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Ism, Ism, Ism: Altered Surfaces

Ism, Ism, Ism: Altered Surfaces

Electric Arthropods, by Manuel DeLanda - California premiere!

Sunday, December 3, 2017, 7:30pm
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Ism, Ism, Ism: Altered Surfaces
At the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028
Guest: Manuela De Laborde, from Mexico

 
Abstraction has been a recurring strategy in Latin American visual cultures since long before the European Conquest.  Over the past century, and often in dialogue with artists elsewhere, Latin Americans working in diverse media have explored both abstraction, or in the case the Concrete art movement, who rejected the term “abstract” art as too suggestive of a link to a figurative realm that is being abstracted, “pure” explorations of color and form.  Not surprisingly, filmmakers have participated actively in this process of exploration, often in collaboration with artists from other media.  Enrique Pineda Barnet’s Cosmorama (1964) uses the kinetic sculptures of the Romanian-Cuban artist Sandú Darié Laver as a point of departure, much like the way Luís Ernesto Arocha’s AZILEF (1971) draws on the process of Colombian sculptor Feliza Bursztyn. Other filmmakers proceed from urban and architectural references, such as Prague’s public transit system in Azucena Losana’s At Your Heels (2017), or the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Teo Hernández’ Nuestra señora de Paris (1981-1982), and render these in ways that cross back and forth between abstraction and recognizable representations, while still others reference the altered sensory perceptions and exaggerated color palettes of psychedelic experiences. Offering an abstract journey into theatrical spectatorship, the images in Manuela De Laborde's As Without So Within document reflective prop-sculptures, which are transformed into tools for creating visual fields. Manuel DeLanda's creates Electric Arthropods with extreme enlargements of various insects, digitally manipulated and colorized with animated particle backgrounds, as part of his continuing search for the uncanny in the alteration of the everyday and the prosaic. Together, like the diverse approaches of the concrete, neo-concrete, geometric abstraction, “grupo Madí,” “grupo Ruptura,” and other movements in the visual arts, these filmmakers pursue colors, light, shadows, and forms as the basis for their work.
 
Tickets: $10 general; $6 for students/seniors; free for Filmforum members. Available in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at https://alteredsurfaces.bpt.me or at the door.

Placeres de la Carne

Horacio Valleregio, 1977, 12min, super 8 transferred to digital, color, sound, Argentina.

At your heels

Azucena Losana, 2017, 2:36 min, 16mm transferred to digital, color, sound, Argentina/República Checa.

HernandezParis

Nuestra señora de Paris

Nuestra señora de Paris

Teo Hernández, 1981-1982, 22 min, 16mm, 18 fps, color, sound, France.

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Cosmorama

Cosmorama

Enrique Pineda Barnet, 1964, 5 min., 35mm film transferred to digital, color, sound, Cuba

DeLandaElectric2017 11 26 10h01m04s660

Electric Arthropods

Electric Arthropods

Manuel DeLanda, 2017, 3.30 min, digital color, sound, USA.

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As without so within

As without so within

Manuela de Laborde, 2016, 25 min, 16mm, color, sound, Mexico/USA/United Kingdom.