value.
Oramics: Atlantis Anew (2011) Aura Satz

https://hamacaonline.net/titles/oramics-atlantis-anew/
The English composer Daphne Oram was one of the pioneers of electronic music. In
1958 she co-founded the BBC Radiophonic workshop where she experimented with new
methods of sound creation the results of which were broadcast on the radio. Filmmaker
Aura Satz approaches the universe of the musical creator to pay tribute to her through
her mythical invention Oramics. Preserved by the Science Museum in London, this
machine is an elaborate contraption whose principle is based on the sound
interpretation of a series of hand-made drawings on transparent 35 mm film. The
strokes made on the surface of the celluloid are amplified and emitted as
unprecedented sounds with no link to musical instruments. This invention connects
with the avant-garde tradition of Optical Sound Films , films that manually inscribe
graphics to generate synthetic sounds. Filmmakers such as Rudolf Pfenninger, Oskar
Fishinger, Guy Sherwin and Lis Rhodes have made films under similar parameters:
their sounds come from the photoelectric cell of the projectors that responds to the
shapes drawn on the celluloid soundtrack by amplifying their signal. Recording on
video the current operation of the machinery; Recording the sound waves it produces
and introducing Oram's own voice – which relates her conceptions written in the
book An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics (1971) – is how Satz
configures this digital piece. To this day, the Barcelona-born filmmaker continues to
create single-channel videos and sound installations that vindicate the careers of barely
studied female musical composers. Delia Derbyshire, Laurie Spiegel, Pauline Oliveiros,
Eliane Radigue, Maryanne Amacher and Beatriz Ferreyra are some of them.
The Perfect Human (2017) The Rara Troup

https://hamacaonline.net/titles/la-humana-perfecta/
The origin of The Perfect Human is the soundtrack of the short film The Perfect
Human (Jørgen Leth, 1967). This Danish film is an anthropological study that shows a
wealth of situations, gestures and everyday actions of human beings, described in detail
through a male voice-over that is not exempt from sarcasm. The piece, filmed in
rigorous black and white, later gained popularity thanks to director Lars Von Trier who
decided to make a remake with Leth himself: the feature film titled The Five
Conditions (2003). La Rara Troup fully recovers the original sound of the filming to
rethink its entire representation. Addressing the constraints argued by the voice, the
collective reconstructs each of the film's shots following its sequence and respecting its
duration. The group stages each of the film's situations, completely changing its
foundation. If in The Perfect Human there is a main actor and a supporting actress –
who illustrate a certain heterosexual relationship based on masculinity – in The Perfect
Human the couple gives way to the community and its diversity. Eleven adults appear
throughout a video that flees from the youthful individuality of the previous one to
embrace plurality. The modern and advertising aesthetic of the first is recovered under
a hyperrealistic prism that emphasizes the strength of the faces. The perfect human is
one of the numerous audiovisual results originated by the collective through the sharing
of ideas, processes and collaborative learning methodologies anchored in concepts such
as mental health and emotional-sexual diversity. Recycling an audio track recorded in
the sixties, this "strange" group carries out an artistic operation that decontextualizes
the voice to introduce anthropological perspectives of necessary relevance.
Notes on habitability in A Barca (2019) Cinema Semente

https://hamacaonline.net/titles/notas-sobre-habitabilite-en-barca/
The 16 mm support is an option that in recent years has gained prominence thanks to
the network of independent laboratories and the film concerns of artists fascinated by
the materiality of images. The interest in showing the idiosyncrasy of photochemical
formats by art centers and film festivals has also sponsored this recovery. Cinema
Semente is a collective of young filmmakers who operate in the Galician area from a
political and community perspective focused on the rural environment. Alfredo Ruiz,
Andrés Fernández, Pablo Paloma, Paloma Hernández and Patxi Burillo are the people
behind a project that originated after the first promotion of the Elías Querejeta Zine
Eskola. Its foundation is due to a desire to "understand traditions, film from listening
and empower the filmed subject based on the recognition of the cultural and human
value that it harbors." Notes on habitability in A Barca collects "things seen and heard"
in this town in southern Galicia throughout the summer days of 2019. It captures both
the vitality of the environment and the desire to film it vividly. The sixteen minutes of
duration present features typical of the heterodox documentary - an approach to the
representation of reality exercised from immediacy, without rhetoric or staging -, lyrical
cinema - a free approach that is amazed at the nature of the region and its inhabitants –
and the metafilmic component – some shots that reveal issues related to the medium,
such as visiting a movie theater. Without leaving aside the spontaneous reflection on
the creation process, Cinema Semente celebrates the existence of celluloid by opting for
an intergenerational portrait where the hipster embraces the elderly. Reveals vital
situations in a wild environment in an inspiring way.
Un encanteri (2014) by Lluís de Sola

