A festival of encounters and discoveries of experimental cinema, Âge d’Or brings together the work of many artists and filmmakers whose daring formal bias, their approach breaking with the cinematographic conformism, and their powerful content have seduced us.
This audacity and this committed language is something shared by the 34 contemporary films of the competition, created in the four corners of the world by young or confirmed artists. They are also the guidelines of the panoramas that are to be presented in parallel: Incisions and Imprints: Argentine Experimental Cinema, a profound and exciting historical journey through the avant-garde cinema of Argentina, which, because of its heterogeneity, brings to the fore the aesthetic talent and ideologies of Argentine artists from the end of the 1960s to the present day. Distribute and Circulate is a program that shows us the work and collective organization of British feminist filmmakers reflecting the political and cultural movements of the 1970s and 1980s in the UK.
In dialogue with this retrospective aspect, Âge d’Or also presents two contemporary focuses: Time, a Hesitant Smile, which revisits the work of Johan Grimonprez, a visual artist, documentary filmmaker and anthropologist, whose personal, metaphorical and demanding language is constantly praised by critics. This “Grimonprez event” – as imagined by the artist himself – is a unique opportunity to witness how his plastic art is in constant dialogue with his filmography, shown here in its entirety. Such interlacing is also to be found in Objects of Desire, a program combining, with great coherence, the films of the young and talented Austrian artist Antoinette Zwirchmayr with other films that echo them.
It is with great pleasure that we invite you to enjoy as much as we do these strong films, the special screenings, as well as the vibrant documentaries by the independent director George T. Nierenberg, or the Treasures from Knokke. Many artist will honor us with their presence, presenting their work. An ambitious and thrilling journey that will make us leave together, for a few days, in search of poetry and subversion through the eye of the camera.