Sunstone
The film tracks Fresnel lenses from their site of production to their exhibition in a museum of lighthouses and navigational devices. It also examines the diverse social contexts in which optics are implicated, contrasting the system of triangular trade that followed the first European arrivals in the ‘New World’ with the political potential seen in Op art in post-revolutionary Cuba. Incorporating 16mm celluloid images, digital desktop captures and 3D CGI, the film also maps a technological trajectory: from historical methods of optical navigation to new algorithms of locating, from singular projection to multi-perspectival satellitic visions. Registering these technical advances progressively through the film’s materials and means of production, Sunstone creates “a cinema of affect, a cinema of experience - an Op- Film.”
Press
http://www.j-p-w.eu/exhibition-review/filipa-cesar-louis-henderson-gasworks/
Palmarès
Festivals
10/2019 : Muestra international Documenta de Bogota, Columbia
01/2019: TRANSMEDIALE, Berlin
11/2018: Kaunas IFF / National Arts Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania
10/2018: DOCLISBOA’18, Lisbon, Portugal (International Competition)
09/2018: 25 FPS, Zagreb, Croatia – Critic’s Prize
09/2018: BEAST - International Film Festival: Meet the East, Porto, Portugal
09/2018: Moscow International Film Festival (MIEFF), Russia - Prix Kodak
09/2018: Kaunas International Film Festival, Lithuania
06/2018: Biennale Architettura 2018 | 16th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice, Italy
06/2018: 14th Kino Otok – Isola Cinema International Film Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia
06/2018: Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), Scotland
05/2018: VIDEOEX – International Experimental Film & Video Festival, Zurich, Switzerland
04/2018: FRONTEIRA - International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Brazil
01/2018: International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Netherlands, world premiere
01/2019: TRANSMEDIALE, Berlin
11/2018: Kaunas IFF / National Arts Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania
10/2018: DOCLISBOA’18, Lisbon, Portugal (International Competition)
09/2018: 25 FPS, Zagreb, Croatia – Critic’s Prize
09/2018: BEAST - International Film Festival: Meet the East, Porto, Portugal
09/2018: Moscow International Film Festival (MIEFF), Russia - Prix Kodak
09/2018: Kaunas International Film Festival, Lithuania
06/2018: Biennale Architettura 2018 | 16th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice, Italy
06/2018: 14th Kino Otok – Isola Cinema International Film Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia
06/2018: Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), Scotland
05/2018: VIDEOEX – International Experimental Film & Video Festival, Zurich, Switzerland
04/2018: FRONTEIRA - International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Brazil
01/2018: International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Netherlands, world premiere
Expositions / shows
11/2018: The Luleå Biennial 2018, Sweden
10/2018: Transmissions, Kinemathek Karlsruhe, Germany
08/2018: Whakatāne Museum, New Zealand
05/2018 : Infected Landscapes, M.1, Hohenlockstedt, Germany
03/2018 : OP FILM / Espace Khiasma, Paris, France
10/2017 : OP FILM / Temporary Gallery, Cologne, Germany
04/2017 : OP FILM / Gasworks, London, UK
03/2017 : OP FILM / Biennale Contours 8, Mechelen, Belgium
Awards
2018 : Critics Award, 25 FPS, Zagreb, Croatia
2018 : Kodak’s Award : Moscow International Film Festival, Russia
Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker interested in the porous boundaries between the moving image and its reception, the fictional dimensions of the documentary and the economies, politics and poetics inherent to cinema praxis. Great part of César's experimental films have been focussed on the spectres of resistance in Portugal’s geo-political past, questioning mechanisms of history production and proposing spaces for performing subjective knowledge. Since 2011, César
has been researching the origins of cinema in Guinea-Bissau, its imaginaries and potencies, developing that research into the collective project Luta ca caba inda (the struggle is not over yet). She was a participant of the research projects Living Archive (2011-13) and Visionary Archive (2013-15) both organised by the Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin.
César premiered her first feature-length essay-film Spell Reel (2017) at the Forum section of the 67. Berlinale, 2017. Selected exhibitions and screenings have taken place at: 29th São Paulo Biennial, 2010; Manifesta 8, Cartagena, 2010; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2011–15; Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2012; Khiasma, Paris, 2011–2015; Kunstwerke, Berlin, 2013; SAAVY Contemporary, Berlin 2014–15; Tensta konsthall, Spånga, 2015; Mumok, Vienna, 2016; Contour 8 Biennial, Mechelen and Gasworks, London; MoMA, New York, 2017.
Selected Film Festivals include :
Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, 2013; Curtas Vila do Conde, 2012-2015; Forum Expanded - Berlinale, 2013 and 2016; IFFR, Rotterdam, 2010, 2013 and 2015; Indie Lisboa, 2010; DocLisboa,2011.
Filmography
F for Fake (2005)
Rapport (2007)
Le Passeur (2008)
The Four Chambered Heart (2009)
Memograma (2010)
The Embassy (2011)
Cacheu (2012)
Conakry (2013)
Sol Miné (2014)
Transmission from the Liberated Zones (2016)
Spell Reel (2017)
Sunstone (2018)
Born in Norwich, 1983 and currently living in Paris. In 2007 Henderson received a First Class BA Honours in Film and Video from London College of Communication, and in 2013 graduated with ‘felicitations du jury’ from Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains. He has shown his work nationally and internationally, including Rotterdam International Film Festival, CPH:DOX, Le Printemps de Septembre, Belo Horizonte Film Festival, Jihlava Documentary Festival, EMAF Osnabrueck, British Film Institute, Centre Pompidou, Museo Reina Sofia, Tate Modern and Whitechapel Gallery.
Henderson’s films can be categorised as documentary-fictions that engage with subjects such as post-colonialism, history, politics and anthropology. His cinema reflects on society’s cultural and material remains and as such his films are essentially archaeological; focusing on the signatures of the archaic in the contemporary.
In 2015, he received the Barbara Aronofsky Price for emerging visual artists in the 53rd edition of the Ann Arbor Festival USA and the Best European Short Film at the International Film Festival T-Mobile New Horizons in Wroclaw, Poland.
His latest films are produced by Spectre and distributed by Phantom (FR) and LUX (UK).
He lives and works in Paris.
Filmography
Overtures, work in progress
Sunstone (2018) Super 16mm and HD, 16:9, Stereo Sound, 34 minutes
The Sea is History(2016) HD 16:9, Dolby 5.1, 21 minutes, 27 minutes
Black Code/Code Noir (2015) HD 16:9, Dolby 5.1, 21 minutes
All That is Solid (2014) HD 16:9, stereo, 15 minutes
Lettres du Voyant (2013) HD 16:9, Dolby 5.1, 40 minutes
Logical Revolts (2012) HD 16:9, Dolby 5.1, 44 minutes
A Walk With Nigel (2010) HD, 16:9, Stereo sound, 22 minutes