Maid • FEARDEATHLOVEDEATH • Reverse Shot • F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now

3 March 2023

Run Time

80 mins

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A programme of short works traversing hallucinatory dreamscapes, contested landscapes, and the precarious movements of bodies through time and space. Argentinian auteur Lucrecia Martel screens alongside contemporary artists, Basim Magdy, Marwa Arsanios and Fox Maxy.

Followed by a Q&A with Basim Magdy

Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 4: Reverse Shot

35 mins

F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now

17 mins

Q&A

Maid

Camarera de Piso

Celebrated Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel explores themes of class, labour and gender violence through the story of a woman who applies for a job as a maid, haunted by an unspecified family trauma. Inspired by forms of contemporary dance, the film probes a kind of audio-visual choreography, focusing on the continuous movement of the body in space and the disruptions that occur offscreen and in the interplay between linear and nonlinear time.

Programmer’s Note

In Camarera de Piso, Martel masterfully builds a scenario in which terror, abjection and the unseen function as crucial components of a scene that would otherwise appear calm, boring and rote. We witness a woman turning over a hotel room, only to realise that she is being observed and trained by another woman who is clearly taking her through the hiring process. As our protagonist attempts to perform her duties with calculated precision, we witness painful disruptions: a familiar voice seems to call her from an unseen place; her cell phone rings even though she was supposed to keep it in her locker; and the unavoidable call turns into a desperate plea. She knows that, if caught, she risks dismissal from the job she needs. In the hands of such a confident filmmaker, the film reaches its boiling point before transforming into something entirely unexpected and perhaps even liberatory.

~ Herb Shellenberger

Director Biography

Lucrecia Martel’s rich and concise body of work has gained worldwide recognition and acclaim since her debut feature, La Ciénaga, in 2001. Born in Salta, in Northwest Argentina, Martel studied film in Buenos Aires and began her career making intimate, elliptical dramas that broke from the aesthetic and ideological tendencies of the prevailing “New Argentine Cinema”. A singular artist, Martel combines a formal mastery—particularly through her attention to sound design—with a sensibility entirely her own, defined by atmosphere, mystery, and caustic humour alongside provocative critiques of class, gender and patriarchy in Argentine society.

Director Filmography

Zama (2017), La Mujer Sin Cabeza (2008), La Niña Santa (2004), La Ciénaga (2001)

Director

Lucrecia Martel

Countries

Argentina Mexico

Year

2022

Premiere

UK Premiere

Dialogue Language

Spanish

Subtitle Language

English

Primary Contact

Eliana Tujschinaider

Duration

12 mins

Distributor

Eliana Tujschinaider

FEARDEATHLOVEDEATH

Egyptian artist Basim Magdy crafts an immersive, hallucinatory audio-visual dreamscape reminiscing on the absurdity of death without trying to understand it. His associative universe of sounds and signifiers imagines a present moment suspended between traces of the mythic past and spectres of uncertain futures. Harnessing the live, organic qualities of super 16mm, the film builds a singular, dissonant energy that stalks the outer boundaries of science fiction, horror, and nature documentary.

Programmer’s Note

An exquisitely layered, striking sound design acts like a frequency able to manifest and animate dreamlike visions. Rather than focusing on the phycological, the film evokes a kind of search, as if testing the interplay between different qualities of emotions – ways they can throw us off guard, creep in or flicker like distant signals. Narration and text seem to point to the precarious ways in which disparate forms of articulation can both hold and disrupt meaning. As with Magdy’s other works, absurdity and humour operate as part of the same logic; as “Bananish”, a one-word language mentioned here, swiftly shows. The work feasts on the incomprehensibility of life as much as on a pleasurably inconclusive exploration of what might lie beyond.

~ Ilinca Vanau

Director Biography

Basim Magdy is an artist and filmmaker whose work employs elements of surrealism and humour to produce layered and colourful observations of reality that investigate collective delusions and dogmatic ideologies. His imaginative works attempt to reveal alternative realities and speculative social blueprints for a more hopeful future. His films have screened at festivals including Locarno, New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and CPH:DOX. His solo exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; MAAT, Lisbon; MCA, Chicago; and MAXXI, Rome. Groups shows include MoMA, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; ands Castello di Rivoli, Torino.

Director Filmography

FEARDEATHLOVEDEATH (2022), M.A.G.N.E.T (2019), New Acid (2019), No Shooting Stars, (2016), The Everyday Ritual of Solitude Hatching Monkeys (2014), The Many Colors of the Sky Radiate Forgetfulness (2014), The Dent (2014), Crystal Ball (2013), Time Laughs Back at You Like a Sunken Ship (2012), On The Good Earth (2011), 13 Essential Rules for Understanding the World (2011), My Father Looks For An Honest City (2010), A Film About The Way Things Are (2010), Turtles All The Way Down (2009), Maybe There is a Message, (2008), Two Days to Apocalypse (2003)