We will be live-streaming our second special UDVFF program next Friday, February 12th at 8pm Berlin Time (Central European Time).
It will remain online for 24 hours.
PROGRAM NOTES
This program might have just as aptly been titled something like ‘Correspondence’, as it can be traced to my first communication with Alexandre Larose, last Fall. Though our interaction was brief, he was exceptionally kind, and the idea came to me that I should like very much to screen one of the films from his brouillard series — one of which I cited on my personal ‘best of the decade in film‘ list, as I believe the project marks a sincere (and successful) attempt to develop visual film language into new territories of movement.
A couple months later, I was happy to introduce the first in-person screening of In Between Solstices II at Fracto Experimental Film Encounter. That twenty-minute film collected the second half of Twelve Seasonal Films, an ambitious yet intimate work by Jorge Suárez-Quiñones Rivas, an avant-garde travelog shot on Super 8, each segment corresponding to a cartridge edited in-camera. I reached out to Jorge about the possibility of screening some of his works through Ultra Dogme, and he was receptive to my request and we agreed that we would screen some part of his work in some form in the near future.
Shortly after new year’s, I heard from my dear friend Anuj. He had a new film he wanted to share with me. As soon as it ended, I watched it a second time. The spoken language was dense, rapid-fire, subtitled, and accompanied by separate on-screen text. In the course of less than 3 minutes, I felt I had already taken in the amount of information which might usually correspond to something closer to 30 minutes. I wanted to screen the film, and I wanted others to see it twice as well, deciding to open and close the program with the same film.
When told of this idea, Jorge Suárez-Quiñones Rivas correspondingly suggested the showing of two excerpts from Twelve Seasonal Films, and furthermore that a fourth filmmaker might also show two works, turning the full program into a mirror — either half presenting the ripples created by the brouillard at its center.
There was only one piece missing; the fourth filmmaker. I spent a day scouring Vimeo and all of the brilliant treasures which hide there in plain sight before coming across the work of Nina Wolf. Her page showed that she was engaged in various modes of creation, yet two particular shorts were clearly a pair. And most importantly, they happened to fit perfectly into the program as I envisioned it — not only for their direct engagement with water and its infinite possibilities in regards to the refraction of light, but for their floating aimlessness.
In my eyes, these are works which sit together so comfortably for their common ‘adrift’ quality — pieces of larger projects, sure, but also film exercises perfectly content to exist as exercises. I find it increasingly rare that a short work should be so confident in this particular regard.
I would like to thank the filmmakers for agreeing to show their work, especially in the compromise that is streaming.
I would also like to give special thanks to Tommaso Isabella for sharing with me his expansive wisdom and knowledge, teaching me several important lessons in curation while we worked together on last year’s program for Fracto.
I hope you enjoy the program.
-MLP
Driftwood
Gaurav Chale Gaya by Anuj Malhotra (2021 / Digital / India)
MarRedondo by Nina Wolf (2017 / Digital, silent / Brazil, Switzerland)
Chūbusangaku by Jorge Suárez-Quiñones Rivas (cartridge #9 from ‘Twelve Seasonal Films’ – 2020 / Super 8, 18fps, silent / Spain, Japan)
brouillard #16 by Alexandre Larose (2014 / 35mm, silent / Canada)
Chūō by Jorge Suárez-Quiñones Rivas (cartridge #10 from ‘Twelve Seasonal Films’ – 2020 / Super 8, 18fps, silent / Spain, Japan)
Maré Terra by Nina Wolf (2016 / Digital / Brazil, Switzerland)
Gaurav Chale Gaya by Anuj Malhotra (repeat screening – 2021/Digital/India)
Total runtime: 30 minutes
Additional Notes:
- There exists a response film to Gaurav Chale Gaya, made by Gaurav himself.
- There also exists a version of MarRedondo and Maré Terra which intertwines the two into a single work.
- Chūbusangaku and Chūō are single-cartridge pieces from the larger work Twelve Seasonal Films.
- brouillard #16 is one of a series of similar passages. The most well-known iteration is #14. Alexandre Larose acknowledges the support of the Conseil des arts & des lettres du Québec and the National Film Board of Canada’s ACIC program.
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