PROGRAMME

► A Portrait of Ga By Margaret Tait

UK, 1952, 16mm, 5’

courtesy Arsenal Berlin

A Portrait of Ga is an early experiment in portraiture from Margaret Tait. In filming her mother she asks the wider question of how much the camera can reveal of the person. Margaret Tait described this film as follows: 'My mother seemed a good subject for a portrait, (she was there), and I thought it offered a chance to do a sort of 'abstract film', in the sense that it didn't have what you might call 'the grammar of film'. It's mostly discontinuous shots linked just by subject, in one case by colour, only rarely by movement'.

► Fake Fruit Factory By Chick Strand

USA, 1986, 16mm, 22’

courtesy Canyon Cinema

While the title may suggest an industrial film tracing an assembly line process to market, Fake Fruit Factory is less interested in products than in the people who make them—the young Mexican women who create decorative papier-mâché fruit and vegetables for a small handicraft facility. The story is told almost entirely through close-ups. The women do things—knead plaster, tear paper, apply paint, hang ornaments to dry, prepare food, care for children, count bills. As they work, they gossip and complain about men. The camera follows their faces and hands and the things that they produce.

► Malapascua By Christina Stuhlberger

BE, 2017, 4K video, 26’

Malapascua is the name of the island in the Philippines where the mother of filmmaker (and our brand-new associated artist!) Christina Stuhlberger was born. When her mother was 20, she met a man who was on holiday in the Philippines. He bought an airline ticket to Europe for her and she moved to Germany to marry him.

As the child of these parents, Christina grew up in the rich and safe environment of the German countryside, surrounded by her father's culture. She never learned her mother's native language, and the world she came from remained a great mystery. Christina wanted to get to know and understand that world.

In Malapascua, we travel with Christina Stuhlberger to this beautiful tropical island in the sun on the other side of the world (at least from a Western European perspective). For six weeks, she visited the island, which is smaller in size than the center of Brussels. It is surrounded by white beaches and pale blue seas, and there are no streets or automobiles. Every day, she walked and explored, as a tourist and as a daughter. Each day she filmed situations, houses and people: a quiet attempt to make a connection with life on Malapascua.