https://hamacaonline.net/titles/un-encanteri/
Filming with the Bolex camera and developing the film material is the main procedure
that the Catalan filmmaker Lluís de Sola uses to make his most personal pieces. This
experienced director of fiction films, cultural television programs and live musical
recordings, opts for black and white negative photochemical material to develop his
most artistic pieces. Un encanteri picks up part of the poetic and contemplative tone
previously exposed in the feature film El pas del riu (2013). He does so by incorporating
a self-reflexive imaginary plot that allows him to combine materials filmed and
developed in a particular environment. The French town of Cerbère – located next to
Portbou – is the setting for a mysterious fiction whose procedural overtones become
"an anecdote with the category of myth." The use of sea water for the last step of the
developing process is a key element of a story told in the whispers of a female voice-
over. Interweaving the documentation of the region with verbal speculation is how the
enchantment emerges, both from the place and from the film itself. The Hôtel
Belvédère du Rayon Vert was the center of operations for an artistic residency in which
Lluís de Sola converted the bathroom into a photochemical laboratory. He also created
audio recordings whose texture interweaves analog and digital technologies, vinyl
players and acoustic records assembled through binary code.
The Sasha (2019) María Molina Peiro

https://hamacaonline.net/titles/the-sasha/
A family photograph in color. A group portrait formed by a married couple and their
two children. He is the astronaut Charles Duke who in 1972 traveled to the Moon within
the Apollo XVI project. Among the tasks entrusted to him is to take high-resolution
photographs of the surface of the only satellite of planet Earth. On his own initiative he
decides to take a photographic copy wrapped in cellophane paper, with the intention of
depositing it on the lunar sphere. This fact is the starting point of an ambitious
audiovisual project whose introduction explains the meaning of the title: "in the
traditional beliefs of some Central African societies, there is an ontological state
between the living and the dead. In this space and time inhabit a class of spirits called
The Sasha." Archive television images, fictitious simulations of true events and
computer-generated digital graphics are the materials that Molina Peiró uses to make a
speculative short film located between science fiction and informative reportage. The
Sasha meditates on the verisimilitude of photography and documentary materials,
conjecturing events framed in the space race while evidencing the visual domination
sponsored by cyberspace. In this essay, the bias derived from the spatio-temporal
relationships that occur between events from the past and a story stated in the present
contributes to thinking about the future of images. Betting on media archeology is a
declaration of principles: it denounces oblivion, demands the need to preserve the past
and rehabilitate it under new cognitive prisms. According to the German theorist
Siegfried Zielinski, media archeology promotes "excavating secret paths in history,
which could help us find our way to the future."
April 26, 2021
In the images, book covers: Fontaine, Cécile, L'émulsion fantastique. Le cinema

selon. Paris: Light Cone, 2021 ; Baron, Jaimie, Reuse, Misuse, Abuse . The Ethics of
Audiovisual Appropriation in the Digital Era. Bucknell University, 2020 ; Lebrat,
Christian, Radical Cinema . Paris: Paris Expérimental, 2021 and Jurij,
Meden, Scratches and Glitches. Observations on Preserving and Exhibiting Cinema in
the Early 21st Century . Vienna: FilmmuseumSynemaPublikatonen, 2021.
April 17, 2021
Found Footage Magazine – Issue #7
The magazine Found Footage Magazine publishes a new issue, the seventh, which
includes a dossier dedicated to the work of Christoph Girardet and Matthias
Müller. Since 1999, the German duo has been making cinematographic works based on
audiovisual recycling. Throughout almost thirty films, the two filmmakers have
reconsidered the appropriate film materials to reveal new reasoning expressed through
precise montages. The mystery they transmit with their pieces derives from the fact of
seeking the ominous in reused images. As they do so, they interrogate both the
cinematic nature of the reused materials and the history that runs through them. A
section of essays, others of articles and interviews, a section of book reviews, the
collaboration of the Mexican filmmaker Ernesto Baca and a series of artistic pieces
complete a publication directed by César Ustarroz that can be purchased at this link .
SPECIAL ON CHRISTOPH GIRARDET & MATTHIAS MÜLLER

