Live Cinema: Daïchi Saïto | Karl Lemieux

In recent years, young Canadian filmmakers with Montreal as a creative center have garnered increased international attention. Two outstanding representatives of this scene are guests in Vienna for the first time, with films and a musical-cinematic live event: two alchemists in the realm of Sight and Sound, who also incorporate accidents and mistakes into their creative process.

 

Daïchi Saïto’s films focus on the perception of nature and the human body. With his studies of movement and vision he has created a unique form of fragile poetry in cinema, achieved through the painstaking process of developing film by hand, among other strategies. His compatriot Karl Lemieux reworks filmed material with various chemicals, paint and razor blades: the images – from Western heroes to the flora of the Amazon – are broken down into their most basic (molecular) components and give birth to eerily illuminated “landscapes”. 

 

Following the film program, the Film Museum will be transformed into a space of disturbingly beautiful textures of image and sound, courtesy of Karl Lemieux who will present a live performance with musicians David Bryant (Godspeed You! Black Emperor), Kevin Doria (Growing) and Jonathan Parent (Fly Pan Am). Four 16mm film projectors will be part of the presentation; the loops on show have been degraded through both chemical and mechanical means. In conjunction with the melancholic music by Bryant, Doria and Parent, an unsettling, "epic" atmosphere will be created, likely to open the eyes, ears and heart. (Michaela Grill)