02/05/2020
They include programmer and producer Simon Field, curator Ricardo Matos Cabo and dancer Mónica Valenciano, among others.
Punto de Vista Labs is a space for knowledge sharing and collective creation. In previous editions, it has attracted leading filmmakers like Rick Prelinger, Luke Fowler, Carlos Casas or Xabier Erkizia, groups like Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol (Mexico) or Echo Park Film Center (Los Angeles), and itinerant initiatives such as the Tate Modern’s Museum of Clouds (London).
Highlights this year include the new Conversations programme, made up of four public encounters between several of the most eminent guests at the festival: Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué, producer and former director of the Rotterdam festival Simon Field, director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich and international Punto de Vista delegate Andrea Lissoni, Portuguese curator Ricardo Matos Cabo, artist Isaki Lacuesta, dancers Mónica Valenciano and Idoia Zabaleta, teacher Aurora Fernández Polanco and the artist and curator Xabier Erkizia.
Rabih Mroué. The workshop, that will take place at Huarte Contemporary Art Center, will focus on the idea of absence, reflecting upon it by raising questions of how one could deal with topics like disappearance, void, memory, rumors, war and death.
The absence as possibility to play on the notions of truth and untruth, reality and fiction, to blur the traces, passing from one side to the other without borders, reversing the signs, stirring up the norms and shaking up certainty, discovering the role of politics in order to create a new ‘unreal’ reality or a virtual one.
The participants are invited to give their thoughts and work, together or separately, on proposals that deal with absence and departure from their own experiences and their particular circumstances.
Isaki Lacuesta. Lacuesta will exhibit some of his installations, exhibitions and interactive concerts—all works that he still considers to be films; however, devised in relation to the space, inviting the spectator to move, act and be the final editor. As Judith Revault d'Allones, curator of Lacuesta's retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, wrote "The unfolding and duality are at the centre of Isaki Lacuesta's creation. (...) Seeing and reviewing, from different perspectives. More than a method, a policy is drawn, and the films unfold".
Xabier Erkizia. The far-off whirring of the reel or the discrete humming of the projector fan reveal that silence does not exist in the cinema. Even after the last session, once all the loudspeakers have been switched off, even in the sleepiest room, the remotest one, the cinema is still going on. The challenge is to capture it. Therefore, it may prove useless to use sound to describe an event that is primarily designed to be pleasing to the eye. Or perhaps, it may be paradoxically revealing. After all, the ears are simply two screens! A radio presentation in the form of a podcast by radio BRBA (brba.audio-lab.org) for the Punto de Vista Festival. A kind of journal of the film festival, using sounds.
Ricardo Matos Cabo will give a lecture on the great Japanese documentarian Tsuchimoto Noriaki dedicated much of his career to making films about the small fishing communities affected by mercury industrial pollution in the Minamata area. Throughout the years, his approach to filmmaking changed in response to the struggle and needs of the people whose lives were affected by this disaster and by the neglect from the authorities. Tsuchimoto's practice has been called "symbiotic" in the way it related closely to the people and their environment. This illustrated talk will complement the screening of The Shiranui Sea (1975) and provide an introductory overview of his filmography. It will focus on how environmental concerns have shaped his work from his very early films onwards, and how these have evolved throughout the years, embodying a form of caring, activism and political critique that is as relevant today as it was then.
Conversations
Within the framework of Punto de Vista Labs, we propose a series of conversations between professionals who exchange ideas about their practices and careers. With this relaxed and intimate format, always based on the dialogue between two guests, we generate a new space for reflection on film and other disciplines, which will allow us to broaden our understanding of documentary.
Simon Field and Andrea Lissoni
Simon Field directed the film department of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 1988 to 1996, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam until 2004. He is the producer of several films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and has co-produced films by Tsai-Ming Liang and Paz Encina, among others.
Andrea Lissoni is co-founder and programmer of VDrome, an online platform offering a film and video art program. He was curator of international art and film at the Tate Modern from 2014 to 2019, and is currently the Artistic Director of The Haus der Kunst museum in Munich.
Mónica Valenciano and Idoia Zabaleta
Mónica Valenciano is a National Dance Prize winner, choreographer, dancer, poet and painter. She is also the protagonist of the documentary He venido a leer la noche, directed by Manuel Fernández-Valdés, which is part of the official section.
Idoia Zabaleta is a choreographer, cultural manager, teacher and director of the company Moare Danza. In 2008 she created Azala, a space for artistic residencies that promotes research and the dissemination of stage creation.
Rabih Mroué y Aurora Fernández Polanco
Rabih Mroué is a theatre director, actor, visual artist and playwright. He is a co-founder of the Beirut Art Center (BAC) and editor of the magazine TDR/ The Drama Review. He has performed and exhibited internationally in dOCUMENTA (13), MoMa and Centre Pompidou, among others. In film, he has collaborated with the artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.
Aurora Fernández Polanco is a professor of Theory and History of Contemporary Art at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She is the director for the project "Critical Views: Cultural Ecologies and Common Research". She has written essays on contemporary art and visual studies, and curated several exhibitions. She is the editor of the bilingual magazine Re-visiones (www.re-visiones.net). The last book she has published is Crítica visual del saber solitario (Bilbao, Consonni, 2019).
