The audiovisual exhibition Somewhere from here to heaven (28th October 2022 > 16th April 2023) draws a constellation of filmmakers from different generations inspired by the universe of Bruce Baillie, the “essential” filmmaker of the sixties and seventies who died in 2020. His lyrical films of American landscapes have influenced artists even beyond those in the avant-garde, including George Lucas and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
From the Exhibition Hall, Somewhere from here to heaven expands through the Zinemateka with two cycles of experimental contemporary and historical cinema, located between the visual and the cinematographic experience. This is an unprecedented opportunity to access the archive of San Francisco's Canyon Cinema. Many of the pieces screened in the programme are in 16 mm - to avoid their deterioration only one screening per day is programmed – come from this cooperative that emerged in the sixties as a filmmakers' forum. Today the Canyon Cinema Foundation is the landmark of both this legacy and the contemporary production of independent, non-commercial and experimental moving images.
Description:
Contemporary cycle, curated by Garbiñe Ortega, takes place between 1st and 30th November and focuses on the exhibition artists: Ana Vaz, Ben Rivers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Eduardo Williams, who enter into dialogue with Bruce Baillie's own films. The selected films propose a game, a possible conversation between the themes and sensitivities that they share with each other, such as the exploration of light and colour in nature, the fascination with new forms of freedom or the discovery of the most spiritual essence of things.
PROGRAMME - CONTEMPORARY CYCLE
Session 1. Emotional Landscape. The flowers, the snow, the countryside and a street seem to hide a secret. Bruce Baillie, Ben Rivers, Apitchapong Weerasethakul and Ana Vaz remind us of our belonging and connect us with nature through contemplation.
Session 2. Forms of Freedom and Poetry. Does freedom educate? Does education liberate? These films by Ana Vaz, Ben Rivers and Bruce Baillie bring us these reflections through an approach to childhood.
Session 3. Reminiscent spaces. Ana Vaz, Bruce Baillie and Apichatpong Weerasethakul address the construction of a collective, social and political memory. These films follow in the footsteps of those who once passed by.
Session 4. The sky that falls. Between cameras attached to a body, the story does not stop. Instead, it levitates in the present like a ghost. Different latitudes speak of other origins and spaces that show what has been forgotten.
Session 5. Dreams of youth. Youth is that stage where we can dream and believe that any horizon is possible. Apitchapong Weerasethakul and Eduardo Williams urge us to dare to dream with the same energy with which we give ourselves to live.
Session 6. Far from the world. Imagine that we are far from the world, that there is no one on earth but oneself. Ben Rivers contemplates in 16 mm the solitude and the freedom to live deeply fused with nature.
Session 7. Liquid youth. This film by Eduardo Williams follows/portrays youth in search of new perspectives, new horizons, new virtual and real drifts in contrast to the alienating life experience of stagnating work.
Historical cycle will take place from January 25th to February 8th 2023 and is dedicated to (re)discovering films created in the fruitful context of the 1960s, in which Bruce Baillie and a generation of American filmmakers began to make films, many of them thanks to the “family” created by Canyon Cinema, an exhibition space and film distributor co-founded by Baillie.
This historical cycle screened in 16 mm offers the opportunity to revisit the great fundamental classics of the American avant-garde (Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Bruce Conner or Larry Jordan) as well as films about the political and social movements of the time (Lenny Lipton, James Broughton, Tom Palazzolo, Dan Draisin), including great films made by a new generation of female filmmakers who brought a feminist look to a more personal and avant-garde cinema (Chick Strand, Alice Anne Parker, Gunvor Nelson, Janis Crystal Lipzin).
PROGRAMME - HISTORICAL CYCLE
Session 1. Pioneers. Maya Deren, Bruce Conner, Larry Jordan, Marie Menken, Will Hindle and Peter Hutton are essential to understanding the underground cinema that began in the United States in 1940. It included dreamlike games, reappropriations of found-footage, juxtapositions and observational fragments in 16 mm that would influence filmmakers to come.
Session 2. Body politics. In the midst of a revolution, for the body too, this programme screens films by precursors of feminist and political cinema that marked the possibility of a new view of the body, such as Chick Strand, Alice Anne Parker, Gunvor Nelson, who marked more than a generation.
Session 3. Movements and revolution!. Confrontation, struggle, revolution in 16 mm: portraits of the social movements of the sixties in the United States with films by Larry Jordan, Tom Palazzollo and Dan Raisin.
Session 4. Close ups. The camera turns and becomes aware of what surrounds it, the closest, the domestic, the family. It seizes intimacy through the light as the characters lose their innocence. These are films by great filmmakers such as Gunvor Nelson, Marjorie Keller and Chick Strand.
Session 5. Anti-heroes. Bruce Baillie uses figures of European antiheroes (Don Quixote and Parsifal) to portray in a fragmentary way a United States in which industrialized labour and the conquest of nature have separated people from themselves and their origins.
