4th Street and Mailing address: Pennsylvania Avenue NW 2000B South Club Drive NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART SPRING10 FILM Washington, DC Landover, MD 20785 A JOURNEY STILL VOICES, THROUGH INNER LIVES: MOVING SPANISH CATALUNYA: THE JOURNALS COMPOSITIONS: EXPERIMENTAL POETRY OF OF ALAIN ASPECTS OF FILM PLACE CAVALIER CHOPIN BEAT MEMORIES de Barcelona), cover calendar page calendar International), page four page three page two The Savage Eye Arrebato The Savage Eye L’arbre deL’arbre les cireres Battle of Wills Tríptico elemental de España SPRING10 details from (Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona) (Photofest) (Photofest) (InformAction and Philippe Lavalette) Philippe (InformAction and The Savage Eye (Photofest) (Centre de Cultura Contemporania , Thérèse (Photofest), Irène (Pyramid Monuments: Matta-Clark, Graham, Smithson Redmond Entwistle in person Saturday June 19 at 2:00 Film Events A clever and amusing critique of three minimalists, Monuments portrays a problem that emerges in the work of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta- Clark, and Dan Graham, as each artist retraces his relationship to New Figaros Hochzeit (The Marriage of Figaro) Jersey. “An alle gory for the effects that globalization has had on society Introduction by Harry Silverstein and landscape” — Rotterdam Film Festival. (Redmond Entwistle, 2009, Saturday April 17 at 1:00 16 mm, 30 minutes) The postwar German DEFA studio (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) Manhattan in 16 mm produced a series of popular black-and-white opera films in the late 1940s Saturday June 19 at 3:30 at their Potsdam-Babelsberg facility. Mozart’s Figaros Hochzeit, the first of these, featured wonderfully showy sets and costumes. (Georg Wildhagen, A sequence of documentary and experimental shorts, filmed over the past 1949, 35 mm, German with subtitles, 109 minutes) Presented in association twenty years in the now rare 16 mm gauge, observes, lionizes, and languishes with Washington National Opera. over the city of New York and its denizens. Included are works by Jim Jen- nings, Jem Cohen, Peter Hutton, Barbara Hammer, Mark Street, and more. Flamenco at the Source (Total running time 80 minutes) Screening and discussion with Brook Zern Sunday April 18 at 4:30 Ciné-Concert: J’Accuse Dennis James on theater organ Flamenco scholar Brook Zern presents segments from the renowned Rito y Sunday June 20 at 4:30 Geografía del Cante Flamenco — the vast ethnographic documentation of flamenco, completed in Spain forty years ago, and featuring legendary tra- Abel Gance’s passionate epic, shot during World War I and viewed today ditional interpreters in the context of their everyday lives. Zern’s focus is the more as an innovative antiwar film than tragic triangular romance, has just diversity of flamenco song, fromalegrías , guajiras, malagueñas and granaínas been restored and reconstructed by the Netherlands Filmmuseum working to the poignant cante jondo. (120 minutes) with Lobster Films in Paris. The print incorporates the original tinted and toned sequences and represents the best historical material. (Abel Gance, Battle of Wills 1919, 35 mm, silent with live music, 166 minutes) Introduction by Anne Henderson Friday April 23 at 1:00 Convinced he owns the only portrait of Shakespeare painted from life, Cana- dian citizen Lloyd Sullivan has invested a fortune trying to prove his point. Battle of Wills moves from conservation labs in North America to galleries on From Ecstasy to Rapture: Bond Street pursuing the puzzle behind a painting that still perplexes the art world. (Anne Henderson, 2008, HD-Cam, 52 minutes) A Journey through Spanish New Masters of European Cinema: Experimental Film En construcción (Work in Progress) José Luis Guerín in person Saturday June 5 at 2:30 An unprecedented retrospective of Spanish avant-garde cinema of the last fifty years, From Ecstasy to Rapture consists of six programs One of the most adventurous talents in European cinema is the Catalan arranged by theme and technique, in archival prints and preserva- filmmaker José Luis Guerín. Almost a decade ago he completedEn construc- tion video transfers. Presented as part of the Preview Spain: Arts & ción, a film that plays with the layered ambiguities of the visual world. Guerín’s Culture ’10 program and through the cooperation of the Embassy of subject, the construction of an upscale condominium in a marginal Barcelona Spain, Spain–USA Foundation, and Centre de Cultura Contemporania neighborhood, allows him to reflect on his own ideas about history and per- de Barcelona. Special thanks to Francisco Tardio Baeza and curators ception, “spinning a spellbinder from the simplest elements” — Harvard Film Antoni Pinent and Andres Hispano. Sound films are subtitled in English. Archive. (José Luis Guerín, 2001, 35 mm, Spanish and Catalan with subtitles, 125 minutes) Documents / Itineraries Saturday April 3 at 2:00 De Vilde Svaner (The Wild Swans) American premiere A program of shorts and réalités including the work of visionary filmmakers Sunday June 6 at 4:30 José Val del Omar and José Luis Guerín, architect Gabriel Blanco, and artists Benet Rossell, Antoni Miralda, and Virginia García del Pino. (Total running H.R.H. