LA BIENNALE DE MONTRÉAL
At the former École des beaux-arts at Montréal
Open daily from noon to 6 pm, Thursday extended until 9 pm.
May 1-31 2011.
Films
Sundays in May
Centering on this year’s theme, "Elements of Chance", sixteen short, medium and feature length films by fourteen directors of diverse nationalities have been screened each Sunday of the seventh edition of "La Biennale de Montréal – BNL MTL".
Dealing with poetry, imagination and the notion of chance in art, each film has offered viewers a unique experience, along with the opportunity to discover the works and testimonies of such artists as Gilles Barbier, Jean-Pierre Betrand, Guido Molinari and Daniel Spoerri, among others.
FROM MAY 1st TO 29th: Every Sundays
At Cinema du Parc,
General admission $ 11,50
Ages 13 – 25 / 60 and over $ 8,50
Documentary film about Daniel Spoerri
Dir. : Laurent Védrine
France, 2010 ; 60 min.
Original French version
Short film written and directed by Laurent Védrine ; a world premier presentation within the framework of the Sundays in May.
Archaeologists searching for mysterious ruins in the Montcel estate in Jouy–en-Josas (Yvelines, France). Around the excavation site, other characters remember a unique artistic event. This excavation site seems to be somewhat odd as the participants claim no knowledge of what they are trying to accomplish. The discovery of a banquet that is buried under the lawn finally reveals the original event that was held there on April 23rd, 1983, i.e., a spectacular performance by Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri.
According to : SDTP - Société du Déterrement du Tableau-Piège.
Triple feature program : including Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice and Molinari and Mallarmé.
Short film about Stéphane Mallarmé
Dir. : Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub
France, 1977 ; 11 min.
Original French version
Every revolution is a throw of the dice, a short film produced in 1977 in which Huillet and Straub adapt Mallarmé’s famous poem, "Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard" using narrators (including Danièle Huillet and Michel Delahaye) as genuine musical instruments that are adapted to the singular typography of the original poem.
For Straub, the challenge in making this film was to « do battle to the opacity … knowing full well that (…) that there would be no solution, and we end up by believing him. Just as Mallarmé’s poem, the film remains slightly obscure, but the beauty of its structure and of the language quickly gains the upper hand.
According to : Vincent Roussel (film critic and documentary producer).
Triple feature program : including Lunch Under the Grass, by Spoerri and Molinari and Mallarmé.
Short film about Guido Molinari and Stéphane Mallarmé
Dir. : Tom Hopkins in collaboration with Harold Klunder and Nicola Zavaglia
Canada, 2003 ; 15 min.
Original English version with French subtitles
Tom Hopkins’ short film, in collaboration with Harold Klunder brings together several elements. Guido Molinari introduces, in English, the impact of “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard” on 20th century paintings. The artist then reads Mallarmé’s poem which he follows up with a short conclusion.
Triple feature program : including Lunch Under the Grass, by Spoerri and Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice
Documentary film about Daniel Spoerri
Dir. : Camille Guichard
France, 1998 ; 52 min.
With Anne Tronche.
Original French version
Known and recognized internationally as the inventor of "snare pictures", Daniel Spoerri has been exploring the enigmatic banality of everyday objects since the beginning of the 1960's. He takes such objects and fixes them on boards, appropriating their function as utensils so that they enter the world of ideas to become signs, figures or fetishes.
This appropriation with the activities of "Nouveau Réalisme" for a while, then, during the 1960's, took him close to the radical positions of the Fluxus movement that sought to reduce the distance between art and life.
As the inventor of a modern vision, creator of a gallery presenting "Eat Art", organizer of theme banquets and the inspired designer of the "Musée Sentimental", Daniel Spoerri has developed a language of attitudes, gestures and cultural innovations that show him to be a tireless inventor.
Source : Terra Luna Films
Double feature program : including Daniel Spoerri and Prillwitzer Idoles
Documentary film about Daniel Spoerri
Dir. : Felix Breisach
Austria, 2005 ; 30 min.
Double feature program : including Daniel Spoerri
Interview with Jean-Pierre Bertrand
Dir. : Didier Morin
France, 2010 ; 45 min.
Original French version
Three filmed sequences presenting - Pierre Bertrand and part of his works, in his workshop.
Triple feature program : including Pig’s Foot and Der Fischgrätenmelkstand kippt ins Höhlengleichnis Refugium.
Dir. : John Bock
Germany. 2008 ; 15 min.
Triple feature program : including In the studio of Jean-Pierre Bertrand and Der Fischgrätenmelkstand kippt ins Höhlengleichnis Refugium.
Dir. : John Bock
Germany, 2008 ; 24 min.
"Fischgrätenmelkstand kippt ins Höhlengleichnis Refugium" conjures up an entirely different mood and century; Bock plays the role of a decadent, powdered, ancient régime dandy, trapped, questioning the meaning of life, with an opulently clad, similarly bewigged young woman in a clinical, tiled space. Under fluorescent lights a paranoid pantomime of the sexes plays out around a strange homemade apparatus. This re-enactment of the time of the European Enlightenment re-imagines the rational world with its hope for all-embracing encyclopedic knowledge as a form of absurd, sadistic theatre.
Source : 17th Biennale of Sydney
Triple feature program : including In the studio of Jean-Pierre Bertrand and Pig’s Foot.
