CINEMA PARENTHÈSE and iMAL present CÉCILE FONTAINE - Materialistic Home Movies in the presence of the artist.
"Fontaine works with what can be called margins, the excluded parts of cinema, revindicating scratching, soaking, de-collage and so filmmaking passes as a primarily plastic activity, with almost no material resources, renewing at once with the first major steps of the Dadaists in their collage – principally in the works of Schwitters and especially the collage of Hannah Höch executed with a kitchen knife and the work of recycling or how to make art without having the air to have touched it." - Yann Beauvais
Born in 1957 in south of France, Fontaine grew up in a French oversea departement named Ile de la Réunion in the Indian Ocean; studied art both in France (1975/1979) and in the United States (Boston 1980/1986) where she started making film in 1982 after taking an evening film class at Massachusetts College of Art then registering full time at School of Museum of Fine Arts, majoring cinema. In 1986 she returns to Paris where she teaches art in a primary school and makes films.
Program
Introduction by Cécile Fontaine
- Mouvement N°2 (1983 , super 8 , color , silent , 1'35)One of the first experiment with the camera and with the editing splicer. A fast edited film using materials from several 3 min films shot in the streets of Boston.
- A Color Movie (1983 , super 8 , color , silent , 4'43)Film combining short sequences shot with the camera by myself and short ones created on underexposed materials manipulated with the artist's tools or coming from reels shot by my father. It's a «suite» of visual experiments edited with an overexposed self-portrait.
- La Chambre Verte (1984 , super 8 , color/b&w , silent , 4'23)Bleached super 8 film shot by Fontaine herself and recovered with new's paper prints and pulp.
- 3 Shorts (1984 , super 8 , color , silent , 5'24)L'atelier De PeintureLive action combined with manipulation of the film by bleaching or displacing the emulsion side, and with collage of acetate or 35mm slides.ChurchLive action manipulated with «ammonia base detergent».Subject: Sound Color PictureFound Footage recut into S-8mm and edited on an academy leader structure.
- Light (1986 , super 8 , color , silent , 3'18)First personal experiment of a super 8 film roll manually exposed (without a camera) to a luminous source. This experiment has been repeated in several other short super 8 rolls by changing some parameters at the exposition. Abstract film in color.
- Le Déjeuner Sur L'herbe (1986 , super 8 , color , silent , 0'57)One of the first Super 8 made from materials by my father (home movie of the 70's) which emulsion has been peeled up from its base and taped on a new surface, in a different manner.
- Home Movie (1986 , 16mm , color , silent , 5'00)Retrieving a family movie of the 50’s bought in a shop of second-hand objects. After being filmed in black and white, the original was decomposed and recomposed by gluing the new black and white support.
- Cruises (1989 , 16mm , color , sound , 7'50)A collage film in three parts, interlacing films through genres and sources of various eras.
- La Pêche Miraculeuse (1995 , 16mm , color , silent , 10’00)Tourism in the Seychelles’ islands, under-water shots of marine life, facts from educational slides, bleached ektakrome films, 16 mm frames, super 8 strips, these are the the images and material which led us from the seaport to the plate; we look at the sea world trough the layers and juxtaposition of taped strips of emulsion from various sources.
- Silver Rush (1998 , 16mm , color , sound , 8'00)A rush sequences (rushes) from different sources: fiction, documentaries and commercials. This film features hunts of all kinds, in the mythical scenery of the American West.
- The Last Lost Shot (1999 , 16mm , color , sound , 7'00)Commissioned for the film event exhibition on the subject of the "Apocalysm" in cinema, this found footage film is essentialy constructed around the strongly altered images of ball-trap sequences for a demonstration film on fire-arms, humorously juxtaposed to images of innocence illustrated by children type drawings on seasonal tales and by fragments of two advertisings films: one on a natural reservation in the Seychelles Islands; the other, a "cartoon", for raincoats, related to the biblical flood.
- Cross Worlds (2006 , 16mm , color , sound , 15'00)Criss crossing of images from professional (16 documentaries) and anonymous amateur (8mm home and holiday movies) filmmakers juxtaposing different geographical areas peopled or locals or tourists inactivities of hard work or leisure.
Q&A With Cécile Fontaine
Cinema Parenthèse is a collective of writers, programmers and filmmakers that organizes experi-mental film screenings and dialogues in Brussels. Current members are Wendy Evan, Els van Riel, Nicky Hamlyn, Daniel A. Swarthnas and Arindam Sen.