Film series on the occasion of the exhibition Sigmar Polke’s Photographic Infamies (13 September - 22 December 2019) at Le BAL
Whether pictorial or photographic, Sigmar Polke's work is nourished by all kinds of images, which he draws from newspapers, magazines and advertisements, revisiting various genres of representation (portrait, landscape, still life, etc.) and blurring the distinction between abstraction and figuration. With an iconoclastic humour, the German artist undermines hierarchies and pictorial and photographic processes to allow flaws to occur in the image and to enable what Bernard Marcadé, co-curator of the exhibition, calls a "mutation of forms and of the gaze".
As an artist of flow and overflow, Sigmar Polke relies on the imagery of consumer society conveyed by the mass media to divert the value of images in favour of a proliferation of meanings. This irreverence, which relies on reversals, inversions, reversibilities, is also present in the work of many experimental filmmakers who, in the 1960s and 1970s, appropriated the images of others in order to subvert them and to mock their meaning. In A Movie (1958), the culmination of this screening and a seminal work of the found footage genre, Bruce Conner assembles found fragments: newsreels, erotic images, B-series films, etc. The piece works according to a principle of association of shots that have no unity of nature, space or time but which, once edited together, produce a coherence that is both reflexive and subversive. While exploding the taboos of puritanism and the values of the Glorious Thirties, he vividly inventories humanity's devastating potential.
In partnership with the Archives du Film Expérimental d'Avignon (AFEA)
NEWSREEL OF DREAMS 1 & 2
by Stan VANDERBEEK 1963-1964 / DCP / color / sound / 9' 00 / double écran |
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WATCHING FOR THE QUEEN
by David RIMMER 1973 / 16mm / b&w / silent / 11' 00 |
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SECONDO IL MIO OCCHIO DI VETRO
According To My Glass Eye by Paolo GIOLI 1972 / 16mm / b&w / sound / 10' 09 |
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BLACK TRIP #1
by Aldo TAMBELLINI 1965 / 16mm / b&w / sound / 5' 00 |
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ISLAND FUSE
by Arthur CANTRILL & Corinne CANTRILL 1971 / 16mm / color / sound / 11' 00 |
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A MOVIE
by Bruce CONNER 1958 / 16mm / b&w / sound / 12' 00 |
address |
Cinéma des Cinéastes 7 avenue de Clichy 75017 Paris France |
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metro | Place de Clichy (lines, 2, 13) |
tel | +33 (0)1 53 42 40 20 |
lightcone@lightcone.org | |
related links |
Exhibition Sigmar Polke’s Photographic Infamies
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rates |
full rate: 9.50 € reduced rate: 7.50 € screening & exhibition at LE BAL: 11.50 € |