Xcèntric: Visions of the Body III: Dwoskin
Sunday March 24 2013, 18:30h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

Stephen Dwoskin’s body (1939-2012) is framed in all his films, in which he delimits a film space that makes his inability to move visible, thereby creating an extensive body of film in intimate proximity with his own partially paralysed body. His cinema, physical and visceral, centres on the flesh, nakedness, “corporeal subjectivity” and the voyeuristic obsession with the female body as an object of desire and the embodiment of his scopic drive. Times For, his first full-length film, is a claustrophobic study of the latent sensuality of four women and a frustrated man. This film is a metaphor of the intensity of sexual experience, which Jonas Mekas considers one of the most solid and original works of erotic cinema.

- Times For (Stephen Dwoskin, 1970, 16 mm, 80 min.)

Xcèntric: Visions of the Body II: Sonbert/Herbert
Thursday March 21 2013, 20h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

One of the most recurrent themes in the work of Warren Sonbert is love between couples (the dynamic of communication, the loving relationship and desire). The Bad and the Beautiful, one of his first colour films with a pop music soundtrack, shows the private rituals of young people on the New York art scene of the sixties. He brings a contemplative approach to his portrayal of couples and the beauty of people in private, in the bedroom and in the street, relaxing with friends, embracing, lying down or waiting for a lover. The filmmaker and painter James Herbert—better known for his music videos for R.E.M.—explores the fragility of the human body using the cinema’s most basic formal properties: light and texture. Porch Glider, a silent film in color, is a meditative, sensual study of adolescent couples naked in the garden, on the porch and in the many rooms of an old house in the US South. With their different filmic strategies, Sonbert and Herbert present a series of specific bodies associated with gesture and the historic context of the late sixties.

- The Bad and the Beautiful (Warren Sonbert, 1967, 16 mm, 34 min)
- Porch Glider (James Herbert, 1970, silent, 35mm, 25 min)

Xcèntric: Visions of the Body I
Sunday, March 17 2013, 18:30h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

The cinema always establishes a relation between the filmed body and the machine that films. The camera captures the light and the duration that envelope the body and, at the same time, the filmed body enters into a process of staging of itself that the camera records. In most cases, this body appears “disembodied”, at the service of a narrative, but there are films, like the ones shown in these sessions, that restore its materiality, bringing flesh to light, allowing gestures to just be themselves. These are works that show us the body’s intimate relationship with itself, with the camera and the other, and the tactile sensation of this experience as an inherent condition of the cinema. Certain imperfections that we see in the images of one of Brakhage’s first great films, Flesh of Morning, speak to us of the most immediate aspects of the body and its carnal obsessions. Beavers’s films, Winged Dialogue and Plan of Brussels, full of lyrical visions of narcissistic, erotic imagination, use psychodrama to show us a divided body: the I and the other. Based on a novel by Balzac, in Himself as Herself Markopoulos portrays a hermaphrodite body, its movements, postures and gestures or expressions, a study of a highly stylized inner landscape that takes Bresson’s ideals to their ultimate conclusions.

- Flesh of Morning (Stan Brakhage, 1956/1985, 16 mm, 25 min)
- Winged Dialogue (Robert Beavers, 1967/2000, 16 mm, 3 min)
- Plan of Brussels (Robert Beavers, 1968/2000, 16 mm, 18 min)
- Himself as Herself (Gregory Markopoulos, 1967, 16 mm, color, 60 min)

Xcèntric: Landscape Plus. The cinema of Laida Lertxundi
Sunday, February 10 2013, 18:30h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

The cinema of Laida Lertxundi, made in and around Los Angeles, draws out a physical and psychological geography of the area, as well as dismounting cinematographic conventions. This session includes her most recent films and a selection of works in 16 mm by Hollis Frampton, Bruce Baillie and Morgan Fisher, who had a major influence on her work.