A Haunted House: The ominous abodes of Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller ,
by Matthew Cole Levine
Personne: The disappearance of the white man , by Catherine Russell
Fenestra Rotunda: A score of notes and memories following the viewing of Girardet &
Müller's Meteor , by Stefano Miraglia
A Conversation with Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller, by Alejandro Bachmann
ESSAYS
Hitching a Ride to Heaven: The confessional as found footage , by Clint Enns
Abbas Kiarostami's Final Frame—an elegy , by Scott MacDonald
Retracted Cinema , by Peter Freund
Being (or Seeming to Be) Center Stage , by Jonathan Rosenbaum
ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

More Is More: Paul Cronin's A Time to Stir , by Scott Macdonald
Artavazd Pelechian's La Nature: When cinema writes disaster, by Anna Doyle
Just Don't Think I'll Scream: A conversation with Frank Beauvais, by Nazaré Soares
Secrets as Surfaces: Prayers in memory of two American filmmakers, by Pablo Marín
When Forever Dies : An interview with Peet Gelderblom, by Joshua Wille
BOOK REVIEWS
Absence in Cinema: The art of showing nothing , by César Ustarroz
Justin Remes. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020
Film and Art After Cinema , by César Ustarroz
Lars Henrik Gass. Zagreb: Multimedijalni institute, 2019
DÉMONTAGE: TRAPPED IN ANOTHER DREAM

by Ernesto Baca
ARTWORKS
by John Baldessari, Lola Dupre, Jean-Jacques Martinod, Audrey Jeamart, Miriam
Tölke, Bill Noir, Monique Vettraino.
February 23, 2021
Mars: warm abstraction, scientific friction
Spheres (1969) Norman McLaren
Playlist for the Xcèntric Archive in relation to the exhibition "Mars. The red mirror" at
the CCCB.
The color of the surface of the planet closest to Earth is one of its most characteristic
features. In any case, the reddish tones belonging to iron oxide have always been
perceived from a distance. This distance, illusorily reduced thanks to the incessant
advance of optical inventions, prevents knowledge on the ground that, simultaneously,
encourages speculation. Artistic creation is a terrain suitable for the astronomical
imagination and cinema is one of its most recurrent disciplines. Leaving aside the
science fiction genre, it is in the field of film experimentation that formalizations are
explored that, through galactic images and interstellar sounds, transmit physical visits
to Mars. They are animations attached to visual music and pieces that deploy special
effects without taking into account the narration.
Science Friction (1959), Stan Vanderbeek, 10'

Trying to get closer to the red planet is equivalent to investing in technological tools
that allow obtaining objective data about its idiosyncrasies. During the space race
carried out by the United States and the former USSR in the context of the Cold War,
the rivalry between the positions of their leaders reaches parody overtones in Stan
Vanderbeek's cut-out animations.
Test I (1971), Józef Robakowski, 5'

On an overexposed 35mm film strip, the Polish Józef Robakowski makes a set of
perforations of different sizes. The resulting circles appear intermittently, synchronized
to percussion notes, leaving a barely perceptible light trail. The film suggests both the
immensity of the Milky Way and the spherical presences of planets and satellites.
Próba (1971), Józef Robakowski, 2'

Próba is an experiment in musical interruption seasoned with homogeneous passages
of a reddish tone. Intervening the continuity of an organ theme by Johann Sebastian
Bach, the filmmaker generates a visually abstract piece where staccato melodies
accompany dark areas and the red sections consist of absolute silence.
Stellar (1993), Stan Brakhage, 2'

The visual richness of any galaxy is suggested in Stellar with spots of translucent colors
and points of light that quickly juxtapose each other, constantly merging. It is a film
painted by hand directly on the emulsion that, rephotographed microscopically,
graduates the acceleration of its images evoking nebulae, star clusters and cosmic dust.
LYLS: Undertone Overture (2013), Jodie Mack, 10'

