caméra-pinceau – marcelle thirache
"Every film is the result of an encounter. I walk through the world and stop, fascinated by a form, a material, a play of light that echoes in my inner world. No, I don't have my camera with me all the time, it's like a love story: I come home, dream, think of the images and then get going (I film) to express my passion." (Marcelle Thirache)
Marcelle Thirache (*1946) belongs to what could be called the post-structural generation of experimental film: These filmmakers moved away from the perceptual explorations of the mechanisms of the cinematographic apparatus that characterized much of the filmmaking of the 1960s and 70s and used the freedom of the experimental form, like painters use their brush, to create radically personal works that testify to the very personal encounter of their bodies and eyes with the world.
Thirache found her way to film through a workshop with Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki, the filmmakers and thinkers of the influential cinéma corporel movement. Thirache takes from them her preference for the lightweight Super 8 camera and the absence of a soundtrack: in her work, it is the images that are made to speak through the filmmaker's gestures. The thematic connection to cinéma corporel can be clearly felt in early works such as À la recherche des amazones, Narcisse et Lilas or S......elle, which explore the female body as a landscape of lesbian desire and myth. Her films have been included in the Light Cone catalog since 1987.
In the 1990s, Thirache's work developed in various directions, while always retaining one of the central features of her practice: the act of filming as a form of the filmmaker's dance with the camera. In this decade, she added another element to her film language that would become even more important in her work of the 2000s and 2010s: painting on the filmstrips, which allowed her to express her subjectivity even more directly.
Perhaps it is this refusal to join a movement or school, or to commit to a consistent style, that has made Thirache's work almost invisible for so long: Our monographic retrospective will be the first of its kind. A heartfelt thanks to Light Cone for preserving Thirache‘s work and making it accessible, especially to Miguel Armas, who will introduce the programs.
thu 05/09 19:00 | caméra-pinceau – marcelle thirache pt. 1: lesbian desires (screening at pupille)
The first program brings together a series of films from the 1980s and early 1990s that are exemplary of perceptual processes in Thirache's work: By liberating her cinema from the male gaze, her camera becomes a research tool that delves into history (À la recherche des amazones) and myth (Narcisse et Lilas) to explore the ways in which the patriarchal order has dictated the norms of femininity and beauty. At the same time, however, the camera also becomes a tool of liberation as Thirache turns her gaze on real existing female bodies, her own and those of others, and embraces them in an act of self-love and lesbian sensuality. The second dimension of this preoccupation with questions of perception concerns what Thirache calls "contemplation": "the little girl's habit of looking at space when adults leave us no room." In these films (Costa de Lavos, Clair de pluie) Thirache patiently contemplates light, the way it is reflected on mirrors, surfaces and the camera lens, how it creates shapes when it hits objects and bodies.
Thanks to Light Cone (Paris, Miguel Armas) for providing the analogue prints of this program.
Mouvance exquise ou voyage intérieur
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, silent, 6 min, 1986
À la recherche des amazones
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, silent, 6 min, 1986
Narcisse et Lilas
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, silent, 7 min, 1988
Air qui erre
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, silent, 7 min, 1989
S……elle
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, silent, 4 min, 1990
Costa de Lavos
D: Marcelle Thirache, 16mm, farbe, stumm, 4 min, 1991
Aréna
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, silent, 4 min, 1995
Clair de pluie
D: Marcelle Thirache, 16mm, color, silent, 3 min, 1986
Éclats
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, b&w, silent, 14 min, 1990
sun 08/09 18:30 | caméra-pinceau – marcelle thirache pt. 2: film as (inner) journey (screening at pupille)
This second program continues one of the main themes that runs like a red thread through Thirache's work: filmmaking as a journey, as an interior or exterior view. Thus we begin with Lande, a cinematographic walk through a Portuguese landscape, in which the camera moves freely through nature and sometimes stops to catch detailed images. This is followed by two travel films: First, the only film in this program not shot by Marcelle Thirache: Mer by Martine Rousset. Rousset belongs to the same generation as Thirache and her works are carried by a similar spirit. The inclusion of her film in this retrospective, which enters into a dialog with Thirache's Hambourg, is a tribute to the shared affinities of the two filmmakers and the friendship that binds them. With Étude pour arbre seul, Monet is Monet and Impressions, another important theme in Thirache's filmmaking emerges: the question of ecology, with cinema becoming an instrument of concern for the natural world. Finally, Big Band is an impressive example of Thirache's practice of painting with color directly on the filmstrip.
Thanks to Light Cone (Paris, Miguel Armas) for providing the analogue prints of this program.
Lande
D: Marcelle Thirache, 16mm, color, silent, 6 min, 1991
Mer
D: Martine Rousset, 16mm, color, sound, 20 min, 2003
Hambourg
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, silent, 6 min, 1990
Étude pour arbre seul
D: Marcelle Thirache, 16mm, color, silent, 6 min, 1999
Monet is Monet
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, silent, 4 min, 1986
Impressions
D: Marcelle Thirache, super 8, color, silent, 6 min, 1995
Big Band
D: Marcelle Thirache, 16mm, color, silent, 3 min, 2001
