23. Feb

THE FILM TO COME (LE FILM À VENIR)

D: Raúl Ruiz, C: Gérard Vincent, Margot Marguerite, Edouard Waintrop, DOP: Jacques Bouquin, FR/CH 1987, 8 min., French Original with English subtitles, 35mm

The Philokinettes secret society are in possession of a film fragment called Le film à venir, which puts its viewers into a kind of hypnotic state, and opens their eyes. When the film disappears it causes a crisis in the group. In surreal images, accompanied by musique concrète by Jorge Arriagada, one experiences an absolute and truthful film that penetrates directly into the consciousness. In a dense nine minutes, Raúl Ruiz develops a multi-layered story whose narrators cannot be identified through a spectrum of absurd as well as suspenseful scenes. The film was one of a series produced by Silvia Voser and Swiss Television, in tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Locarno Film Festival. The directors in the Locarno demi-siècle; réflexions sur l’avenir series, including Chantal Akerman, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Kramer, questioned the future of film, all creating very different visions of a cinema to come.

[Tickets]

MOON NIGHT (TSUKI NO YORU) 

D: Manaka Nagai, C: Katsuya Abe, Manaka Nagai, DOP: Lukas Schupp, DE 2022, 15 min., Japanese Original with English subtitles – German Premiere

Throughout the history of film there are countless dreamers heading towards the moon. But rarely do they achieve their goal as effortlessly as the protagonist of Manaka Nagai’s enchanting miniature – where the magical feels like a gentle breeze in the monotony of quotidian life. After a long day at work a sleepy young woman hangs up her laundry with a profound sadness, when a shirt takes her hand and flies up with her beyond the sky. The handmade world of the film evokes a sense of surrealism, further intensified by the young woman’s somnambulist movements. It isn’t noise, spectacle, or special effects that make this escapist dream come true, but the urgency of her escape, the beauty of small gestures, and the silence in which one can finally breathe.

[Tickets]

SMOG IN YOUR HEART (SMOG EN TU CORAZÓN)

D: Lucía Seles, DOP: Sebastián Toro, Guillermo Romero, C: Martín Aletta, Gabriela Ditisheim, Laura Nevole, Pablo Ragoni, Ignacio Sánchez Mestre, AR 2022, 112 min. Spanish Original with English subtitles – European premiere

When you are the head of a tennis complex, you should keep your emotions separate from your work. – This is SMOG IN YOUR HEART in a nutshell, according to the film’s website. Six people who are at times sympathetically naïve, and other times  psychologically manipulative, pursue each other whilst seemingly enraptured by their own fragility. They talk about a lot but seem not to speak the same language. What they hide is made visible in the editing. Idiosyncratic gestures, hidden glances, and a choreography of clumsy bodies draw us into an entertaining and absurd round of emotions that defies the usual expectations of a narrative.

SMOG IN YOUR HEART is the first part of an unusual trilogy (with SATURDAY DISORDERS and WEAK RANGERS) by Lucía Seles, which anarchically subverts rules of editing and dramaturgy to seriously reinvent the genre of absurdist comedy. 

[Tickets]

Debate SOFTLY SURREAL

How does cinema today manifest the visible and invisible aspects of society? Are visionary films a thing of the past? We discuss fantastical and fanatical films in which resistance and tenderness magically coexist.  

Guests: Rolf de Heer, Tom McCarthy, Ulrike Ottinger, Lucía Seles

[All guests]

[Tickets]