- Lemon (Hollis Frampton, 1969, 16 mm, 7 min)
- Footnotes to a House of Love (Laida Lertxundi, 2007, 16 mm, 13 min)
- My Tears Are Dry (Laida Lertxundi, 2009, 16 mm, 4 min)
- All My Life (Bruce Baillie, 1966, 16 mm, 3 min)
- Llora cuando te pase (Cry When it Happens) (Laida Lertxundi, 2010, 16 mm, 14 min)
- A Lax Riddle Unit (Laida Lertxundi, 2011, 16 mm, 5 min)
- Picture and Sound Rushes (Morgan Fisher, 1974, 16 mm, 11 min)
- Farce Sensationelle! (Laida Lertxundi, 2004, 35 mm, 2 min)

Xcèntric: Political matters
Thursday, February 7, 20h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

Political reality is frequently limited to a more documentary or realistic register. This programme presents different contemporary approaches to politics and the corrosive effects of capitalism, from the viewpoint of the sensitive, formalist abstraction of the visual material itself: the clandestine night-time recording of Afghan and Iraqi refugees at the camp at Sangatte, France (Border); the crushing of cars at the end of the consumer cycle (Chevelle); protests against austerity measures in Athens (Austerity Measures), and the political commentary of Ken Jacobs on the decline of capitalism.

- Border (Laura Waddington, 2004, video, 27 min)
- Chevelle (Kevin Jerome Everson, 2012, 35 mm, 7 min)
- Austerity Measures (Guillaume Cailleau & Ben Russell, 2012, 16 mm, 8 min)
- Seeking the Monkey King (Ken Jacobs, 2011, Blu-ray, 39 min)

Xcèntric: Museum Films II - The MACBA Collection
Thursday January 31st 2013, 20h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

The early days of video: the day a camera was taken into an artist’s studio not only provided a reflective, narcissistic gaze, as Rosalind Krauss has said, it also discovered a time of its own—genuine, expanded and with no restrictions whatsoever. Four titles provide an introduction to the key decade around which the MACBA Collection is constructed. Presented by Carles Guerra, chief conservator at the MACBA and programmer of this session.

- Pulling Mouth (Bruce Nauman, 1969, 11 min.)
- Marcel Broodthaers. Musée d’art du XVIIe siècle (Jef Cornelis, 1969, 5 min.)
- Not I (Samuel Beckett, 1972, 12 min.)
- Baldessari Sings Lewitt (John Baldessari, 1972, 13 min.)

Xcèntric: The parallel attempt. Italian experimental film
Thursday January 24th 2013, 20h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

A reflection on the figure of Marinella Pirelli, an Italian experimental filmmaker with a body of work that has languished for over 40 years in a dark basement. Her films dialogue directly with those of two other Italian filmmakers, Piero Bargellini and Paolo Gioli, constantly questioning the paradigms required to generate an image and its relation with the cinematographic device. Styles, forms and means of production that initially seem very different come together in this session to generate a narrative that runs through the cinema, the technological imaginary and the optical unconscious of Italian experimental film production of the 1960s and 1970s.

- Gioco di dama (Marinella Pirelli, 1961-1963, 6 min)
- Inter-vento (Marinella Pirelli, 1969, 3 min)
- Sole in mano (appropriazione, azione propria, a propria azione) (Marinella Pirelli, 1973, 6 min)
- Il lago (soggettivo-oggettivo) (Marinella Pirelli, 1965, 14 min)
- Nelda (Piero Bargellini, 1969, silent, 4 min)
- Secondo il mio occhio di vetro (Paolo Gioli, 1971, 10 min)
- Immagini reali immagini virtuali (Paolo Gioli, 1972, 10 min)
- Doppio autoritratto (Marinella Pirelli, 1974, 12 min.)

Xcèntric: Dressing for pleasure
Thursday January 17th 2013, 20h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

Julien Temple offered segments of the film Dressing for Pleasure in the Sex Pistols’ documentary The Filth and the Fury (2000). Four years later, designer Vivienne Westwood, the mother of punk style, ran the entire film on a continuous loop at the London retrospective of her career. Only then was the first recognition expressed of the work of John Samson, a forgotten filmmaker who influenced the British punk aesthetic of the seventies and eighties. He has often been considered the European Kenneth Anger, which is why we present the work of the two in a single session for the first time. Scorpio Rising is a fundamental work in American underground cinema that continues to fascinate contemporary creators. To top it off, we retrieve the recreation of Scorpio Rising that video clip artist Luis Cerveró made for the CCCB to publicise the exhibition “That’s Not Entertainment! Film Begets Film”.

- Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1963, 16 mm, 29 min)
- Dressing for Pleasure (John Samson, 1977, 25 min)
- Tattoo (John Samson, 1975, 20 min.)
- Xcèntric. That’s Not Entertainment (Luis Cerveró, 2007, 35 mm, 1 min 30 s.)

Xcèntric: The Gas Works Screenings & Threaded Cocktails performance
Friday, January 11, 18:30h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

The Gas Works are a series of unique films conceived as instable performances of sonic light. Made and projected by hand, the author - Esperanza Collado- describes them as "ephemeral collages in motion or gaseous light sculptures in which cinema is derailed and subject to stitching." The project explores performative aspects involved in mechanical projection such as the plasticity of luminous space, the reading of optical sounds, and the microstructures of the interval.

- The Gas Thus Cuts in Bits (Esperanza Collado, 2012, 16mm and Super16, colour and b&w, optical sound, 8min. 40sec.)
- The Illuminating Gas (Esperanza Collado, 2012, 16mm and Super16, colour and b&w, optical sound, 9min 6sec.)

Operation Rewrite is the artistic collaboration of The Consecutive Impostors (Esperanza Collado and Maximilian Le Cain), in which they explore the cinematic workings of the cut and interruption. Their performances are disturbing and humorous, showing the artists as 'scientist' figures realizing a series of actions involving elaborate projections and sounds, awaken dreams, and domestic objects. Irish theatre maker John McCarthy collaborates.

With the support of Culture Ireland.

Xcèntric: Exquisite collages I & II
Friday, January 11, 20h
Saturday, January 12, 20h
Xcèntric CCCB, Montalegre, 5, 08001 Barcelona

A selection of shorts by classic collage artists alongside new talents.

Programme 1, Jan.11, 20h
- Las Variaciones Schwitters (Alberto Cabrera Bernal, 2012, 6 min)
- Mothlight (Stan Brakhage, 1963, 4 min)
- The Garden of Earthly Delights (Stan Brakhage, 1981, 1 min 30)
- Solar Sight (Larry Jordan, 2011, 15 min)
- Odds and Ends (Jane Congel Belson Shimane, 1959, 4 min)
- Recreation (Robert Breer, 1957, 2 min)
- Jamestown Baloos (Robert Breer, 1957, 6 min)
- Unnamed Film (Caroline Avery, 1989, 45 seg)
- Fil(m) (Frédérique Devaux, 2001, 4 min)
- La Pêche Miraculeuse (Cécile Fontaine, 1995, 10 min)
- Speak (John Latham, 1962, 11 min)

Programme 2, Jan.12, 20h
- Brana Calypso Dendrita (David Domingo, Darío Peña y Dostopos (Ana Pfaff y Ari Ribas), with music of Afrika Pseudobrutismus, 2012, vídeo, 14 min (produced for the Picnic Sessions 2012 of CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo))
- Rabbit (Run Wrake, 2005, 35 mm, 5 min)
- Cineblatz (Jeff Keen, 1967, 16 mm, 3 min)
- Nook & Cranny (Francien Van Everdingen, 2008, 16 mm, 3 min)
- Cats Amore (Martha Colburn, 2002, video, 2 min 30 seg)
- À la Mode (Stan Vanderbeek, 1959-1960, 16 mm, 7 min)
- Tango (Zbigniew Rybcynski, 1981, 35 mm, 8 min)
- Höhenrausch (Siegfried A. Fruhauf, 1999, 16 mm, 4 min)
- Nujiman no borei / 200 000 Fantômes (Jean-Gabriel Périot, 2007, vídeo, 10 min)
- Phantom Canyon (Stacey Steers, 2006, 35 mm, 10 min)