EXPERIMENT 120 / Fantastic gardens

EXPERIMENT 120 / Fantastic gardens

A programme of short films at the Filmmaker’s Cooperative in New York

April 19th 2022 at 4 pm, the Experiment 120 programme will be presented for the first time in the USA with a short selection of films by Marie-Pierre Bonniol, MM Serra, Marie Menken, Ute Aurand & Bärbel Freund.

“To fulfill its vocation, the garden must arouse the wonderful” Hölderlin

To accompany the arrival of Spring, The Film-maker’s Coop presents a program of four films on gardens with the filmmaker and curator Marie-Pierre Bonniol, who will be present. Most of the films are silent and inhabited by “something, like a music, that crosses the space and the silence so dense: hardly more than a vibration, produced perhaps by the secret energy of the leaves, flowers and branches delivered of all constraints, a flux.” (Marco Martella)

Walter Benjamin said in 1927 that “the imaginary reflections of things fall clattering to the ground, they are the accordion-folded leaves of an album called the dream”.

The selection of films focuses on mysteries, the ineffable and springtime, with five women directors from both sides of the ocean: Marie Menken and MM Serra (USA), and Marie-Pierre Bonniol, Ute Aurand and Bärbel Freund (Germany).

This program is suitable for children ages 6 and up, as well as to all interested adults.

Programme

Babylone, Marie-Pierre Bonniol (France, 2018, 1′, digital file), North American premiere 

Silent garden, MM Serra (USA, 2021, 3′, 8mm)

Glimpse of a garden, Marie Menken (USA, 1957, 5′, 16mm)

Im Garten, Ute Aurand and Bärbel Freund (Germany, 2002, 29′, digital copy), USA premiere

Last minute addition: Playground, Walter Duncan and Marie-Pierre Bonniol (USA, 2022, 1’55, digital file), world premiere

Programme credits

Programme curator: Marie-Pierre Bonniol with MM Serra, Film-Makers’ Cooperative

Image credits: Marie-Pierre Bonniol, Marie Menken and MM Serra courtesy of Film-Maker’s Coop, Ute Aurand and Bärbel Freund courtesy of the artists and the Deutsche Kinemathek.

Acknowledgment: Maria Pia Santillo, Diana Kluge/Ricardo Brunn (Deutsche Kinemathek).

Tickets and venue info

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, 475 Park Ave S, New York

Tickets link and program page

Experiment 120

Experiment 120 is an itinerant programme of experimental films for young audiences initiated by artist and curator Marie-Pierre Bonniol in the spring of 2020. Exploring 120 years of experimental films, Experiment 120 offers perspectives of different types of film expressions in historical programmes, which also include animated films, video art, documentations on artworks and films made by children.

Website of Experiment 120 | Contact