Using a fabric dyeing technique such as tie-dye, which consists of tying pieces of
clothing and dyeing them to achieve spiral chromatic effects and concentric circles, the
North American Jodie Mack proposes a abstract piece of textures and gradients. The
frenetic rhythm that guides the variety of colors is synchronized to indefinite sound
environments. All of this seems to invoke the cosmos.
Spheres (1969), Norman McLaren, 7'

Phobos and Deimos are the names of the two satellites of Mars. The first has an
irregular shape and has a decelerated orbit with respect to the planet it surrounds; the
second travels an almost circular orbit developed in synchrony. In Spheres, the
Canadian McLaren collaborates with the Dutch animator René Jodin to create an
interstellar scenography occupied by metallic spheres whose movements recall the
systematic advances of the celestial bodies that revolve around the planets.
La Plage (1991), Patrick Bokanowski, 12'

The two polar caps on Mars appear to be made up mostly of water, however the data
remain contingent. In La Plage, the French filmmaker Bokanowski uses tricks and
special effects that distort the filmed images, turning a common outdoor setting – a
beach – into a dreamlike setting that seems to imagine the surface of the red planet and
approaching it using telescopes and other devices. astronomical.
Book of Mirrors (2002), Joost Rekveld, 12'

Dutch filmmaker and engineer Joost Rekveld ignores camera objective lenses to
produce images that escape traditional perspective. In Book of Mirrors he uses mirrors
and kaleidoscopes to create light waves that rest directly on the emulsion. The result
detects Martian geology with its wind-swayed dune fields. Rozalie Hirs' electroacoustic
composition increases the sensation of witnessing a dizzying restlessness.
William Kentridge: Drawing ideologies, encouraging resistance
Blanket Statement #2: All or Nothing (2013) Jodie Mack
Playlist for the Xcèntric Archive in relation to the exhibition "William Kentridge. What
is not drawn" at the CCCB.
Starting from charcoal drawing, the South African artist William Kentridge investigates
the richness of images operating from his transdisciplinarity. From the city of
Johannesburg he builds a graphic, film, scenic and multimedia work that emphasizes
both the magical illusionism of cinema and the testimony of political conflicts and
social problems in the history of his country. Prepared in parallel to the exhibition
«William Kentridge. What is not drawn", this playlist creates an itinerary that visualizes
the fit between artisanal experimental animation techniques and the ideological
backgrounds that the contents of the films transmit.
Fome (1972) Carlos Vergara, 5'

Hunger, this endemic problem in certain areas of the planet such as much of the
southern hemisphere, stars in this piece. Filmed to denounce the poverty of the
seventies in Brazil, Vergara writes the word FOME (hunger) with grains of white beans
that unfold like an animation of splendid, unusually magical plants.
Música per a perplexes (2001) Laboratorium, 4'

Metaphysical prints that suggest loneliness, absurdity, loss, sadness, disenchantment
and crying. Ten short fragments of songs created by renowned composers of classical
music are the sound accompaniment of animations with illustration features. There are
ten disturbing situations with which Laboratorium (Laura Ginès and Pere Ginard)
evoke fear, individuality and the alienation of contemporary society.
Blanket Statement #2: All or Nothing (2013) Jodie Mack, 2013, 3'
North American filmmaker Jodie Mack works with animation taking into account the
possibilities of the single frame. Filming and recording individual images followed by
many others presented at an accelerated pace is how she develops pieces that include
hundreds of frames of colored wool fabrics. This animation recalls the making of the
tapestries in Kentridge's The Nose series .
In the Penitentiary Colony (2011) Marcel Pié and Dani Pitarch, 6'
This essay on the body, inspired by the story of the same name by the Czech writer
Franz Kafka, is also a study on drawing. Through the typographic animation of the text
and the meticulous cataloging of scientific illustrations, Pié and Pitarch present a story
that visualizes devices and control mechanisms, while reflecting on the face and pain.
Déjeuner du matin (1974) Patrick Bokanowski, 11'

With this morning breakfast in a country house, French filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski
transforms the domestic conventions of this ritual to conceive a set of expressionist
scenes that produce claustrophobia. The desolate tone that permeates this animation,
increased by its pictorial dimension, is given by the tediousness of repetition and lack of
communication.
Ilha das flores (1989) Jorge Furtado, 13'

