01/24/2019
MoMA in New York has just dedicated a retrospective to French filmmaker Marie Losier, who will show the restored copies of her work for the first time in Spain.
The programme for the 13th edition of Punto de Vista includes Contemporary Focuses, monographic sessions which centre their attention on some of the most relevant filmmakers on the international scene. Held in parallel with the Official Section, Retrospectives, Punto de Vista Labs, Special Sessions and the Educational Programme, Focuses helps place the Festival at the vanguard of non-fiction film and the different artistic expressions that accompany it.
The first Focus puts the spotlight on filmmaker and curator Marie Losier (Paris, 1972), an artist recognised worldwide who has shown her work at some of the most important festivals and art centres in the world, including the Berlinale (where she won first prize for her first feature film), Palais de Tokyo, Centre George Pompidou, Cinémathèque Française and the Tribeca Film Festival. Her best known work includes her film portraits of artists such as George Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Tony Conrad and Alan Vega. She received the Guggenheim Award to make her latest full-length film, Cassandro the Exotico!, which will be screened at Baluarte after premiering at Cannes.
Last November, MoMA held a retrospective of the last 15 years of her work under the title Just a million dreams, showcasing her poetic 16mm portraits that ‘transcend documentary conventions, revealing as much about their subjects as they do about their creator.’ Dedicated to analogue filmmaking in a digital age, she makes art alongside those she portrays.
Her restored work will be shown for the first time in Spain at Punto de Vista. Losier will be the subject of two programmes at the Festival. Cassandro, the Exotico! and Bim Bam Boom will be screened in one, and the second will feature Waltz me trust me; Bird, Bath, beyond; Orlan meets Genesis; Tony Conrad; Electrocute your stars; Eat my makeup and The Ontological Cowboy. The director will talk with the audience after each programme.
The second Focus is on British director Guy Sherwin (London, 1948), who has been at the forefront of the film community since the 1970s. After studying painting at London’s Chelsea School of Art, Sherwin went on to make films as part of the London FilmMakers’ Co-operative at the height of the British structural/materialist film movement, exploring the plastic possibilities of his medium, playing with speed and the possibilities of light, movement and sound.
Guy Sherwin will be offering a double programme at Punto de Vista, including both his latest films and his performative work, such as the performance Man with mirror, which consists of him holding a mirror as though it were a screen. The image is projected in Super 8 and the work has evolved along with the artist since his first performances in 1976.
Through his films, installations and performances, Sherwin explores the fundamental qualities of cinema: light and time. He now collaborates on cinema performances with the Singaporean film and sound artist Lynn Loo. Concerned with seriality, his work investigates questions such as the physical relationships between sound and image, the digital re-working of film and the mechanisms of projection and interaction between performer and film.
Another focus will address the work and career of César Vayssié (France, 1967), a film director who also works with performance. Located somewhere between the visual arts and dance, his work defies classification within the conventional categories of art. It reflects a permanent search for itself, taking influences from the world of cinema and many other plastic arts, leading to films which go way beyond the limits of conventional filmmaking. Meeting choreographers and visual artists has steered Vayssié to elaborate forms that combine visual research and performance. He collaborates in particular with Boris Charmatz, François Chaignaud and Philippe Quesne.
Punto de Vista will be presenting his latest work, Ne traivaille pas, which tells the story of Elsa Michaud and Gabriel Gauthier, two fine arts students in Paris. While sharing both a love relationship and artistic research, they find their style after a period of disorientation. Without words, but accompanied by the mesmerising music of the duo Avia x Orly, the montage blends the achievements, failures, events and everyday life of two students from March 2017 to March 2018. The film highlights the paradoxes of a society celebrating the events of May ’68 fifty years on.
The last protagonist of the Contemporary Focuses will be Iván Argote (Bogotá, 1983). His work explores the way in which history, economics and politics influence us as individuals, and also how we as individuals have the historical and political strength to forge our destinies. Through films, performances, sculptures, installations and interventions in public spaces, Argote proposes questions and reflections in the public sphere about our relationship with others, our place in the face of power, in the face of history. Although his works are purposeful, sometimes impertinent and even confrontational, they always maintain a warm but firm tone. They have been exhibited all over the world in numerous solo exhibitions, such as Deep Affection (Perrotin, Paris, 2018); Somos Tiernos (Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico, 2017); Somos (Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo); and La Venganza del Amor (Perrotin, New York, 2017) and many more. The artist will show a selection of his own films as part of the Festival programme. As previously announced, he will also be taking part in the Punto de Vista Educational Programme with Activísimo!, a children's protest workshop aimed at kids aged 4 to 8.
Punto de Vista’s Contemporary Focuses have become an indispensable part of the Festival, bringing the most avant-garde trends in non-fiction film to its audiences without limitations, with the context needed in order to interpret them and direct contact with their creators, opening the way for privileged reflection on the hottest global artistic trends of the moment.
