Pensao Globo
Five films on transition as a psychological and formal device.
Michael Robinson’s Chiquitita and the Soft Escape (2003) started as an attempt to ground nostalgia as “a purely mechanical process”, but reveals instead how powerfully an image carries emotional weight – whether the impositions of family life or, remarkably, the simple camera tilt up a window frame. Stan Brakhage’s In Between (1955), his first in colour and one of his few with music (by John Cage), uses the columns of San Francisco’s Legion of Honor as an external portraiture of the great collage artist Jess Collins. Barbara Sternberg’s Transitions (1982) confines the subject to the space of her bed while her inner mind, caught between waking and dreaming, sorts through visual and vocal superimpositions—the memories both trap her and lead her out into the imaginary beyond. Matthias Müller’s Pensao Globo (1997) looks directly at the beyond as a dying man books a room in Lisbon to spend his final days wandering, his body and mind dissolving into an uncertain eternal rest. Finally, the stunning hot air balloon ride in Fern Silva’s recent Passage Upon the Plume (2011) takes us out through the window and up into a abstracted voyage through the sky.
Programme:
Chiquitita and the Soft Escape, Michael Robinson, 2003, USA, 16mm, 10 min
In Between, Stan Brakhage, USA, 1955, 16mm, 10 min
Transitions, Barbara Sternberg, 1982, Canada, 16mm, 12 min
Pensao Globo, Matthias Müller, 1997, Germany, 16mm, 15 min
Passage Upon the Plume, Fern Silva, 2011, USA, 16mm, 7 min
@ Gladstone Hotel, Art Bar | 1214 Queen St West
Monday May 27, 2013 | 8:00 PM screening | $5 suggested donation
Thanks to Christy LeMaster (the Nightingale Cinema), the CFMDC and The Gladstone Hotel.
Passage Upon the Plume
Chiquitita and the Soft Escape
EMS #52 = June 24 = TBA