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co-présenté par
Introduced by Tomas Rautenstrauch, grandson of the artist and Director of the Filmoteca Narcisa Hirsch, who attends from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Discussion moderated by filmmaker Malena Szlam.
Narcisa Hirsch: Poetics from Patagonia is curated and organized to coincide with the first phase of a major restoration project spearheaded by the newly founded Filmoteca Narcisa Hirsch in Buenos Aires and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, with the aim to preserve the moving image legacy of one of the foremost living figures in the history of South American and international avant-garde cinema.
Currently based in Patagonia, and now in her 96th year, Narcisa Hirsch is a pivotal figure in 20th century art and a legend in her home country of Argentina and beyond. Across the last seven decades—a period marked by two military dictatorships—she has been immersed in a collaborative, multi-disciplinary milieu of filmmaking, happenings, performances, installation, and urban interventions that helped make Buenos Aires one of the most advanced and vibrant centres of the post-war avant-garde.
During her career Hirsch has completed dozens of Super 8 and 16mm films centered on themes including love, the body, death, movement, and the female gaze. She has also produced numerous films and projects in collaboration with other artists such as Werner Nekes, Claudio Caldini, Juan José Mugni, Juan Villola, Horacio Valleregio, and Marie Louise Alemann.
Over the years Hirsch’s films have often screened in non-institutional settings in Buenos Aires as part of informal and underground gatherings, with infrequent engagements occurring more recently at major institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Documenta Madrid (2020). Until recently, much of Hirsch’s oeuvre only existed as camera originals, meaning one copy of each film was available anywhere in the world. Her extensive catalogue of originals is now consequently in fragile condition and cannot yet be screened publicly in their original formats. The current restoration process has brought to light the complexity of Hirsch’s practice, unearthing multiple versions of previously known films, entirely new discoveries, as well as works in progress and unfinished films. As this project continues beyond the digitization phase, one important objective is to restore many of her works to circulation as film prints. – Media City
This event is made possible thanks to Media City Film Festival (Windsor), our deepest gratitude.
PROGRAMME
Manzanas
1969 | 16mm to digital | 4 mins
Documentary recording of the happening in which Narcisa, Marie Louise Alemann and Walther Mejía handed out hundreds of apples to people walking past corner of Florida and Diagonal Norte in the city of Buenos Aires in 1968, under the premise of: « This apple is different from an everyday one / we are doing a work with the people / the work is the shared moment. » – Doc Madrid
Seguro que Bach Cerraba la Puerta cuando Queria Trabajar
1979 | Super 8 to digital | 27 mins
Different women are filmed facing the camera, in close-up, with no sound. Some time later, super 8 is projected and they have to speak to their own image. The film was made three times: in 1974, 1979 and 2005. This is the 1979 version.
– MUBI
Rafael, Agosto de 1984
1984 | 16mm to digital | 11 mins 30
On the occasion of Rafael Maino’s birthday, Hirsch makes a film-letter using images they shot together in Patagonia and traveling in Chile and Brazil, as well as images of (mostly male) bodies she thought would appeal to him. The soundtrack features Hirsch reflecting upon their tumultuous relationship.
– LA Film Forum
Workshop
1974 | 16mm to digital | 11 mins
One of Hirsch’s best-known films, Workshop models itself formally after Michael Snow’s A Casing Shelved, despite the fact that Hirsch had not viewed that film until after hers was made. Like Snow, the image portrayed is of a single image, here, one of the four walls of Hirsch’s studio. In the Spanish-language version (Taller), Narcisa describes to Horacio Maira first what is seen on that wall, then what is outside the frame. In the English-language version (Workshop), the same image is seen while a variation on that conversation takes place between Hirsch and Leopoldo Maher. – LA Film Forum
Come Out
1974 | 16mm to digital | 11 mins
Makes use of a Steve Reich soundtrack and stages an encounter between two machines, camera and record player. – MUBI
BIOGRAPHIES
Fille de Heinrich Heuser, peintre expressionniste, et arrière-petite-fille de Narcisa Perez Millán, Narcisa Hirsch est née à Berlin en 1928. Elle est venue à Buenos Aires au début des années 30 lors de ce qui devait être une visite, mais elle a été obligée de rester en raison de la guerre en Europe. En 1950, elle épouse Paul Hirsch, un juif allemand de la ville de Francfort qui a immigré en Bolivie. Ses premiers travaux, comme celui de son père, ont surtout été des travaux de peinture et de dessin, bien qu’elle ait également fait des estampes et gravures sur bois. Dans les années 50 et 60, les tendances artistiques d’avant-garde émergent à Buenos Aires. Des lieux comme l’Instituto de Arte Moderno, fondé par Marcelo De Ridder en 1949, l’Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, et la Galerie Lirolay, où N.H. a tenu diverses expositions de peintures et d’objets, sont apparus. À cette époque, l’influent critique d’art Jorge Romero Brest, le directeur de l’Instituto Di Tella, avait déclaré la peinture traditionnelle sur chevalet morte. Influencée par ces idées et d’autres liées à la performance, au théâtre vivant et aux lieux artistiques non traditionnels qui émergeaient surtout aux États-Unis à l’époque, N.H. a mis son art dans la rue avec ce qu’on appelait à l’époque les « happenings ».
