[Reader-list] Swiss Experimental Films in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Mumbai / A Season of Footage and Films, Part 9, Four Times Bob. Saturday Feb. 19 at CAMP

[rohitrellan at aol.in]

Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council and Reservoirfilm, Zurich present 
 
Swiss Experimental Films from 1962-1974 
 
a curated package of films belonging to the Swiss experimental films 
movement that started in the 1960s at 
 
Delhi - AJK Mass Communication Resource Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia 
University, Delhi 
on 21 February 2011 at 11 am 
 
  
Ahmedabad - National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad  
24, 25 and 26 February 2011 at 6:00pm 
  
Kolkata - Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata  
28 February, 1 and 2 March 2011 at 6:00 pm 
     
Mumbai - Little Theatre, NCPA, Mumbai 
5, 6 and 7 March 2011 at 5:30 pm 
 
 
Open to All 
 
Swiss Experimental Films from 1962-1974 
Swiss Experimental Films is a project which will include the screening 
of films belonging to the Swiss Experimental film movement that started 
in the 1960's. The project is in collaboration with Reservoir, a Zurich 
based, free collective of curators for the art film and experimental 
cinema. The films illustrate the history of this genre, often referred 
to as the ‘film wonder’ of the 1960s and 1970s. These films were part 
of a restoration project taken up by Reservoir in 2005/2006 to preserve 
the most important yet long-forgotten films of this period in their 
original 16mm-format. 
  
Screenings 
Experimental Landscapes (88 Min.) 
C'était un dimanche en automne..., Claude Champion, CH 1971, 35mm, 7 
Min. 
BER-LIN 99/00, André Lehmann, CH 2000/2003, 21 Min, 16mm 
Die Sage vom alten Hirten Xeudi und seinem Freund Reimann, Hans-Jakob 
Siber, 1973, 60 Min, 16mm 
 
Pazifik and Other Films (83 Min.) 
Allah, Renzo Schraner, 1967, 14 Min, 16mm 
13 Berner Museen, Georg Radanowicz, 1968, 13 Min, 16mm 
Pazifik oder die Zufriedenen, Fredi Murer, 1964, 56 Min, 16mm 
 
Unconventional Narratives  (78 Min.) 
Abbilder des Todes, Balz Raz / Bernd Fiedler, CH 1967, 16mm, 20 Min. 
 
Lydia, Reto A. Savoldelli, 1968, 43 Min, 16mm 
Wieviel Erde braucht der Mensch, Hannes Bossert, 1971, 15 Min, 16mm 
 
Formal Experimentations (71 Min.) 
Status Symbol, Seb. C. Schroeder, 1970, 2 Min, 16mm 
I/68 Dinge, Werner von Mutzenbecher, 1968, 8 Min, 16mm, silent 
Chicorée, Fredi M. Murer 1966, 27 Min, 16mm 
Spiegelei, Isa Hesse-Rabinovitch, 1969, 7 Min, 16mm 
Zeil-Film, Urs Breitenstein, CH/D 1980, 6 Min, 16mm 
My Grandparents, Dieter Meier, CH 1974, 9 Min, 16mm 
Collage No. 1, Seb. C. Schroeder, 1968-70, 6 Min, 16mm 
Inclinations, Guido + Eva Haas, 1962-66, 6 Min, 16mm 
 
Curators and film historians 
The curated package of films will be accompanied by Dr Fred Truniger 
and Thomas Schärer of Reservoir Films for discussions. 
CVs of curators attached. 
---------------------- 
The Experimental film movement in Switzerland 
In the late 1950s and 1960s, as a new cinema emerged in Europe, 
Switzerland was also affected by new ideas. The "Neuer Schweizer Film" 
(New Swiss Cinema) and the names associated to it (Alain Tanner, Michel 
Soutter, Claude Goretta, Daniel Schmid, Thomas Koerfer, Fredi Murer, 
Clemens Klopfenstein and others) quickly became internationally known. 
The Swiss film industry and film promotion refers often to this as 
"film wonder" of the 1960's and 1970's. 
 
The official Swiss film histories largely discuss those figures and 
their films, but almost nothing has been written about the 
undercurrents in the film culture that decisively determined the 
breakup with the old filmic traditions and made the "wonder" possible 
in the first place. 
 
As in other countries, also in Switzerland before the "Neue Schweizer 
Film" launched, a general climate of change had arisen, genre borders 
had been crossed, experiments in the filmic form and narration 
conducted, forums for the "progressive film" founded. One of the most 
important places for discussion was the Film Forum in Zurich. Under the 
direction of film maker Hans-Jakob Siber it regularly showcased works  
 from the New American Cinema, triggered discussions about new filmic 
forms and encouraged local film makers to bring in their own work for 
projection. The idea spread quickly and soon the Ciné Circus was 
founded, a cinema on wheels based at the Film Forum in Zurich. The Ciné 
Circus consisted of a car, a 16mm-filmprojector and a changing set of 
one or two people who knew how to handle either one of them. The Circus 
gave regular guest performances in Lucerne, Basel and Berne and these 
evenings quickly developed into rallies, where the young Swiss film 
makers assembled and maintained their discussions between the annual 
film meeting in Solothurn (Solothurner Filmtage). 
 
Just a few years later, the brief moment of storm and stress in the 
film scene was over. The film funding system had eventually developed, 
success and failure had decided on careers, the fiction film had taken 
the lead again and many of the former cinema tinkerer, who had been 
developing their own film language in small and experimental forms, 
tried to establish an economic life and a career for their own in the 
cinema (Fredi Murer, Clemens Klopfenstein, Alexander Seiler, 
Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf) or started working for Swiss television and the 
commercials (Louis Jent, Robert Schär). 
 
