11 December 2021
A selection of Gieling’s work could be viewed at Eye Filmmuseum in December 2020. His book ‘Wegens werkzaamheden geopend’ ['Open due to roadworks'] was also published that month. Because Eye had to close due to Covid-19 containment measures in 2020, we will be organising another day to properly conclude the programme on 11 December 2021.
Filmmaker, writer, theatre-maker, visual artist: in every role Ramón Gieling wants to get to the bottom of things and see what drives people. The maker of En un momento dado, an extraordinary film about Johan Cruyff’s years in Barcelona, and Erbarme dich (St Matthew Passion), likes to explore the boundary between reality and imagination.
Gieling’s new feature film Sisyphus at Work will also be screened from that day onwards. Discovering the extraordinary in the quotidian, finding beauty in the unruly and contrary: it is one of the main characteristics of Gieling’s oeuvre, the former having attained fame with his first film Duende in 1986.
Ramón Gieling (Utrecht, 1954) spent a considerable amount of his teens living in Spain which he considers his second homeland. ‘Duende’ – the term the poet Federico García Lorca used to describe the dark, intangible moment a performer reaches the pinnacle of their craft and moves their audience – is a key concept for Gieling.
‘Duende’ stands for stylised passion, submitting to forces outside the self. Poets, composers, dancers, matadors, artists, singers, beggars, footballers – all are capable of ‘duende’. Gieling films like the artist he originally was. His films, plays, texts and exhibitions take reality as their point of departure, yet slowly let in the unusual, the mystical – ‘the other’ (Gieling).
With films about a choir of homeless people (The Disciples – A Street Opera), the performance of the Matthäus-Passion (Erbarme dich), the Canto Ostinato van Simeon ten Holt (About Canto) and a film about the methods employed by photographer and filmmaker Johan van der Keuken (Leven met je ogen), Gieling demonstrates how to experience life and art by irrational means.
A selection of Gieling’s films will be screened. The big wall in Cinema 1 will be reserved for a presentation of Gieling’s paintings, drawings and set designs. Ramón Gieling’s photographs will also be on display at Eye.
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