CAAM. Exhibition - Death in four colours - Series: Death on the screen

CENTRO ATLANTICO DE ARTE MODERNO-CAAM / GRAN CANARIA ESPACIO DIGITAL-GCED

‘CUATRICOMÍA DE LA MUERTE’/ ‘DEATH IN FOUR COLOURS’
DEATH ON THE SCREEN Series
May-June 2008

Death in four colours - Series: Death on the screen

The taboo surrounding pain, illness and death was one of the last to fall in the history of film. Classic cinema developed a fine system of allusions to evoke death without it being displayed (as it did with the other organic taboo: sex). Modern film developed an ethic for its representation: death could not be ignored but had to be correctly depicted. In more recent times, as film is becoming more subsidiary to television, a new model has arisen in which pain and death are highlighted aspects of entertainment.

9^th May at 8.30 pm
Presentation: Jesús Palacios.
Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno-CAAM. Multi-purpose Exhibition Hall.

Screenplay and Direction: Daniel Minahan
Cinematography: Randy Drummond
Art director: Gideon Ponte
Music: Girls Against Boys
Produced by: Blow-Up Pictures, NY
Edition in DVD for Spain: Sogepaq
Presented at the Panorama Section of the Berlin Film festival in 2001

Cast: BROOKE SMITH, GLENN FITZGERALD, MICHAEL KAYCHECK, MARYLOUISE BURKE, MERRIT WEAVER, RICHARD VENTURE.

SYNOPSIS:
The Contender is a tremendously popular reality TV programme. The seventh season is about to start. Five contestants are selected at random. They are provided with a pistol and a cameraman is allocated to follow them at all times. Their mission: to follow and find the survivor from the last programme. Only one of the two will come out of the encounter alive. The protagonist, Dawn, has won the last two editions; one more and she could retire. But she is eight months pregnant and one of the new contestants is Jeff, her boyfriend when she was young.

12^th June at 8.00 pm.
Presentation: Antonio Weinrichter. Gran Canaria Espacio Digital-GCED

Directed and film editing by: Alain Resnais
Screenplay by: Jean Cayrol, asesorado por Olga Wormser y Henri Michel
Cinematography by: Ghislain Cloquet y Sacha Vierny
Music by: Hanns Eisler
Narrated by: Michel Bouquet
Produced by: Argos Films, Como Films, Cocinor
Awards: Jean Vigo, Gran Premio del cine francés, Gran Premio festival Karlovy-Vary

SYNOPSIS:
Jumping from the present (coloured images of an abandoned facility) to the past (old black and white images) a reflection is established on one of the most traumatic events in the history of mankind: Nazi concentration camps. No political considerations are made. The aim to objectively describe something unbearably difficult to conceive: the operation of an institution providing industrial death.

Direction, cinematography and film editing: Stan Brakhage
Edition in DVD: Criterion (US)

SYNOPSIS:
Third part of what is known as the Pittsburgh trilogy. In the previous two, Brakhage filmed a police patrol doing its daily rounds and an open heart operation. On this occasion, he takes his 16 mm camera into an autopsy room. The only condition was that he was not to film close ups of the faces.

Directed by:David Cronenberg. Screenplay by: David Cronenberg. Produced by: Claude Héroux. Music by: David Shore. Cinematography by: Mark Irwin. Art direction by: Carol Spier. Special makeup effects by: Rick Baker. Cast: James Woods, Sonja Smits, Deborah Harry, Peter Dvosky.

SYNOPSIS:
Max Renn, a TV channel manager, is looking for new sensationalist content when he discovers a pirate channel called ‘Videodrome’ which broadcasts torture, mutilation and real murders. Attempting to infiltrate the organisation, he becomes submerged in a nightmare of conspiracy, where reality and fiction mix and are confused, testing both his and the audience’s sanity.

Directed by: Michael Haneke.
Screenplay by: Michael Haneke.
Produced by: Veit Heiduschka.
Cinematography by: Jürgen Jürges.
Production design by: Christoph Kanter.
Cast: Susane Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering.

SYNOPSIS:
Two young psychopaths enter the house of a holidaying family, systematically torturing all its members in front of the impassive eye of a camera which is fully aware of what it is. Haneke turns a horror story into a reflection about how violence is represented in the media, taking the spectator to the limits of his resistance.