The Marginal Cinema | Karina Karaeva (Paris)

The marginalization of cinema originates from the experiments of the surrealists in the Un chien andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, and especially in the Entr'acte by René Clair.

The Marginal Cinema program is an attempt to analyze atypical films and videos. Anti-narrativity is one of the principles of such a movie. The anti-narrativity is rather not a trend, but a given vector of displacement of artistic interests. Actually, counter-narrative is a form of such interaction with the narrative when it becomes part of a discrete matrix of visual text. In this sense, any artistic statement turns into a conditional story, the boundaries and meaning of which are connected with its constant displacement into conventionality, formality. This is where an interesting aspect arises, due to the fact that the offset brings a special modified multi-screen meaning to the image. The anti-narrativity unites the works of artists on the principle that each of them demonstrates its own discursive approach to the topic. Aesthetic interest in the destruction of dramaturgy, in the articulation of a visual work of art in a combination of different ideas, methods, formations, languages, leads to the manifesto of a new era beyond narrative and a clear system of plot signs.

Théodule Ribot in his work Creative Imagination poses the problem of perception of a literary text, which directly depends on the imagination of the viewer, follows from the imagination (thus, the viewer's impression is the middle stage between the author's consciousness in the work and the independent life of the author's text). The stability of the author's mind and the instability of the viewer's mind collide. A perfect work is often doomed to misunderstanding. In the position of the stability of the viewer's mind and the instability of the author's mind, the first is invited to become a participant, to take the position of an artist. From the point of view of Merleau-Ponty, described in the article The Cinema and New Psychology, »analytical perception, which tells us the absolute value of isolated elements, corresponds to a late and exceptional position, the position of a scientist engaged in observation, or the position of a reflecting philosopher. The perception of forms in a broad sense – structures, aggregates or configurations – should be considered as a proper or spontaneous way of perception« (The Cinema and New Psychology (translated by M. Iampolsky))

List of films

1) Nicolas Rey, Autrement, la Molussie, 2012, 81’

2) Fernand Deligny, Lе moindre geste, 1971, 96’

3) Marie Losier, Tony Conrad, Dreaminimalist, 2008, 27’

4) Muito Romantico, Distruktur, 2016, 72'

5) Dmitry Bulnygin, The Flowers, 2009, 5'

6) Yves-Marie Mahé, Touch moi pas!, 2011, 2’