Anthem. Courtesy of FIDMarseille International Film Festival

Screening
Anthem / Outlandish: Strange Foreign Bodies / Even the Sun Has Spots

Even the Sun Has Spots (Hasta el Sol Tiene Manchas) 
Mexico/Guatemala. Dir. Julio Hernández Cordón. 2011, 62 mins. Digital projection. In Hernandez-Cordon’s portrayal of the world of adolescents, comedy is overlaid with pathos, and a documentary viewpoint organizes a deliberately open fiction. The film’s lost souls are implicit allegories of Guatemala’s destiny; the fable-like film is stamped with Brechtian artifice, filmed in a studio with 2-D sets and actors in masks. Two characters stand out: Pepe Moco, a mentally handicapped boy who makes an ad for a presidential candidate; and Beto, a rascal who threatens people passing by.

Preceded by: 
Anthem
Thailand. Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 2006, 5 mins. 35mm. Two women chat by a stretch of water. They talk about music coming from a ghetto blaster. One of them says the music has been sanctified and will bring good luck to the cinema in which it is played. We then see a gymnasium: people are dancing, playing badminton, and arranging beautiful tables as if to prepare a show. This brief hymn was conceived to purify cinemas.  

Outlandish: Strange Foreign Bodies 
U.K. Dir. Philippe Warnell. 2009, 20 mins. Digital projection. Philip Warnell’s film involves two actors: philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and an octopus. Sitting at his desk, Nancy tells us about the body and its strangeness. The octopus moves its eight limbs along the panes of an aquarium on the deck of a crewless ship that it seems to be piloting. Between these scenes, we see the process of an organ transplant. Two dances echo each other: one is the dance of language, of ongoing thought incarnated in a body; and the other is the dance of a mute animal moving about like some code’s figures, trapped in a transparent prison. 


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