Cinema and video

Manuel Polo and Jesús Macías are the stars of Todo lo contrario. These ninety-somethings are what you could call film buffs, although unknowingly, because they would never think in those terms, but they use scenes from films to show us what they are thinking or they flesh out ordinary memories with movie memories. They lived during that time and in that world when cinema, the only art form that has been genuinely popular, had an all-pervasive presence; you worked, ate, slept, went to the cinema, just one more thing in the everyday flow of life. This programme came about from a meeting between them and a voluntary film buff, someone who started out at the end of that time and of that world.

Following many conversations and films that the involuntary and voluntary film buffs mentioned and noted, respectively, it was whittled down to six. Manolo’s and Jesús’s tastes are filtered through another taste. Six examples of the talent accumulated in Hollywood during the golden age of the big studios. Six seminal movies, six true works of art and sources of aesthetic (and ethical) pleasure. Six ethical and (aesthetic) hypotheses whose characters mutate, with the torment and pain and excitement of change; they find out who they are and discover their inner desires through chance meetings, reunions, disagreements. And Manolo and Jesús, who saw them, perhaps get to discover something about themselves and about others through them, recognising themselves in them. And perhaps we will too.

The titles already give us a clue to the (dramatic) weight that falls on women, dealing with their adventures and their freedom. After Captains Courageous we could ask ourselves “How can you grow up without losing your childhood?” and answer, thanks to It Happened One Night and The Awful Truth, “by letting fantasies of love lead to companionship, seriousness to improvisation, humour and fun”. But you can still hear a voice saying: “Yes, ok, but… What happens if we are women light years away from the standard, or if certain relationships place us in danger?” That’s where the queen, the pirate and the voyager have something to say.

Passing on this experience, at once intimate and shared, digging up those dead who are still very much alive in the minds of non-experts, helps to understand the overwhelming influence and presence of cinema, when it offered an opportunity for sentient learning every day, a gift for the eyes everyday for everyone. Every week, Jesús, a hairdresser since he was practically a boy, would go through the programme and choose the movies he was going to see, without bothering to take into account how near or how far away the cinema was from his home-hairdresser’s: “Whether it was in Tetuán or Vallecas, it didn’t matter, I went anyway. All cinemas were for me”.

The conjunction was inevitable. While Filmoteca Española (FE), jointly with the publishers Cátedra, were publishing the book La codorniz (de la revista a la pantalla y viceversa), by Aguilar and Cabrerizo, Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo (CA2M) was preparing the exhibition “Absurd Humour” and the book of the same name by the curator Mery Cuesta. To a certain extent, they were forced to get on and, as was the case in hand, “to associate together” in order to jointly imagine a shared variety show. And so, driven by the unbridled imagination of the current confinement, this double programme came about with an evident desire to strike up another equally necessary coupling: a bridge between two generations of comedians with several decades between them. Does the blood of Codorniz humour run through the veins of Chanante humour and its contemporary derivates?

FE and CA2M organized a series of events and rereadings of filmic creations that arose around the satirical magazine La Codorniz run by some of the most outstanding voices in absurd humour today. The playful, surrealist quality of the folly unquestionably runs through the veins of these proposals which, in the second programme, focus on a direct intervention in creations from the past through the optic of the present moment. While Joaquín Reyes dubs fragments of Noticiario de Cine-Club newsreels featuring intellectuals and forward-thinkers from Madrid and Barcelona in 1930, the Tono & Mihura’s “humoristic production” called Un bigote para dos [A Moustache For Two]–“a stupid film for serious people”—is given a revamp by the hands (and voices) of the humoristic practices of Juan Cavestany, Julián Genisson and Lorena Iglesias (members of the Canódromo Abandonado collective) and Venga Monjas.

CAs if they were Jardiel Poncela’s parodic overdubbings of silent movies called “celuloides rancios” now updated to the digital era, the double programme “A Moustache for the 21st Century” goes to clearly show the generational transmission of a kind of nonsense logic humour that ran through Spanish films for many decades, and which is still alive today (at least we believe so) in more contemporary humoristic practices. The connections between Tono & Mihura and Venga Monjas, or between Neville and Joaquín Reyes, emerge naturally, revealing the staying power of absurd humour as a sign of identity of Spanish culture. At the same time, Chanante humour is paired directly with its spiritual forebears, raising absurd laughter. And so to paraphrase the fairground huckster in Verbena: “Step right in [ladies and gentlemen]! Have we a just and moral show for you!”.

