Interval 6. Eric Baudelaire
Letters to Max
This new edition of Intervalos presents Letters to Max , the latest film by Eric Baudelaire, in addition to a conference with the artist and film-maker on the references and dialogues brought together in his work. Eric Baudelaire’s films explore the untold, unfurling stories which, between personal memory and the artist’s research, reveal the contradictions and tensions in recent history. His cinema is constructed while it is narrated, raising unanswered questions and building unresolved conflicts verbally, where the lack of images works to open up a debate on that which remains unrepresentable.
Baudelaire’s filmography also includes The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years without Images (2011) and The Ugly One (2013), films that take another look at activism, physical spaces and mental borders. Letters to Max explores these themes by showing a non-existent nation that has become a paradigm of an unjust geopolitical order. The film reflects the epistolary relationship between Eric Baudelaire and Maxim Gvinjia, the Foreign Minister of Abkhazia, a former Soviet Republic in the Caucasus that was ignored by the international community for 20 years following its secession from Georgia after the Civil War in 1992–1993. The 74 letters sent over 74 days become the script of Letters to Max , with this film essay delving deeper into the idea of nation and the formation of the State, putting forward a series of paradoxes: How is a new State built, what guidelines can exist and in what way does its representation allow or test the reality of its existence?
Intervalos is a film programme showing contemporary audiovisual works, Museo's own productions and works that, between the performative and the cinematic, show the new directions of the moving image.
Program
Tuesday and Saturday 21 and 25 April. Screening with Eric Baudelaire in person
Letters to Max
Film, 2014. DCP, 103’, Original version (Spanish subtitles)
Wednesday, 22 April. Conference
Eric Baudelaire. Devices, Collaborations and Conflicts
The idea of a “device” is a key concept in Eric Baudelaire’s artistic practices. By researching themes that emerge from recent history he contributes new perspectives on the nature of political constructions. Yet in Baudelaire’s cinema, as in his exhibitions, the relationship between theme and director is not a simple one; it is considered a transaction, with the nature of this exchange becoming part of the work’s narrative. These transactions are shown as “devices”, structured in correspondence or negotiated agreements between the artist and his protagonists. In this conference Baudelaire provides an analysis of this and other key concepts in his work.