TIE PROGRAM SUPPLEMENT by Michael Hollins for TIE

Claudio Caldini:
“I became interested in all film techniques, but particularly in the creative title design in feature films of the 60’s. In 1968 I started super 8 filmmaking. Experimental film was very difficult to see at that time in Buenos Aires. We made our own approach without previously seeing any of experimental film’s classic authors.” –Claudio Caldini

Claudio Caldini is an internationally renowned experimental filmmaker. Born in Buenos Aires, Caldini learned optical mechanical principles of photography and film from his father. Caldini’s work has been widely recognized, receiving countless awards for its powerful artistic quality.

Caldini’s film Lux Taal was screened on October 26 at the TIE festival in Milwaukee, WI.

Lux Taal is Caldini’s abstract examination of the four seasons and climate change in a small town west of Buenos Aires. Caldini explained his motivation for creating Lux Taal. “Lux Taal was a diary of light and seasons, from 2006 to 2009,” Caldini said. “The inspiration was mainly botanical observation and small scale landscape. The rhythms of nature are more regular and previsible and I wanted to reflect that and their consequences on our lives. The title is an attempt to escape any precise local or cultural reference by means of phonetical poetry.”

While he discussed the technical approach to Lux Taal, Caldini informed “Lux Taal was a random (half controlled) multiple exposure with black intervals made in single 8, the duration of the shoot as an expressive operation.”

Caldini also stressed the importance of working with traditional film in an ever expanding digital age. “Celluloid experimental film is a classical way to see and understand the world, closer to philosophical thinking,” Caldini said. “Frame and shutter are irreplaceable: the film projection contains what it IS (the image) and the non-being (the dark interval between frames).”

(Sources: Claudio Caldini’s biography statement available at: http://www.boladenieve.org.ar/en/node/383. All other quotes extracted from Michael Hollins’ interview with filmmaker)