(nostalgia) & Still Life

Programme

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  (nostalgia)

  Hollis Frampton reminisces about twelve photographs, which one by one catch fire. The voice-over and images are out of sync: each story belongs to the photograph that follows, not to the one you are seeing, causing a dual experience of time.
  
  Before Hollis Frampton became known as a filmmaker of the New American Cinema, he was mainly involved with photography. In (nostalgia), he presents 11 of his photos, taken between 1958 and 1966, plus one by an unknown photographer. The photos depict friends in the New York art world, mouldy spaghetti, two toilets imitating a crucifixion. He reminisces about all 12 of them. After about a minute, when the narration stops, the photos catch fire one by one and burn to ashes. By filming the charred remains, Frampton in a sense recreates them.
  
  The voice-over and images are out of sync: each story belongs to the photo that follows, not to the one we are looking at. As a viewer, you navigate between the photo you expect to see and the story accompanying the previous one. Frampton’s black-and-white film, part of a larger work titled Hapax Legomena, is a dual experience of time in which memory and anticipation merge.

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  Still Life

  Portugal's Carnation Revolution of 1974 brought an end to the longest dictatorship of 20th-century Europe. A collage of news images, propaganda films and police photos sketch a picture of this almost forgotten and barely processed era.
  
  We all know about Nazi Germany, fascist Spain and Mussolini's Italy, but it's the four decades of António de Oliveira Salazar's regime in Portugal that rates as the longest dictatorship of 20th-century Europe. In contrast to his colleagues, this absolute ruler managed to maintain a sheen of normalcy, at least to the outside world. Under him, Portugal became a member of the United Nations and a founder of NATO.
  
  Based on news reports, propaganda films and images from prison archives, Susana de Sousa Dias paints a picture of this almost forgotten and barely processed era in Portuguese history. We are confronted with processions that emphasised the bond between church and army, much flag waving, children in uniform and police photos of political prisoners. Meanwhile, Salazar waves affably from a balcony. After a relatively harmonious beginning, riots in Lisbon and bloody colonial wars became commonplace. This is a bird's-eye view of history playing in slow motion – as if it were all just a bad dream.