Malena Szlam est une artiste et cinéaste chilienne établie à Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. À travers le cinéma, la performance et l’installation, elle s’intéresse aux relations entre la pratique cinématographique, la notion d’embodiment, la temporalité et la perception. Par une attention portée sur les propriétés affectives de procédés analogiques de l’image en mouvement, le travail de Szlam donne forme à des approximations cinétiques et lyriques du monde naturel.
PROGRAMME
Manzanas
1969 | 16mm to digital | 4 mins
Documentary recording of the happening in which Narcisa, Marie Louise Alemann and Walther Mejía handed out hundreds of apples to people walking past corner of Florida and Diagonal Norte in the city of Buenos Aires in 1968, under the premise of: « This apple is different from an everyday one / we are doing a work with the people / the work is the shared moment. » – Doc Madrid
Seguro que Bach Cerraba la Puerta cuando Queria Trabajar
1979 | Super 8 to digital | 27 mins
Different women are filmed facing the camera, in close-up, with no sound. Some time later, super 8 is projected and they have to speak to their own image. The film was made three times: in 1974, 1979 and 2005. This is the 1979 version.
– MUBI
Rafael, Agosto de 1984
1984 | 16mm to digital | 11 mins 30
On the occasion of Rafael Maino’s birthday, Hirsch makes a film-letter using images they shot together in Patagonia and traveling in Chile and Brazil, as well as images of (mostly male) bodies she thought would appeal to him. The soundtrack features Hirsch reflecting upon their tumultuous relationship.
– LA Film Forum
Workshop
1974 | 16mm to digital | 11 mins
One of Hirsch’s best-known films, Workshop models itself formally after Michael Snow’s A Casing Shelved, despite the fact that Hirsch had not viewed that film until after hers was made. Like Snow, the image portrayed is of a single image, here, one of the four walls of Hirsch’s studio. In the Spanish-language version (Taller), Narcisa describes to Horacio Maira first what is seen on that wall, then what is outside the frame. In the English-language version (Workshop), the same image is seen while a variation on that conversation takes place between Hirsch and Leopoldo Maher. – LA Film Forum
Come Out
1974 | 16mm to digital | 11 mins
Makes use of a Steve Reich soundtrack and stages an encounter between two machines, camera and record player. – MUBI
BIOGRAPHIES
Narcisa Hirsch (1928) is a pioneering multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker born in Berlin, Germany. She relocated to Buenos Aires with her family in the 1930s. Hirsch has completed 50+ films since the mid-1960s. Originally working as a painter, printmaker, and sculptor, her interest in film arose during the documentation of collaborative public performances and happenings undertaken in the streets of Buenos Aires and London. One of these early performances, La Marabunta (1967), was shot by Raymundo Gleyzer, famed filmmaker and political opponent of Argentina’s military dictatorship (1976–1984), who disappeared in 1976. The piece featured a giant wire sculpture of a skeleton stuffed with live parrots and pigeons and adorned in fruits, sandwiches, and candies. Around this time, Hirsch travelled to New York where she studied filmmaking and attended screenings at Anthology Film Archives and other institutions, going on to create dozens of works on Super 8, 16mm, and video. Her films have been the subject of major retrospectives at venues including Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2010), Viennale (2012), and Documenta Athens (2017). She is the author of several books including Philosophy Is a Useless Passion (2015). The Filmoteca Narcisa Hirsch was established in 2019 to preserve her films and provide a cultural space for artists’ film in Buenos Aires. She lives and works in Patagonia.
Malena Szlam is a Chilean artist filmmaker based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her films, performances and installations examine the relations between cinematic practice, embodiment, temporality, and perception. Engaging the affective dimensions of analogue processes, Szlam’s work gives material form to kinetic and lyrical approximations of the natural world.