SESSIONS

CODORNICESCAS PRESENTATIONS | From 22 May

A whole series of audiovisual productions sprung up around La Codorniz, the most iconic satirical magazine in the history of Spanish popular culture. Today these productions are revisited (and recommended) by the researchers Aguilar and Cabrerizo and the filmmaker Carlo Padial (Algo muy gordo, 2017).

_ Verbena (1941), by Edgar Neville [31 min]. Presentation by Santiago Aguilar and Felipe Cabrerizo.
_ Don Viudo de Rodríguez (1935), by Jerónimo Mihura [14 min], + El corazón de un bandido (1968), by Chumy Chúmez [7 min]. Presentations by Carlo Padial.

SCREWBALL OVERDUBBINGS | From 5 June

The practice of screwball overdubbing, the audiovisual sound and image collage, is an excellent way of creating an absurd humoristic effect. Thanks to Tono & Mihura’s Un bigote para dos, their 1940 screwball film, a comedy rewriting of the dialogue of a Johann Strauss biopic, and to Jardiel Poncela and his “celuloides rancios”, these redubbings were hugely popular back in the 1940s. Today we have chosen the filmmaker Juan Cavestany (Gente en sitios, 2013) and two comedian duos, Julián Genisson & Lorena Iglesias and Venga Monjas, to revisit this vintage comic practice from Spanish culture and to make a new dubbing for Un bigote para dos. The programme is rounded off with a dubbing by Joaquín Reyes, in the style of his “Retrospecter” or “Mundo viejuno” sketches, of a newsreel directed by Giménez Caballero.

_ Noticiario de Cine-Club (1930), by Ernesto Giménez Caballero [31 min]. Fragment dubbed by Joaquín Reyes.
_ Un bigote para dos (1940), by Tono y Mihura [64 min]. Dubbed by (in order of appearance) Juan Cavestany (subtitling) / Julián Genisson & Lorena Iglesias / Venga Monjas.

Following the line of work begun in 2014, Cinema Revealed has organized a range of different activities revolving around audiovisual performance and the interrelationship between film and other disciplines. This engagement with the cinematographic experience goes beyond the dark film theatre and the projected image, interrelating and transforming it through other practices in order to activate an audiovisual experience that questions not only its own language, but its entire structure and conventional logistics.

Similar to previous editions, we are presenting various transversal proposals that connect film with sound art, new media and dance. We do our best to bring to our audiences some of the most notable contemporary art practices revolving around issues of concern to us, both within Spanish production as well as international experimentation.

The cycle gets off to a start with the artist Rose Kallal. Recognised internationally for her experimental film and electronic music praxis, this is the first time that Kallal has performed in Spain. This will then be followed by a double session with theatrical proposals created by four emerging artists: Julián Pacomio, Ángela Millano, Carmen Main and Elena Juárez, which straddle sculpture, media-art, film, philosophy, body and sweat. The third session merges dance, reality and fiction in a collective proposal called Kopfkino, by Los Detectives.

A notable addition this year is the introduction of live radio with Andrei Rublev, una Panicografía. Engaging with the near at hand and playing alongside the people from Mostoles is always interesting, which is why we are organising an intergenerational workshop with Sra. Polaroiska for the penultimate weekend. This year’s edition of Cinema Revealed will be brought to a close with the audiovisual performance Falaises, from Canada, which can be seen for the first time in Spain.

Cinema Revealed is consolidating its growing reputation as a performance biennial, and one of the most important events in winter in the Region of Madrid for so-called live art.

PROGRAMME

19 JANUARY 18:30

Spectral Points, by Rose Kallal (Film and audio performance). Premiere in Spain

This is the only opportunity to see this New York based sound and visual artist in Spain, presenting her new performance with 16 mm film and live music. Spectral Points is created using a wide range of technical processes including traditional animation techniques, video synthesis/feedback, and computer animation. The 16mm film loops cycle at varying speeds creating a hypnotic nonlinear flow. Accompanying the films, Kallal will perform a live electronic sound score using modular synthesis.

