CINEINFINITO / Cine Club Filmoteca de Cantabria
Sábado 24 de Abril del 2016, 16:30. Filmoteca de Cantabria
Calle Bonifaz, 6
39003 Santander
Programa:
Outer Space (1999) 35mm
Dream Work (2002) 35mm
Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005) 35mm
Coming Attractions (2010) 35mm
Formato de proyección: 35mm (copias cortesía de Light Cone)
Peter Tscherkassky es un cineasta experimental austríaco que trabaja actualmente de forma exclusiva con metraje encontrado. Toda su obra está realizada en celuloide y editada intensamente en la cámara oscura, en lugar de utilizar otras tecnologías. Tscherkassky no sólo presenta imágenes bellas y absorbentes, sino que también fuerza a la audiencia a repensar el tradicional concepto de cine y narrativa.
Primeros años Peter Tscherkassky nació el 3 de Octubre de 1958 en Viena, Austria. Acudió a la escuela primaria de Mistelbach en los años 1965 - 1969 y al internado Jesuita en 1969 - 1975 en Viena. Acudió al instituto de Mistelbach donde se graduó en Junio de 1977. En los años 1977 - 1979 Tscherkassky estudió periodismo y ciencias políticas así como filosofía en la Universidad de Viena. Su primer encuentro con el cine de vanguardia fue en Enero de 1978 cuando asistió a una serie de conferencias de cinco días de P. Adams Sitney en el Austrian Film Museum.
Carrera cinematográfica Tscherkassky comenzó a filmar en 1979 tras adquirir un equipo de Super-8, y antes de final de año había creado el guión y comenzado a rodar Kreuzritter. A lo largo de su carrera ha creado numerosos festivales de cine como “The Light of Periphery – Austrian Avant-Garde Film 1957–1988” (1988), “Im Off der Geschichte” (1990), “Found Footage – Filme aus gefundenem Material” (1991), y “Unknown Territories – The American Independent Film” (1992). También fue miembro fundador de la nueva Austria Filmmakers Cooperative que comenzó en 1982 y de la que dimitió de su puesto en 1993. SU obra más reciente Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine tuvo su premiere mundia en el Festival de Cine de Cannes dentro de la serie 'Quinzaine des réalisateurs.'
En paralelo, comenzó en 1984 un trabajo de comisariado con la presentación del programa en dos partes “überBlick – Super-8-Filme aus Österreich” en la Kutscherhaus, Berlin. De 1987 a 1991 comisarió programas y retrospectivas de cine de vanguardia austríaco en Berlin, Lucerne, Lisboa, Karlsruhe, Skövde (Suecia), Hannover, Estrasburgo, Budapest, Varsocia y Kremsir (República Checa). Creó y comisarió con Martin Arnold en 1990 el simposio y festival “Im Off der Geschichte” en el Stadtkino Wien (filmes de vanguardia del Reino Unido, Alemania y Austria) y en 1993, la retrospectiva “Austrian Avant-Garde Film from Kubelka to the Present“ en Berlin, entre otras esposiciones. Editó el libro “Peter Kubelka” con Gabriele Jutz en 1995.
De 1989 a 2002, enseñó cine artístico en la Universidad de las Artes y Diseño Industrial de Linz. Desde 1998 enseña “Cine/Comunicación Audiovisual” en la Universidad de Artes Aplicadas de Vienna. El nexo común de su diversa producción radica en la crítica estructural de las convenciones que rigen el cine narrativo. –Experimental Cinema
Outer Space (1999)
Suggesting a convulsive hall of mirrors, Peter Tscherkassky's widescreen tour de force Outer Space reinvents a 1981 Barbara Hershey horror vehicle, leaving the original's crystalline surface intact only to violently shatter its narrative illusion. After Hershey enters a house at nighttime, sounds of crickets, static, and distorted music give way to explosions, screams, and garbled voices. In an eruption of panicked subjectivity, the actress's face multiplies across the screen as the frame is invaded by sprocket holes, an optical soundtrack, and flashes of solarized imagery. (Kristin M. Jones, Closing the American Century: The Avant-Garde in '99, in: Film Comment Jan./Feb. 2000)
Dream Work (2002)
A woman goes to bed, falls asleep, and begins to dream. This dream takes her to a landscape of light and shadow, evoked in a form only possible through classic cinematography.
"Dream Work" is – after "L’Arrivée" und "Outer Space" – the third section of my CinemaScope Trilogy. The formal element binding the trilogy is the specific technique of contact printing, by which found film footage is copied by hand and frame by frame onto unexposed film stock. Through this, I am able, in a literal sense, to realize the central mechanism by which dreams produce meaning, the "dream work," as Sigmund Freud described it: displacement [Verschiebung] and condensation [Verdichtung]. The new interpertation of the text of the original source material takes place through its "displacement" from its original context and its concurrent "condensation" by means of multiple exposure.
Moreover "Dream Work" positions itself as an hommage to Man Ray, who, in 1923 with his famous rayographs in "La retour á la raison" was the first artist to use this technique for filmmaking, exposing the image by shining light through physical objects onto the film stock. [PT]
Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005)
The hero of Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine is easy to identify. Walking down the street unknowingly, he suddenly realizes that he is not only subject to the gruesome moods of several spectators but also at the mercy of the filmmaker. He defends himself heroically, but is condemned to the gallows, where he dies a filmic death through a tearing of the film itself. Our hero then descends into Hades, the realm of shades. Here, in the underground of cinematography, he encounters innumerable printing instructions, the means whereby the existence of every filmic image is made possible. In other words, our hero encounters the conditions of his own possibility, the conditions of his very existence as a filmic shade. Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine is an attempt to transform a Roman Western into a Greek tragedy. [PT]
Coming Attractions (2010)
Coming Attractions and the construction of its images are woven around the idea that there is a deep, underlying relationship between early cinema and avant-garde film. Tom Gunning was among the first to describe and investigate this notion in a systematic and methodical manner in his well known and often quoted essay: `An Unseen Energy Swallows Space: The Space in Early Film and Its Relation to American Avant-Garde Filmí (in: John L. Fell [ed.], Film Before Griffith, Berkeley 1983). Coming Attractions additionally addresses Gunning's concept of a `Cinema of Attractionsí. This term is used to describe a completely different relation between actor, camera and audience to be found in early cinema in general, as compared to the `modern cinemaí which developed after 1910, gradually leading to the narrative technique of D.W.Griffith. The notion of a `Cinema of Attractionsí touches upon the exhibitionistic character of early film, the undaunted show and tell of its creative possibilities, and its direct addressing of the audience. At some point it occured to me that another residue of the cinema of attractions lies within the genre of advertising: Here we also often encounter a uniquely direct relation between actor, camera and audience. The impetus for Coming Attractions was to bring the three together: commercials, early cinema, and avant-garde film. [PT]