Most of those who had worked for years in the grey area between the 
"big picture" and the artistic expression in small, easy to control 
projects put their cameras aside and deposited their films in their 
cellars and cupboards at home (Hans-Jakob Siber, Reto Andrea 
Savoldelli, Guido Haas, Kurt Kühn, Sebastian C. Schroeder, Georg 
Radanowicz, HHK Schoenherr, Hannes Bossert and finally also Louis Jent 
and Robert Schär). Very rarely they were heard of in later days. Only 
very few artists continued to work with small forms, some even up to 
this date (Isa Hesse-Rabionwicz, Werner von Mutzenbecher, Dieter 
Meier). Hardly any of the films have been deposited in film archives, 
where their outlast would have been guaranteed. After around 1974 a 
long period of oblivion started for most of those films. 
 
In 2005/2006 reservoirfilm, a Zurich based, free collective of curators 
for the art film and experimental cinema started to dig into the 
history of the Swiss experimental film movements. They had to go from 
person to person, phone call to phone call and email to email to find 
the people, who had made experimental films in the 1960's and 1970's 
and what they found was both miraculous and alarming: Beautiful Films, 
hand scratched or directly painted on the materials, films with 
eccentric narrations, witty ideas, beautifully framed poetic images – 
films of an artistic quality that competes with the international 
avant-garde movements – but long forgotten and in the most part for 
decades never showed in public, film prints degraded over time. The 
remains were sometimes only one copy of a film, worn to threads by 
former use. 
 
Already for the series of film screenings in May 2006 they had the 
possibility to transfer some of the most endangered films to Video. 
Those film programmes have been shown with an astonishing echo in 
Zurich, Basel and Geneva and eventually also in Paris. After the 
presentations, they worked out a restoration project ("Schweizer 
Filmexperimente 1950-1988") to preserve the most important films of the 
period and to ensure that also in the future they can be presented in 
their original 16mm-format. 
 
For more information visit: 
Reservoir Film: www.reservoirfilm.ch 
--------------------------------------- 
Partners - 
Reservoirfilm, Zurich 
AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New 
Delhi  
National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad  
Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata 
 
Mohile Parikh Centre, Mumbai 
 
------------------------------- 
A Season of Footage and Films, Part 9, Four Times Bob. Saturday Feb. 19 
at CAMP 
 
Dear all, 
 
This Saturday, February 19th, we present: Four Times Bob 
 
A cut of four films on Bob Dylan, 100 mins. 
7:00 pm onwards 
At 
CAMP roof 
301, Alif Apartments, 
Chium village, Khar (w) 
Mumbai- 52 
 
"For individuals to have access to as much different work by one 
contemporary performer as is available to you and me in the case of 
Dylan is something new under the sun, suggesting whole new possible 
realms in the relationship between artist and audience." 
 
- The Early Years, by Paul Williams, 1990 
 
In this screening, we traverse through footage from various films 
created around Bob Dylan, including: 
 
1> Don't Look Back ( D.A. Pennebaker, 1967, 96 mins) is a landmark; as 
a film and as a document of rock history. Directed by D.A.Pennebaker, 
one of the pioneers of direct cinema, the film starts with one of the 
first-of-its kind "music videos", and proceeds to document everything,  
 from intimate late-night moments to live performances in Dylan's 1965 
tour of England. 
 
2> Eat The Document ( Bob Dylan,1972, 54 mins) : In 1966, Pennebaker 
once again accompanied Dylan on his tour of the UK - this time Dylan 
had 'gone electric', with The Hawks backing him through the second half 
of his performance. After this tour, Dylan would not allow Pennebaker 
to complete the film. Eventually, Dylan and Howard Alk spent some time 
editing what became "Eat the Document", a widely bootlegged piece of 
video material. 
 
3> No Direction Home ( Martin Scorsese, 2005, 208 mins) :  This film is 
a series of interviews with Dylan himself, Joan Baez and others. The 
film inter-cuts the interviews with pieces of footage taken from 
earlier films, piecing together Dylan's life from his arrival in New 
York City in '61 up until his motorcycle accident in '66. 
 
4> I'm Not There ( Todd Haynes, 2007, 135 mins) : The film has six 
characters enacting different 'ghosts' of Bob Dylan. The movie contains 
many, sometimes surreal, re-enactments of scenes from archival footage, 
mostly from the above films. 
 
"here lies bob dylan 
murdered 
from behind 
by trembling flesh 
who after being refused by Lazarus, 
jumped on him 
for solitude 
but was amazed to discover 
that he was already 
a streetcar & 
that was exactly the end 
of bob dylan 
 
he now lies in Mrs. Actually's 
beauty parlor 
God rest his soul 
& his rudeness 
 
two brothers 
& a naked mama's boy 
who looks like Jesus Christ 
can now share the remains 
of his sickness 
& his phone numbers 
 
there is no strength 
to give away - 
everybody now 
can just have it back 
 
here lies bob dylan 
demolished by Vienna politeness- 
which will now claim to have invented him 
the cool people can 
now write Fugues about him 
& Cupid can now kick over his kerosene lamp 
boy dylan-killed by a discarded Oedipus 
who turned 
around 
to investigate a ghost 
& discovered that 
the ghost too 
was more than one person." 
 
- Bob Dylan, Tarantula, 1965-66 
See you there! 
 
For questions and responses email info(@)camputer.org