26 JANUARY 18:30

Make it don't fake it, by Julián Pacomio and Ángela Millano (Performance)

This work invites the audience to make itself comfortable in a space which will gradually be informed by various layers of meaning. Images, voice, memory, body, movement, tiredness and sweat meet the gazes and bodies of the audience to create a shared universe during a unique span of time. This performative proposal takes materials from the film Trash Humpers, directed by Harmony Korine in 2009. But it could have been any other film, it could have been any other audiovisual content filmed in the past by another person.

“We would like to understand this work as a piece of live art that focuses its interest in perpetuating the cultural content of images that could be overlooked, forgotten, floating or vanished, by preserving and protecting them in our bodies and in our memories”.

Vanitas, by Carmen Main and Elena Juárez (New media performance). World premiere

A collective action based on a still life exhibited in the hall with different elements which rethinks the Vanitas, a classic genre in the history of painting, through a 3D installation using object mapping. For the occasion, a smartphone app has also been designed that allows the audience to access a video in augmented reality on their devices. Depending on the number of people taking part in the performance and on the time during which the videos are activated, an original soundtrack will be constructed with the addition of the audios which will change in function of the choices made by each participant. The piece is created specifically for this season by Carmen Main and Elena Juárez.

2 FEBRUARY 18:30

Kopfkino, by Los Detectives (María García Vera, Marina Colomina and Mariona Naudin) (Performing arts). Premiere in Madrid

Our brain stores images and operates like a search engine, looking for links in order to understand what is going on, links that will trigger a kind of mental YouTube. We call this ability to link images and build mental films “Kopfkino”. Based on this concept, the members of Los Detectives pose a question: To what extent do the fictions we consume influence our worldview and ourselves? This is the driving engine of Kopfkino, a piece that uses the body as a key tool to explore the margins created when fiction meets reality. This collective work is created by Mariona Naudin together with a team of women working in live art, coming both from dance as well as gestural theatre: María García Vera, Marina Colomina, Mar Median and Laia Cabrera who were all involved in the process of creation and direction of the piece.

9 FEBRUARY 18:30

Andrei Rublev, una paniconografia, by Societat Doctor Alonso (Sofía Asencio and Tomás Aragay) (Radio performance). Premiere in Madrid

The starting point for Andrei Rublev, una paniconografia is Andrei Tarkovsky’s film from 1966, in which the icon painter Andrei Rublev (1360-1427) undertakes a long journey through medieval Russia to paint frescos in the Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Kremlin. The work of this singular painter, with his unique iconographic style, provokes in the spectator an impact and inner withdrawal due to the use of inverted perspective that speaks to us of art, not as a portrait of reality but as a reality among realities. The company revisits this piece in radiophonic format, premiered at the Temporada Alta Festival in 2016, with the purpose of continuing to investigate in numerous formal, sound and material moments in the script and thus further explore this conversation. This is not a conventional radiophonic format, and instead co-opts the presence of a live audience. Furthermore, besides paying particular attention to sound, it also introduces any medium within its reach in a live presentation of the performing arts: screenings of Tarkovsky’s film, subtitles, plays of lights, couples dancing or a parade of icons by Rublev.

Creation and performance: Sofía Asencio and Tomás Aragay (Societat Doctor Alonso) with the collaboration of the filmmaker Virginia García del Pino and Nazario Díaz in performance.

16 FEBRUARY 18:30

No hay edad para el ritmo, by Sra. Polaroiska (Audiovisual installation with intergenerational dance). Premiere in Madrid

The Sra. Polaroiska collective invites us to take part in the installation No hay edad para el ritmo (There is no age for rhythm). In it, it will project its latest audiovisual piece No hay nada más moderno que envejecer (There is nothing more modern than growing old) and will activate a device that invites people of all ages to join in a collective, family and intergenerational dance. It is an invitation to contemplate bodies in motion. Bodies sculpted or not by the passing of time, each one completely different, constructing a dance that speaks of love, desire, beauty, sex, fun and affection. Bodies that move, feel, vibrate and inhabit the present. This proposal brings into question the construction of canons with the purpose of demonstrating a social and cultural imaginary plagued with prejudices and stereotypes. There is no age for rhythm, and that is why we make the most of a unique moment by dancing for the pure pleasure of doing it.

