CAMERA OBSCURA: AMY HALPERN IN MEMORIAM

ONLINE

More info soon.

Camera Obscura is an online programme that was launched in 2020 as a response to the global situation. Its format emulated that of the famous Screening Room led by Robert Gardner, who through American public television summoned the brightest personalities in experimental cinema to talk about their work and show selected pieces. We are recovering Camera Obscura with the intention of honouring a filmmaker who has left an indelible mark on the history of the festival and on our lives: Amy Halpern, who sadly passed away in August 2022. Her cinema, with its undeniable sensitivity, subtlety and intelligence, leads us through mysterious terrains merging symbolism, synaesthesia, sensory nature and particular mises-en-scène where the poetic and the political come together. Halpern, who participated from Los Angeles in Camera Obscura that same 2020, visited us in 2022 to bring us two cathartic sessions and a master class. Now we are recovering the interview we held with her in A Coruña about her masterpiece Falling Lessons, as well as material from the presentations and talks in her master class on the use of sound in her cinema. Furthermore, we interviewed her partner and collaborator, the filmmaker David Lebrun, a tireless champion of her legacy, and Mark Toscano, in charge of preserving Halpern’s work. As the climax, the programme will include one of her films. This is a tribute to a filmmaker who has not yet been sufficiently acknowledged; one of those cases in which artistic quality merges with human quality, in tune with the spirit that the festival intends to uphold.