The screening will be followed by a dialogue between Katerina Thomadaki and Alex Cécile Chich* and a presentation of the slide seriesTri-X-Pan Double Exposure(1977) accompanied by an informal reception.
To mark the acquisition of several short films by Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki into its catalogue, Light Cone presents a special screening of the duo's first feature film, Double Labyrinthe (1976), accompanied by two rarely-seen short films. This mythical film, the cinematographic debut of Klonaris/Thomadaki in France, was screened for the first time in May 1976 at the University of Paris I, in the presence of Michel Journiac and Dominique Noguez. The complex meanings raised by Double Labyrinthe - as if emanating from the depths of the unconscious - as well as the film’s formal audacity and the simplicity of its means of production (shot in Super 8mm), would contribute to the inauguration of a whole movement of cinematographic practices in the French experimental milieu. The main characteristics of this movement would be further explored in the School of the Body, described soon afterward by Dominique Noguez.
The emphasis on the body as the main element of their work has multiple origins. In Athens, Klonaris/Thomadaki had created an experimental theater that served as a bridge to the practice of performative action. After years of living under a dictatorship, upon arrival in Paris, they felt an urgency to create a space for the oppressed, censored, tortured body, a feeling reinforced by their status as women who positioned themselves outside of all normativity. The irreducible power of Double Labyrinthe lies in the intersection of the gazes, the imaginations and the universes of its two "actantes"/"filmantes". As they seek to emancipate cinema from the dominating and objectifying gaze, Klonaris/Thomadaki charge the female body with a discursive power. Caught up in a series of metamorphoses, the filmed body allows to imagine, in their words, "the moving background of identity".
Programme:
- Flash Passion (Maria Klonaris, 1970, DCP, color, silent, 2'12)
- Smoking (Katerina Thomadaki, 1975-2016, DCP, color, silent, 4'00)
- Double Labyrinthe (Maria Klonaris & Katerina Thomadaki, 1975-1976, DCP, color, silent, 55'00)
Alex Cécile Chich: independent researcher in experimental, feminist and queer cinema, specialist of the work of Klonaris/Thomadaki. They have directed the collective publication Klonaris/Thomadaki - Le Cinéma corporel (L'Harmattan, 2006) and dedicated numerous articles to the two artists, in such publications as Doing Women's Film History (Illinois Univ. Press, 2015) and Dictionnaire des féministes (dir. C. Bard, PUF, 2017). In the 1990s, they collaborated with Klonaris/Thomadaki on the Rencontres Internationales Art cinéma/vidéo/ordinateur. A London resident for 30 years, they were member of the Board of Directors of the London Film-makers' Co-op and LUX.