The Brazilian Jorge Furtado creates a parable deeply critical of the capitalist system
based on the journey of a tomato. The origin and future of this food product is used as a
pretext to create an audiovisual essay where the images and voice-over denounce a
situation that starts from irony and reaches irritation. The collage technique
punctuates, in a humorous way, an initial section that pedagogically documents the

endless contradictions existing in society.
NS Trilogie – Teil II: Gefühl Kazet (1997) Linda Christanell, 13'

The stigma caused by National Socialism in her own daily life is Linda Christanell's
object of study in this film. Recovering Nazi imagery and the figure of Hitler, the
Austrian artist questions the fascist traits that exist today. Like Kentridge with the
review of racial segregation during Apartheid, Christanell claims to avoid oblivion.
January 15, 2021
The intimate resistance. Around four films by Eugènia Balcells
Boy Meets Girl (1978)
Published within the Flowers in the Shadow cycle of the Spanish Film Library
together with the text "Eugènia Balcells: the energy of the transitory" by Paula
Arantzazu Ruiz.
Artistic creation is a mode of resistance, one that can focus on intimacy, familiarity, and
proximity while still embracing the unknown. In the cinema of Eugènia Balcells this
intimate resistance is situated between withdrawal and expansion, between the need for
shelter and the desire for discovery. Identify the memory features that identify the
family past; experience the friendly bond that emerges during the creative process
itself; playfully distorting the visual messages of the media, are gestures present in films
that start from the personal to move towards the universal. In this itinerary that goes
from the intimate to the public, interrogating the normativity towards which television,
advertising and commercial cinema tends allows us to articulate a critical discourse
whose filmic concretization includes play and formal experimentation.
The cinematographic practice of Eugènia Balcells (Barcelona, 1943) begins in the mid-
seventies while she creates multidisciplinary works that contribute to questioning the
consumer society and the art market. Using appropriation, the artist explores different
areas – painting, photography, design, installation, film, video – questioning the
essentiality that she supposedly defines each of them. In her objectual work she collects
materials that, unfolding under singular aesthetic associations, become semantic
constructions inspired by the conceptual art of the time. It is in the context of the
dematerialization of the work of art in Catalonia in the early seventies that Balcells
became known. The film manifestations of artists from the Grup de Treball – Francesc
Abad, Muntadas, Àngels Ribé, Pere Portabella, etc. – point out the importance of the
moving image in the artistic context. In the article “Notations on video and feminism in
the Spanish state” Susana Blas explains: "since the end of the seventies, video began to
be used by Spanish conceptual artists who were already using experimental cinema to
document their actions. or to explore the moving image. Among them we can mention
Esther Ferrer, Fina Miralles or Eugènia Balcells". The ideas and artistic attitudes
developed by Balcells have another determining anchor point: the thought of the
American John Cage. Reasoning about the influence that knowing the work and
ideology of the musical composer had on her, the filmmaker explains: "suddenly, by
expanding this conception of sound, perhaps by analogy, other senses and my ability to
understand were also expanded. "It was almost a physical sensation of expansion, of
noticing that all the doors and windows that until then had been closed were opening."
Album (1976)
In Album (1976) the notes of a melancholic piano and the voice-over of Eugènia Gorina,
the artist's grandmother, are the sound section of a montage made of postcards,
photographs and fragments of texts. The film, originated after the discovery of a family
album, proposes a journey to the most intimate and close past. Remembering loved
ones through epistolary reading involves remembering past forms of communication
that show nostalgia. The evocation of the feminine universe is distilled through verbal
pronunciations and calligraphic records of re-framed postcards. This (dis)assembly of
message details reveals both the memory and remembrance they treasure and the
forgetting they entail. Handwritten fragments are interspersed with photographs from
the time in a genealogical recovery operation that reveals the construction of a certain
feminine stereotype. In Boy Meets Girl (1978) the arbitrariness of heterosexual

