2 Outubro | October
LUX-Frágil >23:00
Performance Jürgen Reble / Porter Ricks
The series begins with a performance by the German cineaste Jürgen Reble, with musical accompaniment by Porter Ricks (Thomas Köner and Andy Mellwig). Jürgen Reble’s performances are always rare and unique events, transforming film into the art of wreckage, with the beauty of its own ruin. This performance with Porter Ricks is a projection designed for three to eight film projectors, for a series of one-minute film loops, chemically altered and projected at variable speeds in keeping with the pace of the musical accompaniment.

3 Outubro | October
Cinemateca Portuguesa – Palácio Foz >21:30
Sessão Jürgen Reble
Zillertal
1991, cor, som, 11’
Chicago
1996, preto e branco, som, 13’
Das goldene Tor
1992, pb/cor, som, 54’
The screenings then continue at the Cinemateca Portuguesa with two of Reble’s film pieces, Zillertal and Chicago, in which the film has undergone different optical treatments (rapid ageing, weathering and chemical treatment of the emulsion), using sequences of found footage from various sources. The session also includes the feature film Das goldene Tor, created through montage and classification of found footage and the filmmaker’s own footage, reworked to the limit, using complex chemical processes and systematic exploration of the effects on the emulsion and on the development of the different visual dimensions of each image.

4 Outubro | October
Cinemateca Portuguesa – Palácio Foz >21:30
Stadt in Flammen de Schmelzdahin
1984, cor, som, 5’
Weltenempfänger de Schmelzdahin
1985, cor, som, 5’
La Fissure de Cécile Fontaine
1984, cor, silencioso, 2’
Cruises de Cécile Fontaine
1988-1989, cor, som, 10’
Logomagie de Fréderique Dévaux
1997, cor, som, 4’ 10’’
Signes Song de Fréderique Dévaux
1998, cor, som, 10’
Colour Box de Len Lye
1935, cor, som, 4’
Raw de Don Best
1996, cor, som, 5’
Film Sans Caméra F.S.C. n† 1 de Giovanni Martedi
1974, cor, som, 11’
Please Don’t Stop de Stephanie Maxwell
1988, cor, som, 5’
The Girl’s Nervy de Jennifer Reeves
1995, cor, som, 5’
Emanance de Craig A. Lindley
1999, cor, som, 9’
Terminus For You de Nicolas Rey
1996, p/b, som, 10’
The Politics of Perception de Kirk Tougas
1973, cor, som, 33’
The second session consists of a varied group of films chosen to exemplify different ways of manipulating film: films by the German collective Schmelzdahin (Jürgen Reble, Jochen Müller and Jochen Lempert), in which the film is altered by biological and mechanical means (in Stadt in Flammen, by means of bacterial attack and heating to high temperatures), and films made using found footage which is appropriated for re-use, by means of collage directly on the film, scraping, re-filming and reframing as in the films of Cécile Fontaine or Fréderique Devaux, whose work belongs to the French “letrisme” movement.
The same session will include the “brutalist” and minimal work of Giovanni Martedi, executed using the minimum resources possible, without a camera, with the help of collage and physical printing on the film itself, the discovery of the direct abstract cinema of Don Best or Stephanie Maxwell, the chemical treatments used by Craig Lindley or Jennifer Reeves’ hand-painted and chemically altered films. And also an example of the work of Len Lye, the direct film pioneer: Colour Box, using the rhythmic freedom of film, as a celebration of cinema as the art of movement.
The session is closed by one of the radical and central masterpieces of experimental cinema, The Politics of Perception by Kirk Tougas, member of the Vancouver Group, examining the effects of film as a consumable object and an ode to the ultimate beauty of its own destruction.

6 Outubro | October
Cinemateca Portuguesa – Palácio Foz >18:30
La Couleur de la Forme de Hy Hirsh
1960, cor, som, 7’
Pneuma de Nathaniel Dorski
1977-83, cor, sil., 18ips, 27’
Two Pictures de Carl Brown e Rose Lowder
1999, cor, sil., 12’
The Snowman de Phil Solomon
1995, cor, som, 8’30’’
Elementary Phrases de Stan Brakhage e Phil Solomon
1994, cor, sil., 35’
The third session is dedicated to filmmakers who used film manipulation to reveal highly personal cinematic worlds and ideas. The enigmatic Hy Hirsh, the American colourist and performer, specialist in various manipulation techniques and multiple screen projections, of whose films only very few have survived. An example of the work of Carl Brown, one of the leading filmmakers of the alchemy movement, who worked regularly with Michael Snow and obsessively researched different treatments for transforming the emulsion and the effects of the film’s opacity, here working with the Peruvian filmmaker, Rose Lowder. The elegiac work of Nathaniel Dorsky, whose work for slow projection comes as a revelation, poems for camera and light, with one film which consists solely of film deteriorating in the deepest silence. The special manipulation techniques used by Phil Solomon and, finally, a rare and demanding film by Stan Brakhage, Elementary Phases, in which the film is merely hand painted and subject to Solomon’s own chemical treatments.

Cinemateca Portuguesa – Palácio Foz >21:30
Sessão Stan Brakhage
Window Water Baby Moving
1959, cor, sil., 12’
The Dead
1960, cor, sil., 11’
Mothlight
1963, cor, sil., 4’
Star Garden
1974, cor, sil., 20’
The Garden of Earthly Delights
1981, cor, sil., 18ips, 2’30’’
Murder Psalm
1981, cor, sil., 17’
Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse
1991, cor, sil., 10’
Three Homerics (for Barbara Feldman)
1993, cor, sil., 6’
Black Ice
1994, cor, sil., 2’30’’
Shockingly Hot
1996, cor, sil., 4’
Commingled Containers
1997, cor, sil., 4’
The Lion and The Zebra Make God’s Raw Jewels
1999, cor, sil., 5’30’’
Stan Brakhage is one of the leading filmmakers in the history of cinema, with a career which stretches back to the nineteen fifties. Starting with a period of photographic and figurative film, he went on to develop his work on the basis of the idea that it would be possible to make films with images alien to the human eye and which broke free of any of the laws of perception, known or otherwise implemented. From the sixties onwards, Brakhage began, in the isolation of his own home and family, to produce films using collages of objects close to him (a moth in Mothlight, leaves and plants in The Garden of Earthy Delights). He later started to produce purely abstract films, hand painted on the film, using different techniques.
The films shown at this session cover a period of around fifty years and represent one possible introduction to the vast body of the work of this essential film artist.