Jeune femme à sa fenêtre lisant une lettre

In his work filmed in Super 8, Jean-Claude Rousseau radically assumed some of the material properties of the format to stamp an ascetic sensuality on the filming, sound and assemblage of his Kodachrome cartridges. His poetry is not born of intellectual reflection but of a contradictory, living process motivated by the encounter with a transforming vision. His first film, presented in this session in a new digitised version which the director himself oversaw, is the very genesis of this process.

Carlos Saldaña is an archive technician. He coordinated 16mm and Super 8 film digitisation projects as part of his studies at the film school Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. He continued his training by working at ANIM (Portuguese Cinematheque) and the José Val del Omar Archive. He has organised and presented film and video screenings in different cities and at various institutions. He is currently working with Asociación Lumière on the translation and edition of publications.

JEUNE FEMME À SA FENÊTRE LISANT UNE LETTRE

Jean-Claude Rousseau. France. 1983. 47’. Super-8, transfer DCP

"It is hard to see the landscape through the window. A street, a canal, the view of Delft, the port maybe. We are indoors, bathed in daylight. On the wall, the maps are bigger than the paintings, but we do not know where we are. The woman is by the window. She is standing, reading a letter. She has forgotten what the landscape is about after staring at the letter for too long. It could be any landscape, any pinpoint on the map..."

This new 2K digital version of Jeune femme à sa fenêtre lisant une lettre has been produced at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE) from the original Super-8 film and is part of a research project developed entirely by a team of students and teachers at the centre.