The cinematic paradigm has already been broken by new digital technologies, but it’s not only the image that is redefining itself, narratives are also seeking and establishing new paradigms. And it is in the pursuit of these new horizons of cinema, or what we now call cinema, that art lies. Rodrigo Novaes
In Um punhado de prazeres sublimes [A handful of pleasant delights], curator Rodrigo Novaes 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.
Kenneth Anger, Jean Genet, Luther Price, Jack Smith, Derek Jarman, James Bidgood, Isaac Julien, Andy Warhol, and João Pedro Rodrigues feature in the programme, which sheds light on the “20th-century Queer avant-garde,” screened at CineSesc.
artists
Works
Curator's text Rodrigo Maltez Novaes, 2007
Question
Where, or how, do you situate the confluence of art and cinema today?
The cinematic paradigm has already been broken by new digital technologies, but it’s not only the image that is redefining itself, narratives are also seeking and establishing new paradigms. And it is in the pursuit of these new horizons of cinema, or what we call cinema, that art lies. Therefore, the meaning of cinema is no longer the same, which raises the question: What will the new cinematic paradigm be? It is in this quest that cinema becomes art, because only art has the freedom to explore new frontiers, being free from the industrial demands of guaranteed success.
Statement
"If I cannot have the most brilliant destiny, I want the most wretched, not for the purpose of a sterile solitude, but in order to achieve something new with such rare matter". Jean Genet, The Thief’s Journal
One of the aspects that brings together some of the creators of the films in this programme is solitude, or rather, the singularity of vision that distinguishes them, sets them apart from the rest, from the pack, but which in so doing also turns them into “others” and us into the masses that “watch” them, awestruck in the realisation that other visions and thresholds exist beyond those of our everyday, ordinary, mundane lives. From the vision of these creators come the most instigating and challenging images, ideas, and concepts of reality.
The aim of this programme was to select a series of films specifically from the 20th-century queer avant-garde that explore the boundaries of film as art. Works that are not films in the strict sense, at least not in the classic definition of the term, but which are nonetheless works of art on film. And works of art because in their forms they present new perspectives, new themes, and new ideas, which in their time were not yet imagined by the film industry and because of that were ultimately marginalised.
However, they did not lose their strength and influence because of that, quite the opposite, they became works of reference for the popular media industry. As such, they can be described as visionary works or, more specifically, as visions that emerge from the inner worlds of their creators, some of whom were forced into ostracism and made to wait years to be recognised for works that yield such influence over current popular media and commercial cinema.
With this programme I have tried to trace a rhizomic path with feature-length and short films that have as focus or subtheme human sexual energy, and which thus flirt with marginality, teetering on the edges of the boundaries of what would have been acceptable to show on screen, given the laws of censorship and public sensibilities of the time in which they were first shown. Works that were considered “damned” and notorious for presenting to the world new ideas and concepts that questioned the status quo of the day and that instilled fear by challenging the prevailing paradigms. Films that, in the end, succeeded in creating a new mindset, a new perception.
ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. "16º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica SESC_Videobrasil": de 30 de setembro a 25 de outubro de 2007, p.16-17, Edições SESC SP, São Paulo-SP, 2007, p. 135 a p. 137.