relationships sold by advertising and the insubstantiality of the archetypes that they use
are exposed. An accelerated set of female and male faces, confronted vertically on a split
screen, are accompanied by the sound of slot machines. This points out the chance of
the proposed meeting. In the accumulation of portraits taken from newspapers and
printed magazines, photographs of anonymous, objectified women contrast with those
of famous men, recognizable by their social status. In a conversation with Carlota
Álvarez Basso, Balcells states that the starting point of the film was a question: "what
image would they have of men and women in our time if someone came and formed an
image from the media? ? The piece links with Presenta (1977) and The End (1977),
works that recycle frames from fiction feature films to question their conventions and
happy endings. In For/Against (1983) television is the object of attention. Over the
course of three minutes (a single reel of Super 8) the artist refilms images broadcast by
the silly box with the Dutch musician Peter Van Riper. The visual flow of a North
American television network, with its war news and its advertisements, becomes a
cascade of images emulsified frame by frame, soundtracked alongside a series of quotes
recited in English. "Well cared for, all creatures prosper. Abandoned, all creatures
decay" is the quote from the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu with which the film
concludes.
Escape (1979)
Fugue (1979) agrees with Álbum in that it explores personal relationships from
home. For twenty minutes, the silence of the soundtrack brings together a series of
black and white shots taken with a 16 mm Bolex camera. Filmed on a tripod from a
single location, the twelve panoramic shots take place inside a country house belonging
to the artist's family. Balcells herself and her friends travel there: the filmmaker and
writer Eugeni Bonet, the poet Carles Hac Mor and Nati Ribas. The predetermined
structure with which the filming is planned (multiple exposures of 360º panning,
filmed in a naturally lit room) contrasts with the relaxation and spontaneity conveyed
by the protagonists' gestures. If the formal constraints evoke the structural cinema of
Michael Snow and Werner Nekes, the documentary record testifies to the spectral
character. There is something ghostly about isolated bodies that perform trivial actions,
almost unintentionally. The human figures hint at the serenity and pleasure that comes
with "dolce far niente." Smoking a cigarette, reading the newspaper, writing notes in a
notebook, playing with a ball or using a sewing machine are acts that happen between
glazes and overexposures. Balcells explains that measuring the light with the
photometer – to be able to rewind and film again, up to five times on the same
photochemical support – was a repetitive and meticulous task to which she dedicated
herself. Doors, windows and diverse furniture are intertwined through the perpetual
duplications of their shapes. The appearance of an artificial spotlight in the field or the
frequent reflection of the camera in a mirror contribute to increasing the metafilmic
character of the film. Representing the creation process itself is another parameter that
conveys a daily essay on space and time. If family ties and friendship are a reason for
analysis in Álbum y Fuga ; resistance to the seduction capacity of the hegemonic media
is the germ of Boy Meets Girl and For/Against . The first two have concomitances
with Indian Circle (1981); the second with 133(1978). These other two works made on
video with Van Riper and on 16 mm with Bonet, respectively, incorporate Balcells'
interest in music and sound. Expanding her reflection on the connotations of the
domestic space and media archeology – disclosed by Richard Prelinger in writings,
conferences and a reference website such as archive.org – the filmmaker adds sonic
questions directed both towards the viewer's listening and the immersive dimension of
the audiovisual . This is why Eugènia Balcells progressively abandons single-channel
production to move towards video installation and multimedia installation, areas in
which she has built a work of international scope. This is attested to by exhibitions such
as En trànsit (1993), Roda do tempo (2001), Freqüències (2009) and Años Luz (2012).
Bibliography:
Catalog of the Eugènia Balcells exhibition. Synchronies . Madrid: MNCARS, 1995.

Curated by Claudia Giannetti
Esquirol, Josep Maria, The intimate resistance . Barcelona: Acantilado, 2015.
The End (1977)
December 18, 2020
In the images, book covers: Hirasaha, Go; Adachi-Tasch, Ann; Ross, Julian (Ed.)
"Japanese Expanded Cinema and Intermedia: Critical Texts of the 1960s." Archive
Books, 2020 ; Knowles, Kim, "Experimental Film and Photo-chemical
Practices." Palgrave MacMillan, 2020 ; Yue, Genevieve, "Girls Head. Feminism and
Film Materiality." Fordham University press, 2020 and Ortega, Garbiñe; Palacios,
María (Ed.) "Meditations on the present. Ute Aurand, Helga Fabderl, Jeanette Muñoz,
Renate Sami." Point of View, 2020 .
October 29, 2020
FLUX CLUB 2020 – COVIDeo Session

