Monday October 29, 7:30pm
Inner Journey in Photochemicals Lands
Films from L’Abominable 2000-2018
Organized by filmmaker and curator Stefano Canapa
Stefano Canapa in person!
Still from “Kairos” (2016) by Stefano Canapa and Elisa Ribes – Image courtesy of the artists
Microscope Gallery is extremely pleased to welcome filmmaker Stefano Canapa to the gallery on one of his rare trips to New York to present Inner Journey in Photochemicals Lands, a screening of films by David Dudouit, Emmanuel Lefrant, Guillaume Mazloum, Nicolas Rey, Elisa Ribes, and Yoana Urruzola made under the auspices of Paris’ independent lab L’Abominable.
The 16mm and 35mm works selected by Canapa, whose films are also in the program, were physically made by each of the filmmakers at artist-run film laboratory L’Abominable, a venue that has contributed to keep celluloid film alive since 1996 and has been a formidable resource for artists or for aspiring ones by providing tools to develop, optically print, blow up, edit, and print films.
The evening’s program of films — spanning 18 years — is only a minimal portion culled from a catalogue of more than 300 titles assembled from 1995 until today. In 2014, L’abominable’s co-founder and filmmaker Nicolas Rey writes about the films made at the lab in the years 2007-2012: “What is very impressive in this list is how the filmmakers shared a common setup and practices, exchanged information and were mutually supportive, while developing very different aesthetics. Naturally, working closely together was not without consequences and it would be hard indeed to label these works as fiction, documentary or experimental.”
Stefano Canapa in attendance and available for Q&A following the screening.
General admission $8
Members or students w/ ID $6
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Stefano Canapa (Turin, Italy, 1977) graduated in 2001 in Film History and Aesthetics from DAMS University in Turin. After moving to France, he combined his training with his experience from the Paris-based lab “L’abominable”, and contributed to creating similar kinds of organizations (experimental, artisanal, self-managed) in Turin and Montevideo. Canapa is part of the French artist collective Group ZUR (Zone Utopiquement Reconstituée) since 1998. He has been increasingly involved in projects with live components since 2002: installations, performance art, multidisciplinary improvisations, and plays for theatre. He co-directed with Catherine Libert two feature documentary films, “Les Champs Brulants” and “Des Provinces Lointaines”. His work has been presented in many international festivals and exhibitions such as Locarno, Rotterdam, Berlin, Oberhausen, Marseille, Paris, Lussas, Turin, Seoul, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Belo Horizonte.
Program:
MARISA
16mm film, color, sound, 2007, 10 minutes
by Yoana URRUZOLA
Meeting with Marisa Guevara in an apartment on Reconquista Street, Montevideo, Winter 2007.
AUTREMENT, LA MOLUSSIE (Extrait)
16mm film, color, sound, 2012, 7 minutes
by Nicolas REY
With the agreement of the author, who accepts to make an exception, we show one of the 9 reels that make up his feature film Differently, Molussia. The camera slowly move on a seaside while someone tell us a tale of sailors and phantoms.
ILE DE OUESSANT
16mm film, color, silent, 2010, 10 minutes 20 seconds
by David DUDOUIT
For this film, four rolls of 16mm film were patiently exposed frame by frame over the course of a stay on Ouessant Island in Brittany. Here, observation of nature and its phenomena is paired with striking formal experimentation, which alters our perception of the real.
LE PAYS DÉVASTÉ
35mm film (transfer to digital), color, sound, 2015, 11 minutes 30 seconds
by Emmanuel LEFRANT
– What do you see?
– A place not suited for human beings.
Le Pays Dévasté relates to the Anthropocene, the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.
SEPTIEME FRACTION
16mm film, b&w, sound, 2015, 7 minutes
by Guillaume MAZLOUM
« What thIngs were interred and sacrificed amid magic incantations ! »
Taken from « One way street » by Walter Benjamin. Fractions is a seven films series. Seven sequences, each with a pattern and a reference to a text of a political nature, to create a space for reflexion on the scope and responsibility of these images.
PROMENAUX
16mm film, b&w, sound, 2000-2001, 12 minutes
by Stefano CANAPA
At first it’s just a take on reality, a game of observation amongst an anonymous crowd. Then it’s a strange night fall with words from Rimbaud with the search for new images becoming primordial. In the morning we discover a fascinating reality, a space without limits, fluctuating in a dreamlike state.
KAIROS
16mm film, b&w, sound, 2016, 11 minutes 15 seconds
by Stefano CANAPA & Elisa RIBES
Kairos is a poetic dance film set against a Mediterranean background. Film, nature and the body are brought together to produce an interconnected material choreography. Kairos talks about the loss of the myth of Mermaids while also evoking the odyssey of the today’s migrants, between exile and resistance. For the Greeks, Kairos signifies the point where everything can happen, that point you can choose to do something or not.
JERÔME NOETINGER
35mm film (transfer to digital), b&w, sound, 2018, 11 minutes 40 seconds
by Stefano CANAPA
Solo in front of the camera, the musician/improviser Jérôme Noetinger plays his reel to reel tape recorder, the Revox B77. For the duration of a 16mm film reel, he brings to life and manipulates a complex sonic organism through the power of recording – using microphonic captures, electromagnetic static, and random radio. Stefano Canapa decided to set down this improvised instant with a deliberately simple cinematic device, giving the spectator a poetic and delicate experience without neglecting a certain pedagogical aspect. The film is at the same time a portrait, a study of movement, and a sound piece in its own right, fixed on a perennial support: a strip of traditional black and white 35mm film.
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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2018 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).