ZDB presents a film cycle related to the exhibition First Impressions of a Landscape, currently on show at the gallery, consisting of a small group of films chosen by João Nisa to dialogue with his work, mainly from the field of the so-called experimental cinema. The programme goes through several ways of working with place, landscape and duration, also questioning the notion of point of view.

10 NOVEMBER ~ 7pm ~ Cinemateca, Room M. Félix Ribeiro

NOCTURNO
by João Nisa
2007, DCP, 27’, colour, sound
A visual and aural description of the abandoned area of Lisbon’s former amusement park, in the period preceding its demolition, the film exhibits in an extended duration half-dilapidated façades and dismantled attractions, wrapped in a range of shadows. “I sought to return to a certain zero degree of cinematographic language, capturing the slightest events within a series of fixed framings of a deserted place.” (João Nisa)

TIME AS ACTIVITY – DÜSSELDORF
by David Lamelas
1969, 16mm, 13’, b/w, silent
In Time as Activity, David Lamelas uses time itself as a material, relating it with architecture and urban structures. Conceived for the exhibition Prospect 69, at Düsseldorf’s Kunsthalle, the film is composed of three fixed views of four minutes each, shot at distinct locations of the German city and presenting different relations between stasis and movement.

FOG LINE 
by Larry Gottheim
1970, 16mm, 10’30, colour, silent
“One stares, one stares, and the fog begins to lift, the exquisite image reveals itself. The three patchy trees, the landscape lines, the tension lines, the moving ghost animals, the moving emulsion swirls, all impress them-selves on consciousness, ARE consciousness. Still, rigid lines attempt to contain the amorphous elusive moving fog. Line-nature competes with fog nature, but all is harmony, bathed in gorgeous paleness.” (Larry Gottheim)

PALAST
by Tacita Dean
2004, 16mm, 10’30, colour, sound
Palast isolates fragments of the windowed façade of the former East German parliament building, superimposing the reflections of the surrounding constructions and the sunset light variations to the geometric grid of its structure. Previously shown at museums and galleries only, as a small-size loop projection, the film is presented in this programme for the first time in a cinematographic context.

21 NOVEMBER ~ 7pm and 9:30pm ~ ZDB

MY MOUNTAIN, SONG 27
by Stan Brakhage
1968, 16mm, 17’30, colour, silent
“Time-lapse study of Arapahoe Peak, in all the seasons of two years’ photography – the clouds and weathers that shape its place in landscape.” (Stan Brakhage)

BARN RUSHES
by Larry Gottheim
1971, 16mm, 34’, colour, silent
“The film is made of 8 passes across the barn, each the length of a 100 foot roll of film. The light and the relationship to the foreground grasses, the sky, and the woods behind, change in each pass. […] The barn manifests itself, as do other things and creatures in my films. It is both passive, as I am with the camera, and active, almost alive.” (Larry Gottheim)

CHAMP PROVENÇAL
by Rose Lowder
1979, 16mm, 9’, colour, silent
The film presents a frame by frame visual construction of a peach orchard from a single viewpoint at three different periods: with pink blossom (April 1), with green leaves (April 16) and with red-yellow peaches (June 24).

5 DECEMBER ~ 7pm ~ ZDB   

LA RÉGION CENTRALE
by Michael Snow
1971, 16mm, 190’, colour, sound
“A gigantic landscape film” and “a kind of absolute record of a piece of wilderness” (Michael Snow), La Région centrale was entirely filmed with a machine specifically conceived for the purpose, which allowed the execution of complex rotating camera movements in all directions and at different speeds. The film develops a systematic exploration of a deserted landscape up to the exhaustion of all its visual potentialities, affirming a form of perception radically freed from human coordinates.

19 DECEMBER ~ 7pm ~ ZDB [Postponed. Date to be announced later.]

TREE* MOVIE
by Jackson Mac Low
1961-72, video, 210’, b/w, sound
Conceived under the influence of John Cage and certain compositions by La Monte Young, Tree* Movie initially existed only as a set of written instructions, appearing, before Andy Warhol’s Empire, as the first proposal of a film based on the idea of a virtually endless fixed shot. The version presented combines a video directed by Mac Low, in 1972, and the sound of one of his performances, recorded in 1985.

9 JANUARY ~ 7pm and 9:30pm ~ ZDB 

DER RIESE [THE GIANT]
by Michael Klier
1983, video, 82’, b/w and colour, sound
In Der Riese, Michael Klier transforms the viewer into a voyeur and shows him life in a German town through the electronic eye of numerous surveillance cameras. To the evocative music of Mahler and Wagner, we see images of streets, airports, subway stations, department stores, banks and private houses always through the anonymous and ‘all-seeing’ video eye, that continuously watches everything.

CITYSCAPE 
by Michael Snow
2019, video HD, 8’30, colour, sound
Directed for the IMAX system, Cityscape presents itself as a brief revisitation of the filming method used by Michael Snow in La Région centrale, adapting it to an urban landscape and to the properties of the digital image.