The Night of the Experimental Film is back! OFFoff’s longest-running format takes over the concert hall at Het Bos in Antwerp for an expanded edition, bringing together analog multiprojection, live music, film performances and installation.
At the heart of the evening are two iconic works from 1967, which will be brought back to life. The international experimental currents of the time also found resonance in Belgium. VENSTERS, a unique example of early Belgian expanded cinema, is an audiovisual play by poet Jan van der Hoeven and Lucien Goethals, the pioneer of Belgian electroacoustic music. For this re-staging, the original films and hand-coloured score have been restored under the direction of musician and researcher Karin de Fleyt.
Across the Atlantic, Japanese trailblazer Takahiko Iimura and American composer Alvin Lucier were working on the noise and film performance SHELTER 9999. Films, slides and musical scores were tracked down in their personal archives and at the New York Public Library. Film researcher Julian Ross, who helped to make this restoration possible, will also perform SCREEN PLAY, another work by Iimura featuring 16mm projection onto a bare back. In the exhibition space upstairs, Alex Schuurbiers presents her new film installation SILENCE, SONG, hand-developed using seaweed. In this way, the Night of the Experimental Film pays tribute to the spirit of Shelter 9999, originally performed in New York discotheques as an ever-surprising intermedia spectacle. Or, to borrow the verse that will soon resound in Vensters:
Hasten to your eyes / double your ears / and share all hands, for everything approaches in words
Program
- Lucien Goethals
Vensters (BE, 1967, 25', colour, 16mm, 3x 16mm)
Live Soundtrack: HERMESensemble & Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen
- Takahiko Iimura & Alvin Lucier
Shelter 9999 (JP, 1967, 35', colour, 16mm, 4x 16mm, slides)
- Takahiko Iimura
Screen Play (JP, 1963, 10', colour, 16mm, performance)
- Alex Schuurbiers
Silence, Song