«Rebellion is at the core of Klonaris and Thomadaki’s art. Whereas, in the 1970s, the experimental film scene was dominated by a formal, often non-figurative approach, these two major figures of the cinematic avant-garde practised and theorised what they called the Cinema of the Body (Le Cinéma Corporel) focusing on the female body and identity as a site of visual and political exploration. In their hands, cinema became a powerful tool for subverting the Western patriarchal imaginary, and destabilising norms governing the body and its representations». Maud Jacquin
A visionary hallucination or a wakeful dream, Unheimlich I : Dialogue secret revisits the Freudian « uncanny » bringing to life a dazzling mental imagery. Suspended between movement and immobility, between shadow and light, the performers’ bodies move silently in a black void. Klonaris and Thomadaki have associated the Unheimlich with a « repressed pre and postpatriarcal feminine which leaps from the unconscious and unsettles identity categories as well as cinematic language codes ».
Texts : extracts from the Jeu de Paume programme of the retrospective «Klonaris/Thomadaki, Manifeste. Le Cinéma Corporel», curated by Katerina Thomadaki and Maud Jacquin, Paris, Spring 2016.
A programme dedicated to Maria Klonaris (1950-2014). In presence of Katerina Thomadaki.
Maria Klonaris & Katerina Thomadaki:
Unheimlich I : Dialogue secret, 1977-79, 35mm colour, 70min, silent. Restored from Super 8 to 35mm by the French Film Archive/CNC under the supervision of the filmmakers and with additional funding by the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, Athens.