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark’s original designs dramatically adorn a time 85 minutes) new adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1838 tale about a princess who releases her eleven brothers from the spell of their evil queen mother. Queen Appropriations / Grand Super-8 Margrethe’s costumes and painterly sets, constructed from her decoupage Saturday April 3 at 4:00 art, are the actors’ sole milieu. (Peter Flinth and Ghita Nørby, 2009, 35 mm, Danish with subtitles, 60 minutes) An eclectic mix of Super-8 mm shorts and 16 mm found-footage films (trans- ferred to video) contrasts the work of film artists from divergent generations: the 1970s avant-garde and younger filmmakers active during the last decade. Included are works by Toni Serra, Jesús Pérez-Miranda, Eugeni Bonet, Marcel Pey, Luis Cerveró, Juan Bufill, Lope Serrano Sol, Maximiliano Viale, Oriol Sán- chez, Manuel Huerga, and others. (Total running time 70 minutes) one Movement / Painting L’arbre de les cireres (The Cherry Tree) Friday April 9 at 2:30 Saturday May 1 at 2:00 The only feature in the history of Spanish cinema constructed entirely by In a forgotten village at the end of the twentieth century, a small boy learns hand-painting directly on celluloid, devoid of figurative elements or sound- the subtler lessons of life. Marc Recha crafts his tale in a meditative, minimal- track, Movement / Painting is a spectacular composition of pure and beautiful ist style, taking the boy’s point of view to construct a tale about relationships, abstraction. (José Antonio Sistiaga, 1968 – 1970, 35 mm, silent, 70 minutes) love, death, and the pulse of the natural world. “Gently celebratory, of a sort that our own domestic output seldom manages” — Donald Levit. (Marc Recha, Animated Experiments: Rhythm, Light, Color 1998, 35 mm, Catalan and Spanish with subtitles, 94 minutes) followed by Investigations / Metacinema Saturday April 10 at 2:00 Gala (Elena Dimitrievna Diakonova) followed by Gaudí A survey of experimental animation in the Spanish cinema illustrates one of Saturday May 8 at 2:30 the most inventive of all art forms, with techniques ranging from stop-motion to collage, sand-on-glass animation, and camera-less cinema. Artists include A journey through the incredible life of Elena Dimitrievna Diakonova Gala Josep Mestres, Fermí Marimón, Izebene Oñederra, Jordi Artigas, Isabel from her Russian birthplace, to Davos and first husband Paul Éluard, then on Herguera, Frederic Amat, and Juan Pablo Etcheverry. (Total running time to Paris where she met Salvador Dalí. Gala presents its subject not only as 70 minutes) muse to many artists but also as a complex personality. (Sílvia Munt, 2002, Reflections on the nature of the medium and connections among film and 35 mm, Catalan, Spanish, English, and French with subtitles, 105 minutes) other art forms are explored in Investigations / Metacinema. A few of the art- Gaudí originated with the need to create an “official” version of Antonio ists represented are Blanca Casas Brullet, Gonzalo de Pedro, Jorge Cosmen, Gaudí’s life. Lacking historical documents and footage, the filmmakers recon- and Carles Durán. (Total running time 70 minutes) structed his chronicle by staging their own interviews, attempting to “get a feel for the period through unearthed images found among the rubble after Arrebato (Enraptured) the Civil War.” (Manuel Huerga, 1988, digital betacam, English, Catalan, and Saturday April 10 at 4:30 Spanish with subtitles, 54 minutes) Film-as-vampire is an idea explored in Zulueta’s outrageous and genre- Report on the Revolutionary Movement in Barcelona defying masterpiece, a late 1970s extravaganza of cinema, largely forgotten followed by El alegre paralelo (The Jolly Paralelo) outside Spain. The pivotal character, Pedro, records everything with his Saturday May 15 at 4:30 Super-8 camera, then discovers that he has a special receptiveness to filmed images, allowing him to “reach a near cathartic, mystical state called arrebato The first newsreel of the Civil War, shot entirely by anarchists, July 19 to 23, leading to a strange and unusual fate” — Roberto Curti. (Iván Zulueta, 1980, 1936, exposes the street fighting, the barricades, the ruined convents, and 35 mm, Spanish with subtitles, 105 minutes) the damaged buildings. As the CNT (National Confederation of Labor) takes control, the Durruti Column, only days later, departs for the Aragón Front through the city’s ravaged avenues. (1936, 35 mm, Spanish with subtitles, 20 mintues) Documenting the Avinguda del Parallel, once the heart of Barcelona’s nightlife, amateur cineastes Ramon and Ripoll-Freixes capture in El alegre Catalunya: paralelo the quarter’s insane excitement. (Enric Ripoll-Freixes and Josep Maria Ramon, 1964, digital beta, Spanish with subtitles, 32 minutes) Poetry of Place The cinema of Catalunya (Catalonia) on Spain’s Mediterranean coast flourished all through the twentieth century, even while the region’s filmmaking was threatened following the Civil War.