From 7 October, S.M.A.K. and Film Fest Gent will join forces on the occasion of the 50th festival edition and together they will present three projects.
The museum will show Caligari und der Schlafwandler, a film work from the permanent collection of Venezuelan artist Javier Téllez, as well as 2x25, 25 Film Fest-initiated collaborations between a composer and a filmmaker. In turn, Film Fest Gent asked Jan Van Imschoot to select a number of films in the context of his retrospective exhibition The End is Never Near at S.M.A.K. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary edition, S.M.A.K. and Film Fest Gent are also launching a structural collaboration with a view to the future House of Cinema.
As the title Caligari und der Schlafwandler suggests, Javier Téllez took inspiration for this work from Robert Wiene's classic silent film Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920). In this masterpiece of German expressionist cinema, a hypnotist (Dr Caligari) brings a man (Cesare) under his control and turns him into a sleepwalker who commits murders. Téllez's version is less violent. His Dr Cagliari has a miraculous therapeutic conversation with Cesare, an emissary from the planet Slavenster and also a sleepwalker. Their dialogue and the course of the scenes appear in chalk on portable blackboards. As actors, Téllez chose persons with mental vulnerability or mental disabilities.
For its golden jubilee, Film Fest Gent is launching the festival 2x25: 25 composers - including Colin Stetson, Tsar B and Howard Shore - were invited to write a short piece of music. Then 25 filmmakers - including Paul Schrader, Jia Zhangke, Stijn Coninx and Ildikó Enyedi - were inspired by the music to make a short film. The results are 25 symbioses of music and cinematography, from both emerging talent and established names.
In the Classics section, a rediscovery of seventeen well-known and lesser-known masterpieces of film history from the past fifty years, Film Fest Gent shows, among others, Novecento by Bernardo Bertolucci and Mon Oncle by Jacques Tati. Jan Van Imschoot personally selected these films. With The End is Never Near, the artist has his first retrospective at S.M.A.K. this autumn.
