Jubilee 15th ji. Hlava international documentary film festival


TRANSLUCENT BEING – JOSÉ VAL DEL OMAR



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TRANSLUCENT BEING – JOSÉ VAL DEL OMAR


José Val del Omar (Granada 1904 – Madrid 1982)

Spanish director, experimental filmmaker, and optical designer José Val del Omar fell in love with laterna magica projections during early childhood. In 1928, he published an article in a professional journal on his surprisingly precise designs for a lens with a changeable focal length, a concave lens, and a relief effect created by specific lightning techniques – ideas that would later be incorporated into his research and discoveries. He spent 1953-1955 filming Water Mirror of Granada, a short, poetic audiovisual essay that serves as a vehicle for presenting his technical and optical inventions. The film was screened at the 1956 Berlin film festival and subsequently presented at the international experimental film competition at the 1958 Brussels Expo, earning an enthusiastic response and a wave of positive criticism. Val del Omar’s next film, Fire in Castille (1958–1960) introduced the basics of his concepts of “TactileVision” and “pulsatory tangible lighting,” which worked with his relief effects. The power of the film’s images is further enhanced by an electroacoustic soundtrack that heightens the experience of watching his playing with images. Fire in Castille earned Val del Omar numerous awards, including in Cannes (1961), Bilbao (1961), and Melbourne (1962).

Jihlava audiences will have a chance to see several films by Val del Omar, including the aforementioned Water Mirror of Granada and Fire in Castille, which brought him international fame.

TRANSLUCENT BEING – ALBRECHT VIKTOR BLUM


Albrecht Viktor Blum (1888 – 1959)

This Austrian director with Czech roots created poetic compilation, avant-garde, and social documentary films. Born in Brno under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he began working in film in Germany in the 1920s, where he shot most of his films. In 1933, he emigrated to Czechoslovakia, where he worked as a theater actor in Liberec. In 1936, he departed for Spain and from there to Mexico. Most of his films were produced by the leftist film companies Prometheusfilm and Weltfilm. Of the perhaps thirty films that he directed (he contributed to many more as editor or cinematographer), only six have survived. Except for one, this is the first time they are being shown in the Czech Republic. This includes the controversial compilation film In the Shadow of a Machine, for which Blum used footage from Dziga Vertov’s The Eleventh Year (1928) and Alexander Dovzhenko’s Zvenyhora (1928), which Vertov accusing Blum of stealing his film. Other films shown in Jihlava include the poetic collage The Water Cycle (Germany 1929), which looks at the natural element of water, and In the Shadow of the City (Germany 1930), which explores various corners of Berlin, presenting life in poor working-class neighborhoods slow panoramic shots.


TRANSLUCENT BEING BILL VIOLA


Bill Viola (1951)

American video artist Bill Viola has been creating videos, architectural and audio video-installations and musical performances for 40 years. After studying fine arts and electronic music at Syracuse University, he worked as technical director at the pioneering video studio Art/Tapes/22 in Italy. In the 1970s, he traveled and recoded traditional performing arts on the Solomon Islands, Java, Bali, and in Japan, where he was the first artist-in-residence at the Sony research laboratory. He also experimented with medical imaging technology and with specially modified cameras for filming desert landscapes. In his works, Viola emphasizes the spiritual roots of Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, and makes references to traditional art of East and West. In 1995, he represented the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale. His installations have toured Europe since the 1990s. He collaborated with director Peter Sellars on the opera Tristan und Isolde (2005). His best known exhibition projects include the digital fresco Going Forth By Day (2002) and the art game The Night Journey (2010). Viola has exhibited at some of the most renowned galleries in the world

Among other films, audiences in Ji.hlava will be treated to Reverse Television - Portraits of Viewers (USA 1984), which shows 44 television viewer in their home environment, and The Reflecting Pool (USA 1970-77), in which Viola combines five films whose common motif is the transition from day to night.

TRANSLUCENT BEING LILLIAN F. SCHWARTZ


Lillian F. Schwartz (1927)

American pioneer in computer-generated experimental films. She has been interested in various types of computers since the early days of computers, but is completely self-taught in their use. Her works have experimented with perception, animation, and optic and kinetic effects, and in the late 1960s she began working with medical imaging technology such as x-rays. Her 1968 kinetic sculpture Proxima Centauri was the first computer-generated work to be displayed at the MoMA. She has worked at Bell Labs, at the IBM research center and at the MoMA, where she focused on digital archeological analyses and the restoration and preservation of artifacts. Working with physicists and psychologists, she developed a technology for using computers for film and animation, and her experiments have significantly contributed to the study of visual and color perception. In the early seventies, her suggestive abstract vision of contemporary issues led her work with computer punch cards. Recently, she discovered by accident that films made in the primary colors create 3D effects when viewed using chromatic 3D glasses.

Her 1971 film UFOs takes the viewer on a flight to other worlds, where planets and moons zip past each other, setting and rising. Also being screened is The Hidden Mona Lisa (1990), which uses morphing algorithms in order to analyze the Mona Lisa in an attempt at identifying who Leonardo da Vinci used as a model.



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