Punto de Vista in Brussels
At the beginning of this year, CINEMATEK in Brussels will be hosting a run of films from the last edition of the Punto de Vista Festival. Between 18 and 20 January, CINEMATEK, the Royal Belgian Film Archive, will screen a selection of titles from the Official Section of Punto de Vista 2018 which will include four programmes consisting of the latest films by Kevin Jerome Everson, Jorge Jacome, Jonathas de Andrade, Rosalind Nashashibi, Margaux Guillemard and Deborah Stratman, several of whom were awarded prizes by the jury. Courtisane contributes on two programs. They’ve invited Sara García, Director of the International Documentary Film Festival Play-Doc in Tui. She will introduce the work of Peter Emanuel Goldman, who was the main guest of the 2018 edition of the Play-Doc festival. In Brussels, Goldman’s legendary film Echoes of Silence (1965) will be screened, accompanied by his short, Pestilent City (1965).
The order and number of sequences seem to matter little, to us as to him. It scarcely matters either that the musical sequences are repeated; they are there to prolong a state, as in the endless drawings-out, fishing for tuna or ascension, sith Rosselini. Each chapter, or canvas, interrupts itself by virtue of continuing a length of time; the glances exchanged by three girls in a little room lead to nothing and keep within themselves, latent, a drama that does not unfold. To these beings lost in New York, nothing ever happens. Here time is not accountable to the tumult of every day, and the film progresses by amplification, like a wave, slow but without return, not by addition of actions or events whose exact path one seeks, but by the ensnaring joining of solitudes. - Jean-Claude Biette about Echoes of Silence (1967)
Along with films from the Official Section, the Belgian Film Archive will also be screening other programmes which were shown at Punto de Vista 2018, such as Things Said Once, an interdisciplinary encounter on the documentary on and off the screen presented by the artist and writer Esperanza Collado; Correspondencias, which invites viewers to conceive the possibility of an exchange of letters through film to create imaginary dialogues; Poner el Cuerpo, a look at more corporal cinema, opening a dialogue between the contemporary and historical work of certain directors; and Nuevas Resistencias Post 68, two programmes which, after May 1968, incite reflection on how to reinvent the language of protest.
The programme will also include a workshop on cinema curatorship organised by CINEMATEK and Instituto Cervantes with the participation of María Palacios Cruz (LUX), Marta Selva (Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones), Sara García (Play-Doc) and Garbiñe Ortega, artistic director of Punto de Vista. You can find the other screenings and more information on the website of CINEMATEK.
