Screenings 6: Fast Lane
Saturday, October 17 2009 / 15:00
Filmtheater 't Hoogt, Hall1
“Speed is the form of ecstasy the technical revolution has bestowed on
man. (…) When man delegates the faculty of speed to a machine: from
then on, his own body is outside the process, and he gives over to a
speed that is noncorporeal, nonmaterial, pure speed, speed itself,
ecstasy speed. A curious alliance: the cold impersonality of technology
with all the flames of ecstasy.”
– Milan Kundera
Belgian
speed racer Camille Jenatzy was the first man to break the 100 km/h barrier in
1899. The car he entered History with was called “La Jamais Contente”. Never
satisfied: modernity in a nutshell. The insatiable hunger for machine speed, as
the motor for progress, but also as a sensuous experience, is the central theme
of this programme. The arrival of trains, cars, airplanes and space shuttles
changed irrevocably the relationship between time and space. It increased the
speed with which bodies could move across space and dramatically shortened the
time involved. But this increase of speed brings along contradictions,
paradoxes and dangers….
Guy Sherwin (United Kingdom, 2000, 16mm, 9:00 min) (works)
Accelerating and decelerating rhythms taken from a
train as it enters a station. Sound is adapted from Honneger’s orchestral work
‘Pacific 231’. Rallentando is part of Sherwin’s ...
Gerard Holthuis (The Netherlands, 1999, 35mm, 13:00 min) (works)
The city of Hong Kong is often seen as a living
example of the Virilian notion of ‘speed’. “Change takes place in present-day
Hong Kong in ways ...
Routemaster: Theatre of the Motor
Ilppo Pohjola (Finland, 2000, 35mm, 13:00 min) (works)
Routemaster - Theatre of the Motor is a filmic portrait of
speed consisting of strobe-like, fast-flickering shots, and grainy, monochrome
images of speeding rally cars. While Pohjola’s ...
Mer dare / Our Century
Artavazd Pelechian (Armenia (USSR), 1982, 35mm, 50:00 min) (works)
Pelechian’s
Our Century is a masterful montage of archive footage of space
travel, edited with images from the beginnings of manned flight. A meditation
on the space race, ...
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