[http://lux.org.uk/blog/filmmaker-stephen-connolly-films-samuel-stevens]
LUX/Blog
Editorial
4 Jun 2010
Image: Sam Stevens, Atlantropa (2009), still
When I sit down to write – on Two films by Sam Stevens
Stephen Connolly
When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. George Orwell, 'Why I Write', 1946
The artist filmmaker Samuel Stevens has made two works exploring issues of migration as they manifest in contemporary Spain. Sin Papeles (2005) relates the encounter of the artist with a site of migrant resistance - the Santa Maria del Pi Church in Barcelona - host to a hunger strike by migrants in 2001. The images of Steven’s more recent LAFVA-funded Atlantropa (2009) are anchored by a voiceover spinning a loose narrative around a fictional bridge - spanning the Gibraltar Straits to connect Europe and North Africa - as the film visually explores the infrastructure of the Spanish-Moroccan frontier.
A key influence on Atlantropa is Buñuel's Las Hurdes: Land Without Bread (1933), a film ostensibly aiming to document the life of this remote area of Spain. Buñuel radically subverts the use of voiceover commentary as a vehicle of impartial information, noting 'At the entrance to the town, we are welcomed by a choir of idiots,' as the camera depicts a group of villagers, and later asserting 'Strange, but we never heard anyone singing in Las Hurdes'; an offhand and unmotivated exposition of lack which mirrors the film's title.
Las Hurdes has been suggestively labeled a work of "ethnographic surrealism", a fusion of art and anthropology and aligning it with the surrealist movement of its time. This fusion of disciplines "attacks the familiar, provoking the irruption of otherness - the unexpected” . It is also subversive of the rhetoric of commentary in the documentary – a gesture of criticism and disarming humour that feels very contemporary to 2010 – and is a central feature of the commentary of Atlantropa. Steven’s writing for the voiceover frequently mimics the ‘Euro – communiqué’, deftly deploying the hubris and lumpen metaphor this discursive genre implies. Atlantropa was awarded the ‘False Fiction’ prize at this year’s Ann Arbor film festival in the US.
Land Without Bread was first shown as a silent film at an invitation-only event in Madrid. Why no sound? In 1933 a market for film documentaries did not exist and the expense of a soundtrack was unlikely to be recouped by screenings. Political developments in Madrid as the film was completed may have played a part – a newly installed right wing government was beginning to impact on the artistic and left wing communities of which Buñuel was part, and a polemical voiceover – published as soundtrack - was bound to attract censure. Politically wary, at the first screenings Buñuel performed a live commentary, accompanied by Brahms 4th symphony on a gramophone.
Sam Stevens will be repaying in full his small debt to Bunuel by screening Atlantropa as an expanded cinema event at Sketch on June 6th, adding sound interventions and a live voiceover by actor Tyrone Huggins to a mute projection. This promises to be a rare performance of mischievous ventriloquism – and any socio-political parallels between the deteriorating, fractional polity of Madrid of 1933 and London in 2010 are merely co-incidental. Do not miss.
Sam Stevens is a London based English artist. The visual language established in his work presents the audience with critical yet often poetic forms in film, video and still imagery. Individual works focus on and examine recurrent themes such as the politics and visual codes of landscape, borders, migration, and public space. He was part of the LUX AAP Programme 2008-2009. His works are included in the LUX Collection.
Stephen Connolly's works are represented in the LUX Collection. http://www.bubblefilm.net
Serpentine Cinema: CINACT
Adria Julia and Samuel Stevens
Sunday 6 June 2010
2pm
The screening of Atlantropa will be accompanied by a public reading by Tyrone Huggins.
An artists book that accompanies the films Sin Papeles and Atlatropa will be available for the first time at the screening and later through Koenig books. The book includes an essay by Stephen Connolly and preface by the artist.
Presented in association with Sketch and Picturehouses.
Screning at The Gate
87 Notting Hill Gate
London W11 3JZ
info@cafeoto.co.uk
Tickets £6/5
Available from The Gate
08741 704 2058
www.picturehouses.co.uk
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Tags: AAP Sam Stevens screening Stephen Connolly
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