Critical text Julio Plaza, 1992
texto digitado
9th Videobrasil_ Homages Show_ Moysés Baumstein
Moysés Baumstein
Image research, new forms of expression, contemporary technology linked to visual production, original themes…
These are some of the subjects that stimulated videographic production and the organization of festival such as Videobrasil.
Exactly these same elements form the basis of Moysés Baumstein's works. Moysés died in December 1991. He was an artist, filmmaker, hologram maker. Seeking new ways of developing visual expressionn had always been his greatest challenge.
Multi-disciplinary graduate in Mathematics, Physics, Sociology, and even Theatre, he showed himself as a true “Renaisssance Man” linking Art to Science in various fields of activities.
However the most known aspects of his oeuvre are the cinemathographic/videographic works as well as his holograms, which is the medium used for his homage. He developed film production with Super-8, a format that allowed an independent and creative cinevisual diffusion all over the world, acting like a pioneer of the current video productions.
Out of the 20 films he produced, at least 15 were awarded in national and international festivals. His themes are always based on humor and “non-sense” opposing to all pre-established concepts.
His most popular films are “gags” produced as TV sketches or “very short films” for motion-pictures where topics such as the body-shaping cult had already been satirized in 1978 with “O Método Homeopático”. Besides pure humor, he transposed his experimental works from his theatrical rehearsals and plays into films such as “O Manuscrito” (1976) and “Liberdade, Igualdade e Fraternidadde” (1979).
As director of and independent video production, he created the same kind of humorus productions satirizing TV interviews (“Pesquisa de Opinião Pública-II, 1985), or paying homage to class “B” horror movies (“A Sopa”, 1986), or even parodying the boredom we all suffer (“Trilogia do Último Minuto”, 1991).
He didn't get more intensely involved in producting video because of his dedication to holographic science and holographic film researches. He has a set of impressive works in holograms: his greatest aim was seeking an own holographic language in order to replace the simple three-dimensional effect. For this purpose, he became involved with a group of concret-poets and researchers in communication in order to expreriment with the holographic syntax. Moysés Baumstein's work is a diverse and intense production reflecting the continuos search for experiments in the visual communication field.
An artist-investigator in the DaVinciano paradigm, restless and lucid spirit, and curious as a child, Moysés Baumstein humbly worked in his laboratory (despite fame in the media) looking to the future, creating technology via Laser ray. Moysés Baumstein passed successfully through several subjects and courses. From pictures to VT, from graphics arts to chemical research on image-reproduction, from cinema to holographic science, his work was left to us with taste and humor as well, like a professional-amateur.
Julio Plaza
June de 1992
(9th Videobrasil catalogue). ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. "9th Videobrasil International Festival": 21st to 27th September 1992, pp.46, São Paulo, Brazil, 1992.