SESSION 116, ILLEGAL_CINEMA

Projection of Postscript by Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour and Ryan Ferko (Iran, Canada, 2024) and Descartes by Alejandro Alvarado and Concha Barquero (Spain, 2021). Proposed by Paola Buontempo, followed by a discussion.

The history of cinema is also the history of the destruction of moving images. While cinema lives in an eternal present, its images are condemned to fade away, to be hidden and lost. Insisting on errors, persisting in the face of what is incomplete, attaching a text to the filmic body as an addendum, an appendix or a post scriptum.

In Postscript (Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour and Ryan Ferko, 2024), the shots of an accursed film by Albert Lamorisse literally come up to the surface. An airplane accident, a tin underwater and a notebook as a guide for reconstructing a posthumous work. Putting the pieces together to decipher those erasures, creating fables between counterpoised myths and narratives.

260 negative rolls of 16 mm film found in the Filmoteca Española, the leftovers of a rebel film: Rocío by Fernando Ruiz Vergara, judicially seized in Spain following the abolition of censorship. Descartes (Alejandro Alvarado, Concha Barquero, 2021) recovers those rejected shots, expelled from the final version. A piercing story emerges from those wounded, indignant and profane images.

Paola Buontempo is an Argentinian filmmaker, lecturer and film programmer. She graduated in Audiovisual Arts at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP). She is currently studying for the Master’s Degree in Cinematographic and Audiovisual Archive at the Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE). She programmed Festifreak – Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente de La Plata (Argentina). Between 2018 and 2023 she was a member of the programming team of the Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata. At present, she is a member of the selection committee of Documenta Madrid.