BIOTECNIKA BLOG

Event Date as Display String:

Monday, October 14, 2019, 7:00pm - 8:30pm

Location:

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge

URL:

https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/visitors-2019-10

Event Description:

After "Naqoyqatsi," Reggio didn't finish a new feature until
"Visitors." These substantial gaps in time are necessitated in part by
the filmmaker's commitment to making technically advanced films for
large-scale theatrical exhibition — money for these sorts of projects
is not easy to come by — and presumably by the meditative sensibility
that seems to infuse their films. Visitors, like Reggio's earlier
features, was developed in collaboration with composer Philip Glass,
but while it sometimes evokes the Qatsi Trilogy, it is distinct both
formally (Visitors was shot in elegant black-and-white on 3K and 5K
high-definition video and released in 4K) and in terms of its subject
matter: Reggio's focus is on portraits of individuals, nearly all of
them in close-up, interspersed with panoramic imagery filmed in areas
of Louisiana that had been, five years earlier, devastated by Katrina.
Reggio's black-and-white close-ups in "Visitors" evoke Warhol's
"Screen Tests" of 1964‒66, in their composition, as well as in their
meditative pace — though the kinds of gaze that interest Reggio are
quite different from the gazes of the Factory visitors. "Visitors"
seems part of a contemporary revival of interest in the cinematic
portrait, shared by filmmakers such as Susana de Sousa Dias ("48"
[2009]) and by Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez ("Manakamana" [2013]).
The experience of looking at Reggio's stunning imagery within the
context created by Glass's elegant composition is akin to the powerful
experiences enjoyed by the original audiences for the Cinématographe,
for nineteenth century moving and still panoramas, and for Louis
Daguerre's Diorama shows.

UID:

http://uid.trumba.com/event/138717820

Event Start Date as Date Type:

Monday, October 14, 2019 - 19:00 to 20:30

Thumbnail:

https://www.trumba.com/i/DgD5MgsyWvEUTgMXAQvZxNxu.jpg

Detail Image:

https://www.trumba.com/i/DgDZszkDW0HbzWRHw1-CLrfO.jpg

Feature Image:

Featured:

No

https://www.harvard.edu/preview/featured/events/visitors