Part of Winter 2013
Pleasure Dome is pleased to be co-presenting Salomé with The 8 fest, Toronto’s annual festival dedicated to the art of small-gauge film.
“Mexican-born filmmaker Téo Hernandez settled in Paris in 1966, where he lived and worked until his death from AIDS in 1992. While there he conjured his beautiful Salomé (1976, 65 minutes), a dream-like re-vision of the religious content, Orientalist iconography and gender politics of the biblical legend. The film heralded the emergence of a new movement in French experimental filmmaking, dubbed “l’École du corps” (“the School of the Body”). Comprised largely of gay and lesbian filmmakers working in Super 8, this movement approached themes of the body and desire in lush and original ways. Salomé exemplifies the powerfully operatic quality of many of the films, a quality seldom associated with Super 8 before or since. The importance of Hernandez’s body of work to France’s cultural heritage is now well established, yet his films are seldom exhibited outside of the country.” — Image+Nation
Born in Mexico in 1939, Hernandez studied architecture before co-founding the CEC (Centro Experimental de Cinematografia) in 1960 in Mexico City. He moved to Paris in 1966 and from 1968 to 1976 began to realize an extensive number of personal films, all shot in Super-8, some on travels to Morocco, Denmark and London, others in his adopted hometown, Paris. Many of Hernandez’s films are marked by strong sweeping camera movements and single-frame shooting of places and spaces near and dear to him
The 8 fest returns to Toronto for its sixth year for three nights of screenings and live performances, hosted at a new venue: Workman Arts. The 8 fest is North America’s only festival devoted to all forms of small-gauge film, including Super 8, 8mm, 9.5 and loops, shown in their original formats. www.the8fest.com
