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Los Angeles Filmforum presents *Vincent Grenier: In Focus* – the second of two Grenier programs this weekend (the first is at the Academy Museum on Saturday, Sept 6).Curated by Madison Brookshire.
Full program lineup and info at: http://www.lafilmforum.org
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Masdison's overview:
Artist, programmer, and professor **Vincent Grenier** was a mentor and friend to many, including myself. He was beloved by both students and peers, and, for those of us lucky enough to experience them, his sensuous experimental films and videos have had a deep and lasting impact.
In many of Vincent Grenier’s films, there is a distinct rhythm. A thing appears, flashes, disappears, then returns for a long time. It is not the same as foreshadowing, exactly; it is more like a stutter or a stammer. It happens again and again, across time, in different periods, in films as well as videos, in silent abstractions and documentary portraits alike. You can see it in *Tabula Rasa* (2004) and in *You* (1990): a stop-start. It’s as though the image first has to haunt the screen before it can inhabit it, has to flicker before it runs.
Deleuze says of Proust that he has a way of writing that makes language stammer. Likewise, I think Grenier makes time stammer. And in that interruption, that break, is an irruption. There is time in that time, in those layers. And these films are always deeply layered. Grenier divides up the screen, always flat (but deeper still for its flatness), in a painterly way, like a composition by Mondrian or Muqi. And, as with these painters, while some of Grenier’s works may at first appear austere, with time and attention, they give. That is, they reveal themselves to be giving. This is true in the works where he so deftly, fluidly uses superimposition (again, like *You* and *Tabula Rasa*), but it’s true in *Back View* (2011) as well. The frame is complex, almost cubist, even when it is direct, clear, without any superimposition. It is magic: a transformation. Something ordinary first becomes strange and then opens. If there is any formalism here, it is never for itself, but always for this transformation. *Closer Outside* (1981) shows me this, and of course *Intérieur Interiors (to A.K.)* (1978), which cannot be surpassed, only entered. With its incredible grain, there is so much movement, even in stillness, so much sound, even in silence. Every frame is rich with differentiated movements—not just contrasting, but differentiated (a difference in potential, as Deleuze says).
When Grenier does use sound, it is as delicate and considered as his framing. Whether the image is abstract or empty of people, which it often is, the sound, always concrete, creates a world. The sound transforms the film, transforms the frame. As above, the frame is already deep, layered, even when it is flat, but the sound reveals everything around it. It creates / reveals a whole world inside / outside the frame. In over twenty films, Grenier created many such worlds, though never by the same approach, not exactly. You almost wouldn’t think it is all the work of a single filmmaker. Across his work, certain familiarities or themes emerge—like water, for instance, ever present; there is a river running through these films, a river made of film, of images—but most especially there is a rhythm that is all Grenier’s, unlike any other that I know. A thing appears, flashes, disappears, then returns. Like a stutter, or a stammer. There is time inside of time—and these films are nothing if not multiple.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057, USA, United States
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