Experimental Film Club
31.05.12 // 20.00
We are delighted to announce our first screening on 16mm film of Dimitri Kirsanoff's ‘Ménilmontant’, which will take place on Thursday May 31st at 8pm in 126, Artist-run Gallery, Queen St., Galway. The event is free and all are welcome.
38 min / 16mm film / silent
The Experimental Film Club Galway at 126 Gallery is a new initiative that aims to bring together cinephiles and like-minded individuals interested in experimental cinema and all it has to offer. The club aims to be a meeting point and forum for discussion around experimental film practices, both contemporary and historic with the aim to building new audiences in Galway for this unique and overlooked form of cinema. The Club is organised by Galway native Tom Flanagan (Co-director of Different Directions experimental film festival) in conjunction with 126 Gallery. It is envisaged that screenings will happen monthly with a strong emphasis on screening works available on 16mm / super 8 film.
We are delighted to announce our first screening on 16mm film of Dimitri Kirsanoff's ‘Ménilmontant’, which will take place on Thursday May 31st at 8pm in 126, Artist-run Gallery, Queen St., Galway. The event is free and all are welcome.
Dimitri Kirsanoff's Ménilmontant is a masterpiece of silent cinema, taking a simple melodramatic plot and transforming it into a deeply affecting work of art with the sheer force of the poetic and intense visuals that Kirsanoff uses to tell his story. The film follows a pair of sisters who leave the country for the city after their parents are slaughtered in a mysterious axe murder. Unusually for the time, there are no intertitles, so the plot is communicated entirely with imagery. Kirsanoff employs a wide variety of aesthetic tools, from superimposition to expressive close-ups to poetic non-narrative shots of the urban surroundings.
In France from 1923, Kirsanoff was at the forefront of Parisian avant-garde filmmaking thanks to works such as Ménilmontant. For a recent article on the subject read 'The Paradoxes of Dimitri Kirsanoff: 'Menilmontant' Within the Avant-Garde Tradition' written by Santiago Rubín de Celis for 'Experimental Conversations' Cork Film Centre’s online journal of experimental film.
For more information contact: experimentalgalway@gmail.com
www.experimentalfilmclub.wordpress.com
www.126.ie