19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil: Southern Panoramas | Film Programs – Program #3 | Frictions + Film Program | Gabriel Abrantes, 15 Oct 2015 — 02 Dec 2015
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19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil: Southern Panoramas | Film Programs – Program #3 | Frictions + Film Program | Gabriel Abrantes

Sesc Pompeia, Rua Clélia 93, Pompeia

Southern Panoramas | Film Programs comprises screening of selected films that approach pertinent issues to the geopolitical South.

Program #3 | Frictions comprehends five films, with a total duration of 75’30”.

Oo, a preview (2013, 3’30”), by Viktorija Rybakova (b. 1989, Vilnius, Lithuania) is also at display at the exhibition venue (Sesc Pompeia’s Convivência area) and is a film where an hypnotic voiceover compels us to dive into the pages of a book –a two-dimensional object expanded into the realm of verbal language, which articulates itself visually. Echoes from psychoanalysis cause the mind to wander in a way as affective and organic as it is controlled, and further underscored by the hybrid nature of the images. The dreamlike strength that drags us into the book appears to cycle back into its own semantic stratagem, giving us the very architecture forged by language.

Ana Vaz (b. 1986, Brasília, Brazil) presents A Idade da Pedra (2013, 29’), that highlights a belief in the natural interdependence of things: animals, celestial bodies, plants, humans, and rocky formations all belong in the same order. Spaces and characters are portrayed in a poetic way, like sketches of something that’s yet to be built. The video carries the ghost of Brasília, of the utopian dreams contained in the city; and at the same time a possibility of other dreams, in which social living and nature relate in a closer, more fluid way.

Myth of Modernity (2014, 16’), by Chulayarnnon Siriphol (b. 1986, Bangkok, Thailand),
is a film halfway between documentary and fiction. It begins as an inquiry into the impact of modernism in Thai culture, particularly its architecture, and becomes a sci-fi piece where the country’s population is hypnotized by a pyramid-shaped figure of light. Siriphol offers an interesting insight into the power structures that perpetuate themselves throughout history, including through an architecture of power, from an either divine or earthly order.

In the Traveler’s Heart (2013, 19’), by Distruktur (Brazil/Germany) is the fourth film of the program. The majority of Distruktur’s output consists of Super 8 and 16 mm films, defined by the artist duo as performance-films, and shifting back and forth constantly between cinema and the visual arts. In the Traveler’s Heart is about the trajectory of a lonely subject, a mixture of man and woman, who walks between the snow and the ocean. The sound of its footsteps is interrupted when he starts singing “Cuitelinho”, a Brazilian folk song that speaks of a longing that cuts like a steel razor.

VOSTOK_screening (2014, 8’), by Letícia Ramos (b. 1976, Santo Antônio da Patrulha, Brazil), presents a submarine that navigates the depths of a formerly frozen Antarctic lake, beneath the glacial crust, as a voice warns of the mission and its course. The artist resorts to the world of fiction to unveil parallel realities; by concocting her own research and laboratory apparatus, she defies science through humor and technology. The VOSTOK Project, to which the video belongs, includes an artist book, a performance and a music record.

The second program of the screening, Film Program | Gabriel Abrantes, also comprehends five films, with a total length of 100’. Olympia I & II

(2006, 9’) was created in partnership with Katie Widloski. The film is a diptych featuring two reconstitutions of Édouard Manet’s famous painting “Olympia”. The first tableau shows Katie as Olympia while the second shows Abrantes as a male version of the same figure. Shot on 16 mm film, which underscores its pictorial qualities, Olympia de-constructs the mythical aura of Manet’s painting while rendering its legacy more complex.

Visionary Iraq (2008, 18’17”) was produced with Benjamin Crotty and is about a Portuguese young man and his adopted Angolan sister who join the Iraqi Freedom movement. During their vernissage/farewell party, their mother discovers that they have been having a secret love affair. At the same time, it also comes to light that their father turns a tidy profit from investments in Iraqi infrastructure projects, placing the pair in a difficult moral dilemma.

Taprobana (2014, 32’) is a comedy about one of Europe’s first colonialist authors, Luís Vaz de Camões (1525–1580), who composed the epic poem “The Lusiads” during his Eastern exile. Published in 1572, the poem recounts the discovery of the sea route to India and the glories of the Portuguese people and empire. The film accompanies the poet through one of his creative crises during a hedonistic period of exile.

Ὀρνιθες [Ornithes – Aves | Birds] (2012, 17’) is a satire on dead languages, totalitarianism, and colonization shot in Jacmel, Haiti. The film begins with a staging of Aristophanes’ “The Birds” in Greece, where two men have fled to avoid paying taxes. In their search for a new city, they decide to colonize and organize the kingdom of birds – the sky – which had been “free” until then. They start charging taxes from men and the gods if they want to pass through the sky.

Finally, A History of Mutual Respect (2010, 24’),
shot in collaboration with Daniel Schmidt in Brazil, Portugal, and Argentina, looks at the complex dynamic of Brazil-Portugal relations and the clichés that pervade representations of alterity. Faced with their disillusionment at the modernist experiment in Brasília, two young Americans decide to go in search of “pure love,” which they will find in a young Indigenous woman.

Film program – A
7pm – Program #3 | Frictions + Film Program | Gabriel Abrantes
Sesc Pompeia | Theater: OCT/15 (thu), OCT/29 (thu), NOV/12 (thu), NOV/26 (thu) e DEC/02 (wed)
Galpão VB: OCT/20 (tue), NOV/03 (tue), NOV/17 (tue) e DEC/01 (tue)

Film program – B
4:30pm – Film Program | Gabriel Abrantes +Program #3 | Frictions
Sesc Pompeia | Theater: OCT/22 (thu), NOV/05 (thu), NOV/19 (thu), DEC/01 (tue) e DEC/03 (thu)
Galpão VB: OCT/13 (tue), OCT/27 (tue), NOV/10 (tue), NOV/24 (tue)

Contacts & Details
OPENING:
tue, wed, thu, fri, sat 9:00 am – 10:00 pm; sun 9:00 am – 8:00 pm

CLOSING DAYS:
mon

T: +55 11 3871 7700
M: email@pompeia.sescsp.org.br
Website

ADDRESS
Sesc Pompeia, Rua Clélia 93, Pompeia

ESTABLISHED
1982
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