el devenir de las piedras: 2015

THE LIAISON OF INDEPENDENT FILMMAKERS OF TORONTO (LIFT)
ANNOUNCES ARGENTINEAN VISITING ARTIST CLAUDIO CALDINI

Toronto, March 5, 2015—The Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) is pleased to announce that Argentinean filmmaker Claudio Caldini has joined us in Toronto from March 3rd to April 4th, 2015 as a visiting artist. He will be teaching a nine-evening Spanish-language Super 8mm film workshop and showing his films at the aluCine Latin Film + Media Arts Festival, which runs from April 2nd - 5th, 2015. He will also spend the month using LIFT’s film resources to work on his most recent film. Although well-travelled in Europe, this is Caldini’s first visit to North America.

Claudio Caldini is one of the most important experimental filmmakers in Argentina. He began making films during the 1970s at a time of great political upheaval, yet he was able to work amongst a community of filmmakers like Narcisa Hirsch and Marielouise Allemann that formed a creative network of like-minded artists. That creative milieu became a touchstone for Argentina’s vibrant filmmaking scene, a scene that Caldini has continually influenced through his prolific filmmaking output and a legendary and long-standing Super 8mm workshop series in Buenos Aires.

Caldini's films, made and shown on Super 8mm film, explore spiritual and philosophical quests through a practice that blends the act of seeing with the mechanical possibilities of the camera. They are lyrical masterpieces, transforming vision into lush studies of superimposition, blurred landscapes and inner mysticism.

"Super 8mm is a refuge for cinematic poetry in a physical form…It imposes another relationship with cinema, from conception to screening. It allows for unknown exhibition circuits. Which ones? Those that the creators imagine and make happen. They are the ones who decide what kind of films to make, their audiences, and how to reach them."

—Claudio Caldini

Caldini's workshop was sold-out within a week of it being announced, but his screening at the aluCine Latin Film + Media Arts Festival will provide an opportunity for local audiences to engage with his work. Caldini will present a short suite of Super 8mm films followed by a stunning three-projector performance exploring live colour manipulation of the cityscape. This is a rare chance to see the Caldini’s films projected, as the unique nature of Super 8mm film prints require that Caldini travel with them. The screening will be at the Art Gallery of Ontario's Jackman Hall, located at 317 Dundas Street West, on Friday, April 3rd at 7:30pm.

“Behind every experimental filmmaker lies a defence of the still unconquered liberty of the amateur—of the unpredictable, infinite twists and turns of an art form that is, when all is said and done, as varied as the people who engage it. In his own way—rigorous, attentive, sensitive, formal—Claudio Caldini has constructed one of the most lucid and committed defences of this last, unconquered and unexploitable cinematic territory, as a personal act in the face of an outside world in constant tumult.”

—Pablo Marìn, filmmaker

Claudio Caldini's workshop and visit is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts through the Artists and Community Collaboration Program (ACCP).

Claudio Caldini was born in Buenos Aires in 1952 and has been making experimental films since 1970. In 1971 he began his studies at the Centro Experimental del Instituto Nacional de Cinematografía (Buenos Aires) and attended film seminars with Alberto Fischerman (1977), Werner Nekes (1980) and Werner Schroeter (1983) at the Goethe-Institut (Buenos Aires). He studied Modern and Audioperceptive Dance with Rolf Gelewski in Salvador da Bahía and São Paulo (Brazil), in 1978 and 1982, respectively. Caldini worked as a lighting designer and operator for theater and rock concerts and as a programmer of electronic instruments, in association with Jorge Haro (1989–90). He was the film and video curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (Argentina) from 1998 to 2004, and a member of the Jury of the 2003 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Germany). In 2005, he was an Artist in Residence at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown (Scotland). He is the recipient of the following awards: the Premio Leonardo from the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (1997); Beca de la Fundación Antorchas (1998); the Gran Premio at the III Festival Franco-Latinoamericano de Video Arte for his work Heliografía (1994); and the Primer Premio at the Primera Semana del Cine Experimental, ARCO ’91, for his work El devenir de la piedras (1991).http://eldevenirdelaspiedras.blogspot.ca

The aluCine Toronto Latin Film + Media Arts Festival seeks to showcase excellence and innovation in contemporary Latin American film and new media works. Their annual festival functions as a vital Canadian outlet for emerging and established Latin filmmakers living in Canada, Latin America and the Diaspora, while year-round screenings, symposiums and workshops promote the development of Latin film and culture in Toronto. aluCine strives to transgress aesthetic, ideological and geographical borders and to transcend pre-established notions of representation as they pertain to Latin American culture in Canada.www.alucinefestival.com

The Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) is Canada’s foremost artist-run production and education organization dedicated to celebrating excellence in the moving image. LIFT exists to provide support and encouragement for independent filmmakers and artists through affordable access to production, post-production and exhibition equipment; professional and creative development; workshops and courses; commissioning and exhibitions; artist-residencies; and a variety of other services. LIFT is supported by its membership, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ontario Arts Foundation, the Government of Ontario and the Toronto Arts Council. www.lift.ca