Undertaking |
  • Associação Cultural Videobrasil
  • SESC São Paulo
General Curator |

The experimentation that marks the history of audiovisual, bringing cinema, video, and art closer to each other provided the theme for the 16th edition of the Festival, which paid tribute to the classic film Limite (1940), by Mario Peixoto, and received twenty thousand visitors.

British artist Peter Greenaway opened the programme with his Tulse Luper Suitcases performance, in which he rebuilds, live, images of his film trilogy by the same name. The performance is part of the filmmaker’s project of seeking expanded models of cinema, as are the films and installation that took over the 4th story at SESC Avenida Paulista for the duration of the Festival.

Installation work by German artist Marcel Odenbach, a video art pioneer, featured a large retrospective, as well as films by Kenneth Anger, one of the founding fathers of United States underground cinema. The Brazilians Eder Santos, Detanico & Lain, and Arthur Omar screened previously unseen works at the Festival, which also dedicated cycles to films by Carlos Adriano and Edgard Navarro.

The Southern Panoramas exhibition brought together sixty-six works produced from 2005 to 2007 by artists from the south. In addition to prizes in cash, the selected artists were also contestants for eight exchange prizes granted by the Videobrasil Residency Programme.

Hybridization in contemporary image and multiple narratives were discussed in the Videobrasil Seminars, which were part of the Festival’s knowledge zone and counted on 250 participants.


Visual identity and graphic design | Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain 

Photographic record | Elizabeth Lee and Thiago Villaça Boffe

Video record | Almir Almas / ECA-USP

Programme

competitive show

Southern Panoramas: Contemporary Investigations | 16th Festival

The 16th Festival’s competitive show had 791 submissions, which were narrowed down to 66 shortlisted pieces. The board of curators divided the pieces into three sections: State of the Art, Contemporary Investigations and New Vectors.

Southern Panoramas: New Vectors | 16th Festival

The 16th Festival’s competitive show had 791 submissions, which were narrowed down to 66 shortlisted pieces. The board of curators divided the pieces into three sections: State of the Art, Contemporary Investigations and New Vectors.

Southern Panoramas: State of the Art | 16th Festival

The 16th Festival’s competitive show had 791 submissions, which were narrowed down to 66 shortlisted pieces. The board of curators divided the pieces into three sections: State of the Art, Contemporary Investigations and New Vectors.

film and/or video screenings

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART : Arthur Omar

Arthur Omar has built a career path that breaks down borders between different artistic territories. His work covers different media, and has social violence as one of its key issues. The Festival will feature twelve works by the artist.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART : Carlos Adriano

The cinema by Carlos Adriano elected documentary films as his territory for experimenting. This Festival edition dedicates a special screening of eight films made by the Brazilian artist from 1988 to 2006.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART : Marcel Odenbach

Since the 1970s, the pioneer Marcel Odenbach has used electronic image to build an oeuvre committed to political and social issues. The Festival brings the largest exhibition of the german artist's work ever held in Latin America.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART: "Kinds of Images", curated programme by Berta Sichel

Walls and tunnels that separate and segregate, waters that swallow up landscapes, and compared parallel universes are some of the duality-comprising elements in Kinds of Images.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART: "Le Temps des Elegants", curated programme by Jean-Paul Fargier

Elegance shows many of its faces in the selection of French artists brought to the 16th Videobrasil by artist, critic, and cinema & TV professor Jean-Paul Fargier.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART: "Panoramas of the Imagination", curated program by David Cranswick

In works that comprise both the cinema language and visual art practices, the programme illustrates “the texture and diversity” of the Australia’s audiovisual production, and of the contemporary Australian experience in itself.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART: "The Cinema of Difficult Dialogues", curated programme by Martin Mhando

The special programme brought by Tanzanian filmmaker and professor provokes thought on how not only African filmmakers struggle with the continent’s social ills (war, AIDS, slavery), but also with narrative frameworks rooted in the community psyche.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART: "Um Punhado de Prazeres Sublimes" [A handful of pleasant delights], curated programme by Rodrigo Novaes

It brings together the unique visions of artists who explored the limits of film as an art form, exerting an influence that transcends the boundaries of their marginal condition to the industry.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART: Edgard Navarro

Edgard Navarro’s “possible cinema” was born out of the 1970s “countercultural, Tropicalian stew.” Armed with that spirit—and virtually nothing else—, he created some of the most irreverent films in the history of Brazilian visual arts. The show includes historical short films by the director from Bahia.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART: Kenneth Anger

One of the inventors of experimental cinema in the United States, Kenneth Anger's work features in a never-before-seen retrospective in the country, including nine short films made from 1947 to 1972.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART: Peter Greenaway

