November 2, 2007, 8 p.m. Down with the pimps of art! Relationships between art and punk in communist Poland (1970/80s). Curated by Lukasz Ronduda & Michal Wolinski in association with Piktogram and Archfilm
Jacques de Koning
A documentary about the band Izrael, made by a Dutch filmmaker and scriptwriter, lost in Poland of the martial law era, fascinated with the Polish punk underground. The film is
a grotesque fun play, a conscious tongue-in-cheek overidentification with roles, confronting an ignorant filmmaker from the 'affluent West' with the members of a punk bank from communist Poland.
Jacques de Koning, I could live in Africa, 1983, 21:30
Henryk Gajewski, Jacques de Koning
The film (known internationally as Punk in Poland) is a kind of continuation of Gajewski's Tilt Back. It tells of the adventures of two friends, co-founders of the band Tilt - Tomek Lipinski (Frantz) and Jacek Lenartowicz (Luter), who become separated when one of them emigrates. The film features a lot of existential poetry by Luter - the eponymous Passenger - who is 'in exile' in West Berlin. We follow his neurotic attempts to find a place for himself in the new reality, to set up a new band with his girlfriend Pola. We also watch a lot of 'archival' footage from the 1979-1981 period, e.g. Get Up, Stand Up performed by Tilt in Gdansk three days before the outbreak of the shipyard strikes (that eventually led to the formation of Solidarity), scenes with Piotr Rypson announcing performers at the legendary first new-wave festival in Kolobrzeg, or de Koning's humorous 1982 'interview' with Kryzys.
Henryk Gajewski, Jacques de Koning, The Passenger,
1985, 44:00
Darek Skubiel, Zdzislaw Zinczuk
The film's aim was to present the Jarocin festival as an ecstatic, virtually delirious, manifestation of the state of anarchy, the kind of 'life in suspension', that reigned in Poland between the signing of the August Agreements in 1980 and the introduction of the martial law in December 1981. The film's incredible atmosphere is built by a rigorous formal structure - the growing ecstasy of the ritual's participants is accompanied by ever louder, trance music that, at the climax, unable to keep up with the image, suddenly stops. Getting closer to nature turns out to be the best way to
escape the paranoia of reality.
Darek Skubiel, Zdzislaw Zinczuk, Touching the Sound,
AWA Amateur Filmmakers' Club, Poznan, 1981, 6:09
http://www.piktogram.pl/alfonsy_eng.html
November 3 & 4, 2007, 8 p.m. Films by Thomas Bayrle, Octavio Cortázar, Cyprien Gaillard, Buster Keaton, Jean Renoir, Frederick Wiseman (presented by Daniel Bauman with Rhapsodie Georgienne for Cello and Orchestra by Alexander Tcherepnin)
Thomas Bayrle (*1937)
"I consider the relationship between individual and collective/community the same as that between dot and grid, the dot representing a component of the grid, and between cell and body, the cell being its basic element."
Thomas Bayrle, Autobahnkopf, 1988/89, 9:21
Thomas Bayrle, Gummibaum, 1993, 8:22
Thomas Bayrle, Dolly Animation, 1998, 5:44
Thomas Bayrle, B(Alt), 1997, 2:13
Thomas Bayrle, Sunbeam, 1993/94, 11:01
Octavio Cortázar (*1935)
In this classic Cuban documentary, the director Octavio Cortázar (*1935) and his camerman Jose Lopez accompany a travelling cinema to the remote community of Los Mulos, where the peasants have never before seen a film, and are not even very sure what cinema is.
Octavio Cortázar, Por primera vez / For the first time, 1967, 10:00
Cyprien Gaillard (*1980)
Between vandalism and minimal aesthetic, romanticism and Land Art, Cyprien GAILLARD's works question man's traces in nature. "Desniansky Raion" constantly alternates between order and chaos. Made of three parts, the video is introduced by a static shot of a building from the 70's, monumental triumphal arch at the entrance of the city of Belgrade. The first section of the video shows a pitched battle between two hooligan gangs on the parking lot of a housing project in the suburbs of Saint Petersburg, filmed from a neighbouring building. Blues against reds, some wearing white gloves, the two compact groups move forward in an organised manner, then dismantle under shock before regrouping for a new assault. The second part is a static shot of the façade of a high-rise block in the suburbs of Paris, on wich a show is projected mixing light, music and fireworks. This grandiose staging, usually saved for historical buildings, ends abruptly with the building collapsing. The last section wanders through Desniansky Raion, a district in the suburbs of Kiev, filmed without flight clearance from a microlight, dangerously shaken by the wind, producing images both cinematographic and amateurish. (excerpt from www.cosmicgalerie.com)
Cyprien Gaillard, Desniansky Raion, 2007, 30:00, soundtrack by Koudlam
Buster Keaton
Roscoe and Buster operate a combination garage and fire station. In the first half they destroy a car left for them to clean. In the second half they go off on a false alarm and return to find their own building on fire.
In 1920 when the last Keaton-Arbuckle short, The Garage, was released Arbuckle moved into feature films and Schenck bought Keaton his own studio and Keaton was headed for stardom. After several feature films, Arbuckle was involved in a scandal and while he was not guilty he never returned to be the comedian he was. Keaton helped him get back into films and he did direct several films under the name of William Goodrich but Buster Keaton and Roscoe Arbuckle were best friends.
Buster Keaton, The Garage, 1919
Jean Renoir
Widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir’s masterpiece The Rules of the Game is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners. At a weekend hunting party, amorous escapades abound among the aristocratic guests and are mirrored by the activities of the servants downstairs. The refusal of one of the guests to play by society’s rules sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy. Poorly received upon its release in 1939, the film was severely re-edited, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II. Only in 1959 was the film fully reconstructed and embraced by audiences and critics who now see the film as a timeless representation of a vanishing way of life.
Jean Renoir, La rčgle du jeu (The Rules of the Game), 1939
Frederick Wiseman
The film shows the educational programs and daily life of students from kindergarten through the 12th grade at the Alabama School for the Blind. The school is organized around the effort to educate blind and visually impaired students to be in charge of their own lives. Sequences in the film include mobility training, braille instruction and orientation as well as traditional classroom subjects such as English, history, science and music. Other sequences show psychological counseling sessions; vocational training; staff dealing with student disciplinary problems; and the wide variety of recreational and athletic programs.
Frederick Wiseman, Blind, 1986, 132:00