Heretgies

“For me, film is the extension of language. I begin with poetry, then visual arts, and finally cinema which brings together several different elements of art. Which is to say: writing (poetry), the object (visual art), and the image (film). The difficult thing, of course, is the harmony between these elements.” Marcel Broodthaers, 1997

Heretgies (Heresies) is a programme of short films meant for the movie theatre. For one week, short films by a given author will be viewed before the cinema’s feature presentations, coming as a surprise for standar cinema-goers. A monograph will then take place at the end of the week.

Where do the boundaries between art and film lie nowadays? The line between artists and filmmakers always becomes blurred when venturing into the essay film genre. In being a genre without specific laws, and almost impossible to label, it constitutes as a space for experimentation and represents those films that unfold while they are being shot – as can be seen through the lenses of Jean-Luc Godard or Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Chantal Akerman or Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.

In Theodor Adorno’s own words: “the law of the innermost form of the essay is heresy.” Nevertheless, these two notions are constantly set apart by the conventional spaces in which they are circulated, nowadays being mostly public institutions and museums. Will we then succeed in bringing heresy to the movie theatres?