_Intergenerational dance workshop with Sra. Polaroiska

16 February | 10:00 - 14:00

Sra. Polaroiska is made up of Alaitz Arenzana and María Ibarretxe. Collaboration in the workshop and the performance by the visual artist, music producer and DJ: Agnès Pe.

Enrolment free HERE.

The group of collaborators will be made up of 20 to 25 people.

Aimed at all publics, of any age, interested in dance.

More information en actividades.ca2m@madrid.org / 912 760 227

23 FEBRUARY 18:30

Falaises, by Guillaume Côté, Alexis Langevin-Tétrault and Dave Gagnon (Audiovisual performance). Premiere in Madrid

Falaises, a project of audiovisual performances made up of a piece in three acts, combines the musical practices of the composers Guillaume Côté and Alexis Langevin-Tétrault with the work of the visual artist Dave Gagnon. Straddling artistic installation and video art, in its actions the Canadian collective uses digital audio tools and modular synthesizers that alter the video projections and lights in real time, presented in an exclusive multiple support device with screen and lightboxes.

Following the development of the artistic project If The Others Did Not Exist; Or The Mirrors, we wish to invite the public to an open appointment with the artists Vanessa López and Israel Cordero and the various participants and agents who made the formalization of the experience possible.

This latest encounter is conceived as a circular dialogue addressing some of the questions that cut across the different sessions integrated in this proposal, with the goal of questioning and evaluating key ideas in its development and conception, as well as the resulting perceptions. This collective becoming will engage with some of the filmic narratives and ways of doing that have helped to articulate and activate different problematics, like those pertaining to the capacity and relevance of the images and art to give an account of the “real” today; the mutation undergone as consumers of audiovisual narratives and experiences of duration; the possibility of alternatively reconstructing the facts of our lives, with the artistic medium acting as an effective instrument for transformation and as a medium of co-construction of alterity; or the need for frameworks of relations in which to share and operate from the unsayable and to reactivate a new political-affective possibility.

The If The Others Did Not Exist; Or The Mirrors project has proven itself to be a critical structure able to afford a unique space of confidence and commitment between artists, audience and institution, placing each of the parts involved in a horizontal and propositional scenario that has enabled a re-evaluation of the relationships that the artistic experience is able to facilitate. And everything in spite of cinema.

CA2M presents the film CA2M, 10 años en Móstoles, produced by López-Li Films and directed by José Luis López-Linares, which was premiered last October at Sala Equis coinciding with the art centre’s tenth anniversary.

Located in the city of Móstoles, CA2M (Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo) opened its doors on 2 May 2008. Since then, it has hosted over 70 exhibitions and doubled the number of visitors. Currently directed by Manuel Segade, the art centre has staked out a position for itself in Spain as one of the forerunners in articulating narratives on artistic contemporaneity and it is now recognised as a benchmark in contemporary art in Spain. At the same time it has managed to integrate itself into the social fabric of its hometown and its surroundings thanks to its programme which is free and aimed at all kinds of audiences.

Its location in Móstoles is a key part of its identity, given that it has enabled it to question the complex definition of the metropolis and its role in contemporary culture. Its geopolitical position to the south of Madrid –with an immediate cultural catchment for over one million people and, in a wider radius, the five million inhabitants of the region in general– has helped to consolidate a space committed with innovative mediation strategies whose goal is to ensure that art fulfils its role in intellectually stimulating society and contemporary culture.

Over a period of several months, José Luis López Linares and the whole team at López-Li Films were directly involved in the day-to-day running of the art centre, speaking with members of staff, with artists and with the visiting public, with a view to rendering a polyhedral vision of the institution in this short auteur documentary which evinces the social and cultural transformation brought about by CA2M.

The short received funding from Madrid en Corto, a programme promoted by the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sports of the Region of Madrid and run by ECAM Distribución whose mission is to support the national and international distribution of shorts produced in the Region of Madrid.

Produced by López-Li Films

Directed by: José Luis López-Linares

Script: Cristina Otero Roth

Photography: José Luis López-Linares

Production: Cristina Moñívar and Pilar Barbat

Camera operator: Andrés Recio

Sound: Juan Carlos Cid Torrejón and Tomás Mantecón

Editing: Cristina Otero Roth

Postproduction: Roberto Gacio

Editing room and cameras: Canal Foto