Movement has always been pointed out as the big difference between the cinema and photography. The photographic camera and the cinematograph have taken different but also complementary paths. How do the cinema and photography approach the capture of what is real? What is the nature of time in these disciplines? At what points do they converge and what can they contribute to each other?
Philippe Dubois maintains that we cannot speak of photography as specific, exclusive, isolated practice. As this author points out, ‘creative contemporary photography has incessantly proven itself to be haunted by cinema … undoubtedly for a long time now, although knowingly and particularly acutely for the last two decades.’ Palpable evidence of this reality has been seen in Galicia for some years now. Just as in the case of the cinema, the landscape of Galician photography is in a state of creative ferment. Projects like Iván Nespereira’s Nueva Galicia (New Galicia) or Tono Mejuto’s Quiasma (Chiasma), which were once part of this festival’s programme, show that this cinema-photography rapprochement is a reality to be explored and analysed. This overflowing of photography and its transfer to the cinema, within the current universe of expanded art, is perhaps one of the most interesting avenues that the time-image, the cinema, has been exploring in the past years.
For this reason, we would like to provide a space for raising awareness of and simultaneously reflecting on photography in this edition. As a result, photography has been adopted as the subject matter of this edition, with a programme entitled Eppur si muove which includes three lines of work: the presentation of photography projects, a meeting between filmmakers and photographers and an exhibition with a selection of works by these creators.
Meeting
Two different stands on one and the same fact: the audiovisual creations between which the festival wants to promote a dialogue this year. In view of the current circumstances, a closer alignment of positions like this is inescapable. On the one hand, the need to build bridges between photography and the cinema is patent, as is the emergence of a new concept of ‘all things cinematographic’. On the other hand, there is a factor that is becoming ever more present which lies in the possibilities offered by video and in the simplicity of the technology, both of which constitute an invitation to reinvent oneself and create new formulas for photography projects. For all these reasons, we thought it interesting to reflect on these practices. What is it that links us? What is it that separates us? How do photographers approach the cinema? How do filmmakers approach photography? How is the concept ‘time’ dealt with in either praxis? How is movement dealt with? This meeting is an informal activity open to the different guest creators and attendants for them to participate in an open dialogue in which we will reflect on the time-image.
