Graeme Thomson

Biography

Artist and filmmaker Graeme Thomson is co-founder with Silvia Maglioni of TERMINAL BEACH - a cross-media art platform to investigate new configurations of image, sound, text and spectatorship (2005) - they have made films and photo-essays, sound and videoinstallations, solo and group exhibitions, performances, experimental radio shows as well as publishing numerous texts.
In 2009 they completed their first feature film, Facs of Life, which draws on encounters with a number of former students of Gilles Deleuze, navigating between the terrains of documentary, fiction, essay and video art to explore aspects of Deleuze's philosophical legacy. The film received its world premiere at FID-Marseille 2009, and has since been shown at numerous international festivals and art spaces including BAFICI, JIHLAVA, Il Vento del Cinema, Ludwig Museum, TATE Britain, Fundação Clovis Salgado, Serralves Contemporary Art Museum and 16beaver. Redeploying elements of Facs of Life and its research archive, the duo have also created a series of exhibitions exploring the idea of 'exploded' cinema: "Inarchivé – explosition d’un film", a dispersion of the film's components around the city of Marseille (Les Instants Vidéo in association with FID), "blown up ! à la recherche des élèves de Gilles Deleuze", an 'eventwork' combining multimedia installation, dance, sound art, performance, lectures, screenings and discussions in a live spatial montage (Mains d’Oeuvres Art Centre, Paris) and "twice torn from time", a four-screen installation of the film (UCSB gallery, Santa Barbara).
Together with Through the Letterbox, a high-definition 'refilming' of the video archive of Gilles Deleuze's seminar at Vincennes, and Wolkengestalt, considering September 11 and its aftermath through the prism of Goethe's meteorological diaries, their other films include Ghosts of Chance, The balade of Dèsastronaute #1 and Statues.
Their work has been presented in various international institutions and art foundations including TATE Britain, Museum Ludwig, 16beaver, Fondazione Pistoletto, European Media Art Festival, Fundação Clovis Salgado, Bétonsalon, Amsterdam Film Experience, Maison Rouge, Gasworks, Stedelijk Museum, Kunstenzentrum Z33, Telic Arts Exchange, Goldsmiths, ENS, Museu de Arte Contemporânea Serralves, UCLA, Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, Museo MALBA.
Graeme Thomson is currently living in Paris where he is working with Silvia on a new feature film, GIRL FROM THE NOUVELLE VAGUE.

Filmography
Statues (60´, Italy, 2003)
Wolkengestalt" (13, Italy, 2007)
Facs of Life (116´, France, Italy, United Kingdom 2009)
Through the Letterbox (125´, France, 2009)
Ghosts of Chance (7´, France, 2010)
The Girls From the Nouvelle Vague (Film in progress, 2011)

Facs of Life

Facs of Life (Orig.) / 2009 / France, Italy, United Kingdom / 115 min

Facs of Life is a ﬁlm of conceptual/poetic dispositifs that charts trajectories of those affected by Gilles Deleuze’s laboratory of machinic thought at the Centre Expérimental Universitaire de Paris 8 – Vincennes (1969-1980).

News

Retrospective Of Nicolas Philibert

This French director is a critic of documentary activism who calls himself “a bit of an anti-Michael Moore”, refusing, unlike one of the most famous activist filmmakers, to „think for the audience“. On the contrary, he „offers them something they can think about“. Philibert gained attention especially thanks to his successful film To Be and To Have, in which he portrayed a French single-class school and its specifics. A combination of a sensitive perspective of a specific world of preparations in one single-class school full of children of various ages and an original topic depicting ordinary life attracted large audiences, resulting in a worldwide commercial success. Other films in the retrospective also include Nénette, an original feature documentary about a female orang-utan with a Mona Lisa smile, and a film, or rather a return to the world of making a film about a triple murder – Back To Normandy

Stream FOR FREE from June 10 to 23!

A Taste Of Film Debuts From FIDMarseille

Since the French film festival FID Marseille is nearing, we have prepared, in cooperation with its organizers, a selection of the most original film debuts by contemporary documentary filmmakers.

STREAM FOR FREE to June 9

Mirror to the Society

RETROSPECTIVE OF BERT HAANSTRA – Filmmaker Holding a Mirror to the Society

Bert Haanstra was born in 1916 in Holten in the Netherlands. He became a professional filmmaker in 1947. He received international acclaim for his short documentary film Mirror of Holland, which was awarded the Grand Prix for a short film at the Cannes festival in 1951. Throughout his carrier, Haanstra has won over a hundred film awards. As a director, he holds a mirror to the society, reflecting also on the material most mirrors are made of – glass in his film of the same name Glass: a short, Oscar-winning film made at glassworks in Leerdam and Schiedam that shows the work of glass blowers. His other films include a fresh and humorous montage entitled ZOO (Haanstra draws striking similarities between humans and animals).

STREAM FOR FREE to June 2