02: David Gatten, Francisco Rodríguez, Isabelle Tollenaere

29 March, 2018 - 17:30
Sphinx cinema

Three films that deal with ghosts and remembrance, traces and retelling. From the inscriptions / stories left behind on unexposed 16mm film by the Atlantic Ocean, to the mysterious death of four Chinese workers in the Strait of Magellan which cannot be solely explained by forensic, material evidence, to memories retold by those who couldn’t have possibly experienced them. These works shift from the concrete to the speculative, from documentary to fiction, through all the ambiguities in between.

 

In the presence of Francisco Rodríguez and Isabelle Tollenaere.

What the water said 1-3

David Gatten
,
US
,
1998
,
16mm
,
colour
,
16'

The result of a series of camera-less collaborations between the filmmaker, the Atlantic Ocean, and a crab trap. For three days in January and three days in October of 1997, and again, for a day, in August of 1998, lengths of unexposed, undeveloped film were soaked in a crab cage on a South Carolina beach. Both the sound and image are the result of the ensuing oceanic inscriptions written directly into the emulsion of the film as it was buffeted by the salt water, sand, rocks and shells.

Una Luna de Hierro

Francisco Rodríguez
,
CL, FR
,
2017
,
DCP
,
colour
,
28'

The ghosts which fill the film are those of four Chinese workers, who died at sea after jumping off a fishing boat in the hope of reaching Puntas Arenas, a Chilean city north of the Strait of Magellan. Birds have pecked out their eyes; their mobile phones, passports, computers and food were found. They were wearing lifejackets and yet their deaths were deemed a suicide. The inhabitants hence stand in front of their homes or on the pebble beaches to recount their version of events, children learn to read by deciphering newspapers or they recite and sing apocalyptic fables, telling of imaginary illnesses that would attack their jaws, and dreaming of an ark to harbour them, defying the wind to make their voices heard. History stammers and breaks down, the earth sweats and cadavers emerge. At the end of all possible paths, only impressions, directions, apparitions remain. (Charlotte Bayer-Broc)

 

Spanish spoken with English subtitles

The Remembered Film

Isabelle Tollenaere
,
BE
,
DCP
,
colour
,
18'

In The Remembered Film young soldiers from previous wars are seen roaming the woods aimlessly. They wear the uniforms of the Soviet troops, the Wehrmacht or the American military forces during the Vietnam war, and seem to co-exist in the same peaceful forest. In interviews, they share war memories they can’t possibly have experienced themselves, but which have taken root in their memory. A film connecting war and spectacle, history and representation, reality and imagination.

 

English spoken with Dutch & French subtitles