Dore O.: A Series of Film Screenings and Book Launch
Figures of Absence: The Films of Dore O. Women’s Experimental Cinema
Program 2:
VARIATIONS ON A CELLOPHANE WRAPPER
(1970, 9 min, format. Directed by David Rimmer)
David Rimmer, one of Canada’s best-known and influential, yet rarely screened, experimental filmmakers, challenged overtly cerebral notions of structuralism with his highly visceral and poetic image and sound manipulations. Rimmer’s 1970 film served as an inspiration for Dore O.s own lyrical and sensual orchestration of repetition-variation patterns centered on stillness and motion.
JÜM-JÜM
(1967, 9 min, 16mm-to-DCP. Co-directed by Werner Nekes.)
“Viable editing sequences, picture in picture; all in all, painted body and freedom.” – Dore O.
“The girl on the swing turns into a staccato movement, a light/color symbol of movement. We become detached from the girl and can see only visual rhythms.” — Stephen Dwoskin
KASKARA (1974, 21 min, 16mm-to-DCP)
“A balance of being enclosed in divided space. The landscape exists only as a view through windows and doors. Attraction, blending, and repulsion of half of the film frame for the purpose of a sensual topology. One image consumes another.” – Dore O.
In her report from the 5th International Experimental-Film Competition in Knokke, Belgium, where Dore O. – as the very first female filmmaker – won the Grand Prize, Marjorie Keller wrote of
KASKARA, “There is an unforgettable image of a door opening on to clear, white light. . . . It is the rhythms of editing and superimposition that are so strikingly beautiful and meditative. The film looked very different from most of the other films at Knokke, more intuitive, complex, and visually composed.”
FROZEN FLASHES (1976, 30 min, 16mm-to-DCP)
“Lightning strikes the square of dreams out of the darkness.” – Dore O.
“Exposure…has a double reading in
FROZEN FLASHES: where light exposure indicates not just the technical revelation of the image, but its diegetic dimension too. [Dore O.] engages the viewer in a tantalizing game of narrative disclosure through light play, where images are momentarily revealed only to be withdrawn as they fade into darkness, or out into light. . . . Could the interrogatory rhythms and repetitions of the film’s flash frames stand beside Sander or Brückner to speak as fluently as any dialogue to the conflicted position of women’s societal role and lack of public agency?” – Lucy Reynolds
"Figures of Absence: The Films of Dore O., Women’s Experimental Cinema"
On the occasion of the publication of Figures of Absence: The Films of Dore O., Women’s Experimental Cinema (StrzeleckiBooks; ed. Masha Matzke), the first monograph focusing on the film practice of the German artist Dore O., this series of events honours the work and legacy of one of Germany’s most prolific and internationally renowned ― yet overlooked ― experimental filmmakers. Four themed film programs and a book launch with film restorer Masha Matzke (Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin) and scholar André Habib (...), presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, offer the rare chance to see the recently restored films by Dore O., many of which haven’t been accessible for a long time.
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