Day Four - A Fair of Restored Gems + Sonic Parade

The competition part of the programme is behind us and a time has come for a proper film chilling. However, a Sunday afternoon at SC cinema is all but lazy! At 4pm at SC cinema we will be gathered by Mark Toscano, the third member of our distinguished jury of peers. Aside from coming to see a host of good competition films, Mr Toscano came to generously show us celluloid gems he worked on as a conserver at the Academy Archives in the last dozen years. 

You might believe Mr Toscano just loves to brag, but you would too if you were travelling the world in the company of Chick Stand, Stan Brakhage, Suzan Pitt, Pat O’Neill and many others. Under the highly mysterious title of Theme/variation/transubstantiation there is a bunch of virtuoso animation, troubled celluloid strips, fantasmagoric found footage, rippled abstractions, grotesque, psychedelia – all you need!

At 6pm we take a walk to the French Pavilion, where our film programme ends just like it began – without film. Twenty-four bodies scattered across the pavilion floor will gather not out of activism, but for a juicy Hit Parade experiment, conducted by Christof Migone. After that we will direct our eyes to the sky, with a hundred trumpets attached to a hundred colourful balloons in an eclectic arrangement of Alex Mendizabal, promising a unique psycho-acoustic experience. Fraudulent Projections, made by illusory acoustic impulses, will round up the festival which began with Julien Maire’s alternative projections.

With a mind broadened by insights on the scopes of different factors influencing a film event, at 8pm we rush back to our favourite cinema and begin ceremonially throwing proverbial laurels on the winners of this year’s festival edition. After a round of applause, we will run another screening – a non-alternative and non-fantasy – of their works.

And then we will close our minds before the fact that tomorrow is another working week and socialise at the after party at &TD.

Danijel Brlas