L’Âge d’Or: into the breach for experimental film

Kenneth Anger won one in 1958, Martin Scorsese in 1967, Jean-Luc Godard in 1980, Béla Tarr in 1994, and Jia Zhang-ke in 1998. For more than half a century, the Belgian Film Archive, better known as Cinematek, has honoured the venerable tradition of awarding the L’Âge d’Or Prize to a film “that through its design or writing strays off the well-trodden cinematographic paths.” As of 1986, the prize was linked to Filmvondsten/Cinédécouvertes. With the cessation of that festival, which screened the best festival contenders that could not secure distribution, there was a risk that the L’Âge d’Or Prize would also come to an end. But instead, it has become the main feature of a veritable L’Âge d’Or festival. Henceforth, every October, Brussels will become the place “where cinematographic boundaries – between experimental film, alternative fiction, idiosyncratic documentaries – are ignored or eliminated.” Cinematek is thus reconnecting with EXPRMNTL: the renowned festival of experimental film that it organised in Knokke until 1974. To provide you with the most concrete idea of what to expect from a “festival of cinematic experiences”, we asked the three programme organisers and curator Nicola Mazzanti to select and introduce one film each from the extensive range.


The selection of Olivier Dekegel:
Age is …
(Stephen Dwoskin)

“Stephen Dwoskin (1939-2012) was one of the most original talents of modern cinema. His oeuvre is inextricably linked to the partial paralysis that he suffered throughout his life after catching polio as a child. The oeuvre focuses on desire, facial expressions, sharing, and it depicts the ‘imaginary solutions’ to a reality that must be reconstructed if you have a disability.”
“Age Is... is both a hard and tender film in which the director sets out to depict the beauty and unique character of ageing faces and bodies with almost amorous attention to detail. It is a complex film that was conceived in the act of sharing: on the eve of his own death, Dwoskin invited some of his friends to film old age. Although it is not his best film, it is overwhelming and demonstrates that his genius lay in editing and the use of diegetic music.”


The selection of Nicola Mazzanti:
Baby, I Will Make You Sweat
(Birgit Hein)

“Filmmaker, event programmer, (polemical and highly idiosyncratic) critic, and lecturer Birgit Hein has simply been the icon of German avant-garde cinema since the 1960s. She wrote the very first work on the history of European avant-garde film and was a participant and witness of the Festival of Experimental Film in Knokke back in the day.”
“Her Baby, I Will Make You Sweat, which was released in 1995, is not only innovative qua form, it is – honestly – incredibly beautiful. When it was released, the film ignited endless polemics. Baby, I Will Make You Sweat treats sexuality, race relations, hidden colonialism, and still has the power to educe heated debate and make its viewers feel uneasy. This makes it the perfect film to open the L’Âge d’Or festival!”


The selection of Xavier GarcÍa BardÓn:
Anna
(Alberto Grifi)

“Alberto Grifi (1938-2007) is an ingenious, underappreciated representative of Italian avant-garde cinema. He invented new forms and ground-breaking technical equipment. Anna (produced with Massimo Sarchielli) was filmed in Rome in the early 1970s with one of the very first black and white video cameras – a new instrument that completely redefined the cinematic method. Very few works have managed so overwhelmingly to capture an age, a place, and a moment in personal and collective history.”
“We have to allocate this masterpiece a place in the history of cinema. L’Âge d’Or is screening a cycle of three experimental Italian films from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, and is showcasing the remastering techniques of the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome.”


The selection of Philippe Delvosalle:
Om Dar-B-Dar
(Kamal Swaroop)

“This initiation fairy tale (the coming of age story of the little Om in a village in Rajasthan) is a baroque and nonsensical unidentified cinematographic object. It is a cross between Federico Fellini, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Ritwik Ghatak, and the musical comedies of Bollywood. It was screened on the international festival circuit in the late 1980s, but was only released in India in January of this year, after being remastered.”
“I discovered Swaroop while trying to identify the director who inveighs somewhat bitterly but lucidly against the different castes in Indian cinema in the short film I Am Micro by Shai Heredia and Shumona Goel. You don’t have to have seen everything to compile a festival programme. It’s all about wanting to share hidden gems with other people.”


L’ÂGE D'OR FESTIVAL • 8 > 14/10, Cinematek, rue Baron Hortastraat 9, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-551.19.19, www.cinematek.be