Interview/conversation with Guido Molinari
Dir. : Jo Légaré and Vincent Chimisso
Canada, 2005 ; 50 min.
Original French version
One summer night on St Lawrence blvd in 2001, I met a painter who had come to see an exhibition of forty or so sketches and drawings by Dora Maar. He was enthusiastic, I was impressed.
His name was Guido Molinari. I knew him by name, like everyone else. That was not enough for him, not enough for me either.
Listening, day after day, to this man who was larger than life, speak to me of painting, his own and that of others, I knew I would make a film about him. Of the man that I knew and the artist that I was beginning to know, interrogating him constantly about his work and his life, listening to him endlessly talk about himself, his childhood, his favorite painters and thinkers, and with inestimable luck, telling me his dreams.
From our first conversation to the last, I could follow the film of his life. I was the privileged witness to his battle with cancer, and his last student. (Jo Légaré)
Source : Films JAD
Triple feature program : including The Big One and Cleromancy no2.
Dir. : Gabriel Lester
Netherlands, 2010/2011 ; 16 min. film loop (Cleromancy no.2).
“The Big One” depicts an inexplicable gathering of people that the viewer will be quick to interpret as a ritual invocation of fate. The film demonstrates people’s readiness to think magically and their tendency to ascribe value to non-existent interrelationships: people perceive it as a magical gathering despite there being no other indications of this. The other film by Lester, “Cleromancy no.2”, is an abstract interplay of color and movement composed of fragments of footage of lottery draws all around the globe.
Source : Rotterdam museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Triple feature program : including Molinari : The last conversation.
Dir. : John Bock
Germany, 2010; 74 min.
With FriederikeKempter, Adrian Lohmüller, MattiIsan Blind, John Bock, HeinerFranzen, Linnart Schneider.
“Im Schatten der Made” is designed as a native full length movie, with professional actors. The plot is based on a “un ménage à trois”, a priest, a scientist and his wife with in parallel with the creation and animation of an android. All the life stages and overall emotions are features: birth, life and death are crisscrossed with euphoria, fear, hatred, cupidity, love, debauchery, pain and violence. The overall production forms a theatrical world that destabilizes the myth of its creation.
Bock himself plays the main role of the priest, with his cross hanging from the camera as an accessory that represents a divine incarnation, but that also brings to mind Dracula’s blood. This is a satire of the subconscious and of the subjective mind that always seem to find an odd role in the bizarre and the grotesque.
Source : Studio John Bock
Documentary film about Gilles Barbier
Dir. : Manuela Dalle
France, 2009 ; 26 min.
With Pierre Sterckx, art critic, Georges-Philippe Vallois, gallery owner, Jean-Yves Jouannais, art critic.
Original French version
Do-it-yourselfer and handyman, Gilles Barbier draws, sculpts paints and designs installations. Through his various works, the artist examines reality, the concept of identity and of copy. The art clones that he produces, dresses up and features in his work bear witness to his humor. He has also created a full gallery of worn out super heroes and codes that help him explore the themes that obsess him. Gilles Barbier draws upon multiple influences and copying their codes: science, comic books, science fiction and poetry.
In his film, Manuela Dalle follows the artist in his Parisian workshop as he works feverishly and at the Grand Palais (Paris, France where he is installing one of his “Tourniquets” as well as at Villa Arson (Nice, France) where he is completing his "Patinoire".
Source : ARTE
Dir. Agnès Varda
France, 2000 ; 82 min. Format DV / 1,33 : 1
With Agnès Varda, Bodan Litnanski, François Wertheimer.
Original French version with English subtitles
In every corner of France, Agnès has met up with people who work in the fields, who recycle and pickers. Either out of necessity, chance or choice, they are in contact with what other people discard. Their universe is astonishing. This is a far cry from the fieldworkers of yesteryears who picked wheat after the crops had been brought in. Today, they pick potatoes, apples and other discarded food products, ownerless objects, handless clocks. But Agnes has also “picked” the title and her documentary is subjective.
Source : Première
Documentary film about / Portrait of Guido Molinari
Réal. : Jo Légaré
Canada. 2006.; 53 min. Betacam SP or digital.
Original French version
”Moli who? Molinari the Enigma” proposes a well documented, funny, tender and passionate portrait of the painter Guido Molinari. Artists, friends, art historians, former students or journalists, from Montreal to Paris, by way of Toronto, draw the portrait of the man they familiarly called Moli.
The painter himself, young, mature or tender, ironic, serious or passionate, speaks to us of art and life, making us want to discover his work directly, to become aware of its mystery and its beauty.
This fast paced and playful film addresses the work and the man in such a way that cannot leave you indifferent.
Source : Films JAD
Documentary film about Brion Gysin
Dir. : Nik Sheenan
Canada. 2008 ; 75 min.
With Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull, William Burroughs.
Original English version
The film tells the story of Brion Gysin, creator of the dream machine – a 100-watt light bulb, a motor and a rotating cylinder with cutouts. Gysin believed that his dream machine would provide a drug-less high that would revolutionize human consciousness.
Gysin's invention attracted the likes of Marianne Faithfull, Iggy Pop and William Burroughs, but others argued over whether or not it could be recognized as an absolute piece of 20th-century art or not. The question is: "Does perception of art end when you close your eyes or is that when it just starts?"
Sources :
Interzone Éditions
The National Filmboard of Canada (NFB)