“With the advent of digital tools, we have really left behind, or ought to have left behind, the pools and lakes of placid water and finally emerged into the oceans. Cinema is wasted on cinema—we really must put it to better use.” - Peter Greenaway The desire to break the physical limits of the screen-frame and of literary narrative—through a more inventive use of image technologies—drive the British artist Peter Greenaway toward what he considers the cinema of the future. Known for the movies he made during the 1990s, which were peculiar combinations of a cataloguing obsession, baroque preciosity, and an amoral artistic curiosity that does not stop in the face of social taboos, Greenaway will bring to São Paulo his Tulse Luper Suitcases project, the plots of which feed films, performances, installation work, and Web sites. Tulse Luper is the theme of the performance that will kick off the Festival, and of the exhibition that will occupy the 4th floor of SESC Avenida Paulista. The programme includes a large retrospective of films and TV shows by Greenaway, the blog Peter Greenaway no Videobrasil, and a key note class by the artist.

exhibition

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART : "Braille Ligado", Detanico e Lain

Meeting points between the written and visual languages, alphabets and typographies are recurring universes in the work of artists Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain, from the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART : "Low Pressure (Revezamento 3X1)", Eder Santos

One of the leading names in Brazilian electronic art, Eder Santos moves between video, installation, and performances in which he uses image as a scenic and narrative element. He participated in the 23rd Bienal de São Paulo with the installation Memória de ferro (1993), in the Biennial’s 50th anniversary exhibition with Planetarium (2001), and in festivals in Mexico, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. In the 16th Videobrasil Festival, he will present the installation Low Pressure (Revezamento 3x1) comprised of an LED panel that occupies part of the marquee at SESC Avenida Paulista.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART : "Tulse Luper Suitcases", Peter Greenaway

The Tulse Luper Suitcases reconstructs the life of Tulse Luper, a professional writer and project-maker, caught up in a life of prisons. This multimedia work in progress includes an installation displaying the 92 suitcases, three feature films, a performance and an interactive on-line game.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART : Arthur Omar

The artist exhibited three video installations on the 3rd floor of Sesc Avenida Paulista.

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART: Marcel Odenbach

The Festival featured the largest exhibition dedicated to the German artist ever in Latin America. The show comprised five video installations, including Disturbed Places – Five Variations on India

performance

CINEMA+VIDEO+ART : "Tulse Luper VJ Performance", Peter Greenaway

The performance is part of the multimedia project Tulse Luper Suitcases. Greenway, this year’s special guest, commands an open-air presentation of the images projection onto the facade of the SESC Paulista building during the ouverture of the Festival.

public programs

Lectures: Jorge La Ferla – Expanded Cinema

Universidad de Buenos Aires professor and Argentine videomaker Jorge La Ferla discusses the nature of audiovisual media.

Lectures: Peter Greenaway - Cinema is dead. Long live the cinema!

The artist talks about the passing away of the “the dying technology-aesthetic called cinema” and exhorts the quest for a “virtual unreality” cinema that the new technologies enable.

Lectures: Tom van Vliet - Panorama 360º

Dutch curator Tom van Vliet talks about the 360º projection panorama he developed in partnership with architects and technicians, an immersive environment with images in synchronous motion, that artists are invited to work in.

Meetings of the South: Art and nomadic space

To win new audiences, groups of artists travel to showcase their work and incite cultural production in unexpected places.

Meetings of the South: Artistic residencies—spaces for creation

The importance of artistic residency programmes to the exchange and generation of new ideas.

Meetings of the South: Spaces for memories, references, and articulations

The creation of new venues managed by artists. The recording and legitimization of art that is not included in museums or art collections.

Meetings of the South: Videobrasil Residency Programme

Announcement of the award-winning artists for the 2008 programme, counting on the presence of the partnering residencies. Screening of the video Un circle au tour du soleil, by Ali Cherri and a statement by Cao Guimarães.

Meetings of the South: Virtual vehicles and spaces

Cyberspace as an environment for reproducing, storing, and distributing artistic creations, and for making up new relations between aesthetics and activism.

Videobrasil Seminars: (De)limit(ation)s: hybridizations in contemporary image

In a series of four debates, artists, curators, and researchers will investigate those subjects along with the Department of Cinema, Radio, and Television, and the Department of Visual Arts at the Universidade de São Paulo’s School of Communications and Arts (ECA-USP).

Videobrasil Seminars: Image and alterity

In a series of four debates, artists, curators, and researchers will investigate those subjects along with the Department of Cinema, Radio, and Television, and the Department of Visual Arts at the Universidade de São Paulo’s School of Communications and Arts (ECA-USP).

Videobrasil Seminars: Image in multiple narratives

In a series of four debates, artists, curators, and researchers will investigate those subjects along with the Department of Cinema, Radio, and Television, and the Department of Visual Arts at the Universidade de São Paulo’s School of Communications and Arts (ECA-USP).

Videobrasil Seminars: Image: other mediations and experiments

In a series of four debates, artists, curators, and researchers will investigate those subjects along with the Department of Cinema, Radio, and Television, and the Department of Visual Arts at the Universidade de São Paulo’s School of Communications and Arts (ECA-USP).