S.M.A.K. and Film Fest Gent are joining forces to celebrate the festival’s 50th anniversary. They are co-presenting three projects.
The museum will screen Caligari und der Schlafwandler [Caligari and the Sleepwalker], a film from the permanent collection directed by Venezuelan artist Javier Téllez, and 2x25, twenty-five Film Fest-initiated collaborations between composers and filmmakers. Film Fest Gent, in turn, has invited Jan Van Imschoot to curate a film programme in the context of his retrospective at S.M.A.K, The End is Never Near. S.M.A.K. and Film Fest Gent are also launching a structural collaboration in honour of the festival’s 50th edition, with a view to a future ‘House of Cinema’.
As the title suggests, Javier Téllez’s Caligari und der Schlafwandler [Caligari and the Sleepwalker] was inspired by Robert Wiene’s classic silent film Das Kabinet des Dr Caligari (1920). In this masterpiece of German expressionist cinema, a hypnotist (Dr Caligari) turns a man (Cesare) into a murderous sleepwalker. Téllez’s version is less violent. His Dr Caligari has a miraculous and therapeutic conversation with Cesare, an emissary from the planet Slavenster who also sleepwalks. Their dialogue and the scenes are written in chalk on handheld blackboards. As actors, Téllez chose to work with people with a mental vulnerability or impairment.
Film Fest Gent is launching the 2x25 festival to celebrate its golden jubilee. Twenty-five composers – including Colin Stetson, Tsar B and Howard Shore – were invited to write a short piece of music. In turn, twenty-five filmmakers – including Paul Schrader, Jia Zhangke, Stijn Coninx and Ildikó Enyedi – created short films inspired by the music. Twenty-five symbioses of music and cinematography are the result, from both emerging talent and established names.
Film Fest Gent is showing seventeen famous and lesser-known masterpieces of film history from the past fifty years as part of its Classics programme. A chance to rediscover, amongst other titles, Novecento by Bernardo Bertolucci and Mon Oncle by Jacques Tati. The films have been personally selected by the artist Jan Van Imschoot. His first retrospective at S.M.A.K. opens this autumn, The End is Never Near.
