Playlists

Across bodies

Selection of queer films from the Xcèntric Archive

The aim of this selection of films from the Xcèntric Archive is to reflect on queerness as a transitive concept, not anchored to any pre-established identity or narrative. As pointed out by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, the word queer itself means ‘across’ and comes from the Indo-European root twerkw, which also gave rise to quer (‘across’) in German, torquere (‘to twist’) in Latin, athwart in English... The films in this playlist explore different aspects of the queer experience - body, desire and gender - in relation to the places we inhabit and the devices regulating them.

Take Off, Gunvor Nelson, 1972, 9' 13''

Defined by Gunvor Nelson as a ‘metaphysical striptease’, Take Off deconstructs the patriarchal gaze that tends to dominate the female body in cinema. Using collage techniques, the filmmaker fragments and reconfigures the body of a striptease dancer, questioning the binary categories of gender and desire and inviting a queer vision of the body as transformable and fluid. At the end, when the body ‘takes off’ and transcends its own physical nature, the film breaks with the usual expectations of visual consummation, proposing new forms of corporeality and desire beyond the norm.

Mann & Frau & Animal, VALIE EXPORT, 1973, 9'

VALIE EXPORT uses the body and everyday objects to reveal the power dynamics inherent in gender constructions. ‘The masculine is nothing more than a machine: the mechanics of the phallus’ writes the artist, an idea that resonates in the first part of the film in which various devices such as pipes and taps become symbolic extensions of the male body, reflecting the rigidity and functionality of patriarchy. These images reveal how power structures shape relationships whilst the female body appears in constant tension with the devices that seek to discipline it. In this way, VALIE EXPORT dismantles the meanings associated with phallic symbolism and provides a critique of the universality of male power, inviting us to reflect on the body’s capacity to resist and transform.

La escena circular, Claudio Caldini, 1982, 7' 58''

In this film, as autobiographical as it is mysterious, Claudio Caldini transcends the conventional representations of the body and space. By playing with textures, superimposition and shadows, the film dematerialises the physical body, replacing it with an abstract language that evokes a fluid, expansive subjectivity. Traversing, transiting, crossing the threshold: in the eponymous circular scene, the indiscernibility of the bodies is transformed into a phantasmagorical choreography of desire in which the boundaries between the physical and the immaterial become diluted.

Aus der Ferne / The Memo Book, Matthias Müller, 1989, 28'

With this ‘memo book’, Matthias Müller has composed a collage of memories, fragments and reminiscences following the death of a lover, combining archive footage and images in which he films himself. The film, steeped in melancholy, resonates with the Zeitgeist of an entire generation deeply scarred by the HIV crisis. The deterioration of the film material resonates with the fragility of memory and body, translating the experience of mourning into something material.

Un chant d’amour, Jean Genet, 1950, 25'

The only film directed by the poet and novelist Jean Genet, Un chant d'amour is a transgressive work that explores desire in an environment of repression and surveillance. Set in a prison, the film portrays the erotic connection between two men through the walls of their cells, radically challenging the social norms of its time. Genet, who claimed that ‘the camera can unzip a fly and search out its secrets’, uses cinematic language to strip desire of any inhibitions and give it an intensity that’s as physical as it is poetic.

Death and Transfiguration, Jim Davis, 1961, 9' 46''

Known for his purely abstract films that experiment with the movement of light and colour, in Death & Transfiguration Jim Davis provides a visual meditation on the transformation of the body, mortality and the transit between worlds. The abstraction of light and colour projected onto naked bodies evokes the dematerialisation of the body and the possibility of an existence beyond the tangible.

 

A playlist by Miguel Armas.

You can view the works of this playlist in the Xcèntric Archive.

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