Bastian Cleve is a young West German filmmaker (from Hamburg) currently living in Los Angeles where he recently completed his first dramatic feature film Exit Sunset Boulevard (to be shown in S.F. at the Cinematheque and Goethe Institute on the 18th and 20th, respectively).
For this, Bastian Cleve's third PFA screening, we have selected a program of his most recent experimental short films, akin in style to the complex use of super-imposition, in-camera editing, and multi-screen imagery we first witnessed in his Hamburg films of some 4-5 years ago. Prior to his first U.S. visit, Cleve had established himself in Germany as one of the foremost independent and avant-garde filmmakers, and was frequently compared to Werner Nekes and Dore O., Hamburg's most noted cinema innovators of the late '60s and early '70s.
“Cleve's use of super-imposition and color (is) most startling and pleasing: his are films of precision and magic. Indeed he has gone back to Melies and produced a screen that is fairly alive with images popping in and out and reappearing in changing patterns only seen before in computer-type films. These films are not computer films by any stretch of the imagination. Cleve really knows his camera and works painstakingly to achieve every effect. His in-the-camera editing is most amazing, used so precisely, especially in the multi-screened films where he manipulates up to 77 images within each frame. Viewing the films I was immediately aware of the fact that I was watching light and color, and that these images are indeed transparent. Cleve makes visual music of such complexity that the soundtrack often seems superfluous, although it in no way detracts from the presentation. In fact I did see the films silently once and for me they lost nothing. The real music of these films is in the dance of light as the images flicker, change color, become simple then more complex with incredible economy and subtlety.” --Carmen Vigil, The Cinematheque at the S.F. Art Institute.
Tonight's film, Holi, is constructed out of seven short films, which make reference to one another structurally and in content. According to the filmmaker, “Holi” is the name of an Indian religious festival, “where everybody throws colors at one another.” The short films included in Holi are: East I, Raga, Seeing Is Believing, Labyrinth, Transit, Fatehpur Sikri, and East II. Labyrinth and Fatehpur Sikri have received awards at the recent Chicago and Houston Film Festivals.