Courtisane presenteert voor eerst in België een overzicht van het werk van Laida Lertxundi (ES, 1981), een van de meest getalenteerde jonge filmmakers die vandaag actief zijn in de traditie van de zogenaamde “avant-garde”. Lertxundi maakt 16mm films met non-acteurs die vaak gefilmd zijn in de omgeving van Los Angeles, waar ze reeds geruime tijd verblijft. Haar films evoceren externe en interne ruimtes van intimiteit, als bevraging van hoe de verlangens en verwachtingen van de kijker worden gevormd door cinematografische vormen van narrativiteit. Ze zoekt daarbij naar afwijkende manieren om klank en muziek te combineren met gevonden parameters, geconstrueerde situaties en alledaagse omgevingen. Haar werk werd recent vertoond in instellingen zoals MoMa en LACMA, en festivals zoals de Viennale, IFFR en het London Film Festival. Courtisane vertoonde vorig jaar nog Cry When It Happens op het festival en heeft voor de komende editie haar nieuwe film, A Lax Riddle Unit, op het programma staan. Als voorsmaakje van het Courtisane Festival 2012 (21-25 maart) worden bij OFFoff vier films van Lertxundi vertoond, samen met een selectie van werken die haar praktijk hebben beïnvloed.

Lemon, Hollis Frampton, 7mins, 1969

"As a voluptuous lemon is devoured by the same light that reveals it, its image passes from the spatial rhetoric of illusion into the spatial grammar of the graphic arts." (HF)

Footnotes to a House of Love, Laida Lertxundi,13min, 2007

“Footnotes is most centrally about the presence of place, the house and the desert beyond, and the possibilities they seem to invite. narra- tives and relationships are only just hinted at and seemingly swallowed up by the surroundings. There is a subtle mysteriousness to the place that could easily have made it a site for terror, or at least danger, but this is constantly leavened by a gentle, disarming playfulness and teasing.” (Patrick Friel)

My Tears are Dry,  Laida Lertxundi, 4 min, 2009

“As with her earlier film, Lertxundi is concerned with the feeling of a location. She creates an off-hand, casual tone that is both comfortable and slightly on edge. The effect is gentler here, but the cross-cutting at the beginning between a woman sprawled on a bed playing snippets of the 1961 Hoagy Landis song “My Tears Are Dry” on a portable cassette deck and a woman plucking discordantly on a guitar sets up an uneasy tension (a slight nod to the “Dueling Banjos” in Deliverance?). It’s the experimental film equivalent of lo-fi pop.” (Patrick Friel)

All My Life, Bruce Baillie, 3min, 1966

"Caspar, California, old fence with red roses." (BB)

Llora Cuando Te Pase/ Cry When it Happens, Laida Lertxundi, 14min, 2010

“Los Angeles City Hall is reflected onto the window of the Paradise Motel. It serves as an anchor for this traversal through the natural expanse of California. Here, we discover a restrained psychodrama of play, loss, and the transformation of everyday habitats. Music appears across the interiors and exteriors and speaks of limitlessness and longing.” (LL)

A Lax Riddle Unit, Laida Lertxundi, 5min, 2011

“In a Los Angeles interior, moving walls for loss. Practicing a song to a loved one. A film of the feminine structuring body.” (LL)

Picture and Sound Rushes, Morgan Fisher, 11mins, 1973

“Picture and Sound Rushes takes the form of a lecture in which his deadpan discourse describes the various permutations of sound/silence and picture/no picture. These states are demonstrated in the editing, which cuts between them at regular intervals (determined by dividing a roll of film equally by the total number of combinations), with no regard for the audience struggling to follow the dialogue”. (Mark Webber)