Carlo Chatrian
The aesthetics of contemporary cinema and the limits of programming
Carlo Chatrian has been a decisive protagonist in the aesthetic configuration of contemporary cinema. His time at the Locarno Festival, and later at the Berlinale, left evidence of what was happening in the cinema of the present. He recognised new auteurs, vindicated new poetics, understood the emergence of filmmakers whose origins were not associated with cinematic traditions, and did not fail to establish a dialogue between the old masters of cinema and their peers in our time. He was a great seismographer, a great interpreter of what is most arduous and dangerous: the act of glimpsing where cinema reveals itself in a moment where consensus is lacking, and the certainties of history are ineffectual.
Moderated by: Roger Koza
Lav Diaz
Perception, Stimuli and Narrative: Time in the Age of Acceleration
The fact that film playback software offers the possibility of accelerating the speed of projection is not simply a technological matter; a dominant regime of perception is condensed in this innovation for impatient users. Who can concentrate on watching a film without interruption for more than three hours? Diaz’s cinema has always implied a twofold demand: the long, often fixed, shots and the total time of his films poses a perceptual challenge to the viewer: the dense matter of time, that abstract but real condition, is felt due to a laborious poetics of duration. Indeed, the Filipino filmmaker’s cinema of time constitutes a perceptual paradigm of resistance to the age of extreme acceleration.
Moderated by: Roger Koza
Nicole Brenez
The ghost of Godard
Godard died, unexpectedly but understandably. What to do with his absence? What remains of his legacy? Godard’s spectre is still felt in the loose pieces that survive him. It was enough to hear his voice in a quasi-religious performance at Cannes 2023 to experience a shuddering strangeness. The same thing happened on seeing his texts on film again, and being enchanted by the palette of colours that have left an imprint on the retina of all of us who have loved his cinema. In recent times, the filmmaker had glimpsed a new possibility for cinema. He appropriated the digital image better than anyone else. His last films were a sketch for the cinema of the future and a warning about the need for a relationship between the present and the past.
Moderated by: Roger Koza