Pandemic (2020) Carolina Cabrerizo
On Monday, December 9, a new session of the Flux Club is organized at the Antic
Teatre in Barcelona. "COVIDeo. Audiovisual reflections in times of covering gaps" is the
statement of an extensive video creation program in which 25 artists participate who,
during confinement, videographically analyze the uncertainty caused by the pandemic
and the states of alert it raises. In the words of the programmers Lis Costa and Josep M.
Jordana "we will discover very critical audiovisual reflections, others that are more
aesthetic, humorous, poetic, philosophical and others that are intimate and
emotional." The list of participants includes Nora Ancarola, Miguel Andrés, Carolina
Cabrerizo, Elena Ferrer, Lalo García / Raimon Lorda, Kikol Grau, Javier Guerra,
Ramon Guimaraes, Miquel Jordà, Violeta Kokopelli, Francesca Llopis, Elisabet Mabres,
Núria Manso, Gonzalo Marcuzzi , Jordi Mitjà, Rrose Present, Diana Rangel, Ana
Rodríguez León, Noemi Sjöberg, Jacobo Sucari, Jordi Teixidó, Ulrich Weitzel and
myself. At this link you can consult the program of a session that will include a final
discussion.
Nosaltres (part I) (2020) Nora Ancarola
Pandemic: Flowers on the sidelines / Malas Hierbas (2020) Rrose Present
Deconfining a workshop (2020) Jordi Mitjà
Pork Chops (2020) Javier Guerra
October 26, 2020
Political Advertisement X: 1952 - 2020 – Antoni Muntadas + Marshall Reese

ONLINE SESSION
On Tuesday, November 3, the new version of the work Political Advertisement X: 1952-
2020 by Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese will be shown at the Zumzeig cinema in
Barcelona . The screening of the recent edition of this work in progress begun in 1984
coincides with the US elections to Parliament, an election day in which Joe Biden hopes
to unseat Donald Trump for the presidency. Marcelo Expósito and myself will present
an audiovisual project that reveals the transformations suffered by audiovisual
advertising strategies with respect to the logic of persuasion and the ideological
mechanisms that threaten.
"For 35 years, artists Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese have compiled presidential
campaign television ads. And each election year, they publish their updated anthology.
Played in chronological order and without commentary, the ads become a chorus of
patriotism, partisanship and the nation's fear. They began the work in 1984, compiling
campaign ads for current President Ronald Reagan and former Democratic Vice
President Walter Mondale. Today, the film spans from the 1950s to the 2020 election."
October 7, 2020
Beyond the canon. Other stories from experimental cinema – Aula Xcèntric 2020
Killer of Sheep (1978) Charles Burnett
Xcèntric organizes a new course of its Classroom with a set of sessions dedicated to
discussing the canon of avant-garde and experimental cinema. Beyond the
canon. Other Histories of Experimental Cinema is the enunciation of a conference
program designed to reveal non-hegemonic approaches to these film
practices. Questioning what to date has been promoted as the history of experimental
cinema is one of the objectives of sessions in which "we will shift the focus to the
margins of this canon, such as cinema made by women, cinema produced in Africa or
the Asian Pacific, or anonymous films". Throughout October, November and December
2020, the following presentations from Aula Xcèntric 2020 will take place:
10.27.2020 "Tearing down statues. Thinking about a counterhistory of experimental

cinema." Erik Bullot
03.11.2020 "Telling the history (of cinema) of women. Directing students at the Official
School of Cinematography." Sonia Garcia Lopez
10.11.2020 "We, Ourselves and Us. Essential Cinema and its consequences." Albert
Alcoz
17.11.2020 "African cinemas and their diaspora: expanding the canon from the black
radical imagination." Bea Leal
11.24.2020 "Micropolitics and canonicity in the film avant-garde: minorities and
militancy." Juan Antonio Suarez
01.12.2020 "Forgotten artifacts. Incisions in the infinite film archive." Celeste Araújo
03.12.2020 "Experimental cinema and artistic expansion in Taiwan and the Asian
Pacific." Esperanza Collado
Killer of Sheep (1978) Charles Burnett

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