Output details
36 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
Roehampton University
Film Season Paradise Now! Essential French Avant-Garde Cinema 1890-2008
This major retrospective was undertaken for Tate Modern, and accompanied their Duchamp/Man Ray/Picabia exhibition in Spring 2008. It was co-curated by Witt, Professor Nicole Brenez (Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle), and Dr Michael Temple (Birkbeck), in association with Stuart Comer (Curator of Film, Tate Modern) and Laurent Mannoni and Pierre d’Amerval of the Cinémathèque française, Paris.
The overwhelming majority of written accounts of French avant-garde cinema rehearse the same periods, movements and filmmakers (Dada/Surrealism; the narrative avant-garde of the 1920s; the 1960s), misrepresenting the tradition as one of purely formal experimentation. Against this backdrop, the season set out to achieve the following research objectives: to construct a fresh history of the field through the pursuit of curation as a research practice; to demonstrate the diversity and vitality of this tradition by showcasing works from every decade; to make available numerous films that had never been shown in the UK (this was the case for over 80% of the 90 films screened); and to demonstrate the inseparability in the French context of an engagement by avant-garde filmmakers with political struggles and everyday experiences and an interrogation of the conventions and constrictions of mainstream cinema.
Witt’s work on the season included archival research; selecting prints at the Cinémathèque française; co-designing with Brenez and Temple the season’s fifteen-programme architecture; and setting out the research agenda behind the season in the introductory text (2,200 words) and the presentation of the fifteen programmes (4,600 words) that he co-authored with them for the 24-page booklet published by Tate Modern.
The event was extremely well attended, and audience feedback and press coverage (Financial Times, 17 March 2008; Libération, 13 March 2008) indicated that its central aim of reconfiguring the field through curation was successfully achieved.
