Expanded Cinema, the expanded cinema performance section of the 18th 25 FPS Festival of Experimental Film and Video, which will take place from September 21 to 24 at the Kinoteka cinema, will feature three great photochemical performances by renowned names in contemporary experimental film.
On Friday, September 23, at 10:30 pm, the programme opens with film artist Luis Macías and a performance for the 16 mm projector The Eyes Empty and the Pupils Burning of Rage and Desire. It is a kind of minimalistic and alchemical exploration of emulsion ‘without image, without sound and without description’ in which the artist shapes a limited number of images live exclusively with the elements of projection – light, shutter and focus.
Luis Macías is an internationally renowned Spanish artist and co-founder of CRATER-lab, an independent film laboratory for analogue film. In his works, which have been shown at prestigious festivals around the world, he explores the formal properties of the moving image and the photochemical nature of the medium. His latest film The Ocean Analog (2022) premiered at the prestigious Rotterdam Film Festival, and the Zagreb audience will be able to watch it in the main competition of 25 FPS, on Thursday, September 22 at 8 pm.
Another guest of the Expanded Cinema section is Gaëlle Rouard, a distinguished French filmmaker and performer who has been working with handmade films since the early 1990s and researching different methods of chemical processing of analogue film. In performances around the world, she experiments with the possibilities of multiple live projections both in collaborations and in independent performances.
In 2008, she performed live at the 25 FPS Festival with Etienne Caire under the name Lafoxe, and now she returns with an independent film performance M...H and a film screening Darkness, darkness, burning bright. In both works, Rouard creatively uses a 16mm projector to subtly reshape handmade film stills inspired by mythological landscapes. The performance M...H is scheduled for Friday, September 23 at 11 pm, and Darkness, darkness, burning bright, on Saturday at 2 pm.
Her photographic work Luminograms (2021) will also be on view at the Scrapbook exhibition celebrating 40 years of experimental film archive and distributor Light Cone, from September 22 to October 9 at the Institut Français.
PHOTO: M...H, The Eyes Empty and the Pupils Burning of Rage and Desire