EDGAR PÊRA: RETROSPECTIVE - 18 NOV
18 NOV 2016
Film concertEdgar Pêra e Tó Trips
Since 1990 Edgar Pêra has organised film concerts - live performances that, in collaboration with musicians on the stage, radicalise the performance-based aspect and unfinished aesthetic that spans all his work. Resulting from the frustration of not being able to permanent changely the work that he has directed and confronting the very notion of "work", his film concerts allow him to re-edit his old films, giving them unexpected new directions, by combining them with other images and music, which at the same time enables a reconfiguration of the processes of the spectator’s participation or identification and the mirror effect of conventional cinemas, thus responding to the utopia of having, on the same screen, a simultaneous reflection of the images of the film and of the spectator (who is thereby literally integrated into the film) . One of the fundamental characteristics of the film concerts is the live performance of the musicians during the projection of a film However, contrary to early silent films - where musicians were normally hidden from view - in Edgar Pêra’s film concerts the musicians ascend to the screen, and together with the audience they share the status of agents and image, in a confusion of the normal status of the spectator and the performance. The film concert thus complies with the old dream of making cinema a "mirror of reality", in that it reflects and effectively updates the only possible reality: the concrete reality of the movie theatre, in a closed circuit where the principles of cinematic illusion are dismantled. In addition, the film concert is a unique and unrepeatable event, that reacts to the unique conditions of the moment when it is presented, through live manipulation of the pre-edited images, that are superimposed on other images which are filmed live, and can therefore, be understood as an interactive variant of expanded cinema.In the film concert that is now presented in Serralves, Edgar Pêra will revisit some of the moments of the Sudwestern saga, designed in partnership with Tó Trips.
This session is integrated within the film cycle EDGAR PÊRA: A Retrospective.
Since 1990 Edgar Pêra has organised film concerts - live performances that, in collaboration with musicians on the stage, radicalise the performance-based aspect and unfinished aesthetic that spans all his work. Resulting from the frustration of not being able to permanent changely the work that he has directed and confronting the very notion of "work", his film concerts allow him to re-edit his old films, giving them unexpected new directions, by combining them with other images and music, which at the same time enables a reconfiguration of the processes of the spectator’s participation or identification and the mirror effect of conventional cinemas, thus responding to the utopia of having, on the same screen, a simultaneous reflection of the images of the film and of the spectator (who is thereby literally integrated into the film) . One of the fundamental characteristics of the film concerts is the live performance of the musicians during the projection of a film However, contrary to early silent films - where musicians were normally hidden from view - in Edgar Pêra’s film concerts the musicians ascend to the screen, and together with the audience they share the status of agents and image, in a confusion of the normal status of the spectator and the performance. The film concert thus complies with the old dream of making cinema a "mirror of reality", in that it reflects and effectively updates the only possible reality: the concrete reality of the movie theatre, in a closed circuit where the principles of cinematic illusion are dismantled. In addition, the film concert is a unique and unrepeatable event, that reacts to the unique conditions of the moment when it is presented, through live manipulation of the pre-edited images, that are superimposed on other images which are filmed live, and can therefore, be understood as an interactive variant of expanded cinema.In the film concert that is now presented in Serralves, Edgar Pêra will revisit some of the moments of the Sudwestern saga, designed in partnership with Tó Trips.
This session is integrated within the film cycle EDGAR PÊRA: A Retrospective.
