Dis­cov­er trans­gres­sive and unruly cin­e­ma at Frames of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion 2019

As mod­ern film­mak­ers make it ever more dif­fi­cult to clas­si­fy their work, whether through for­mal inno­va­tions or the ways in which they dis­man­tle con­ven­tion­al film gram­mar, a fes­ti­val such as Frames of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion becomes ever more vital. It acts as some­thing of a safe­ty net – cradling those works that have per­haps slipped through the cracks of main­stream accep­tance because they may not have been cre­at­ed to take the path most wan­dered in order to con­nect with their public.

And this, broad­ly, is the theme of this year’s edi­tion: the notion of decat­e­gori­sa­tion. It’s not just a sim­ple attempt to define a niche, but to start a con­ver­sa­tion as to how we can tran­scend the idea of cin­e­ma as a a rigid, immov­able and often gener­ic form.

Kick­ing things off is Rober­to Minervini’s What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire?, which wowed audi­ences at the 2018 Venice Film Fes­ti­val. The film screens in a 106 minute director’s cut, and will be pro­ceed­ed with a round-table dis­cus­sion in which Min­ervi­ni will be in dia­logue with mem­bers of the Black Pan­ther party.

Else­where, the lat­est from China’s Wang Bing, Beau­ty Lives in Free­dom, screens after an on-stage con­ver­sa­tion with the direc­tor, while the new film from Mexico’s Car­los Rey­gadas, Our Time, receives its UK pre­mière fol­low­ing a mas­ter­class with the direc­tor. From glanc­ing across this year’s eclec­tic line-up, it appears that as much time and thought has been placed into the events, pan­els and class­es as has been put into select­ing the films set to screen, embody­ing FoR’s com­mit­ment to the con­cept of decat­e­gori­sa­tion even when it comes to the struc­ture of the fes­ti­val itself.

Final­ly, we spoke to artis­tic direc­tor Nico Marzano who had this to say on the jour­ney he took to pull togeth­er such an ambi­tious pro­gramme of films and events:

“This year all the cura­to­r­i­al efforts went into work­ing on a pro­gramme that aims to include a broad and unclas­si­fi­able range of works. Films that blur the bound­aries between doc­u­men­tary and fic­tion to the point that these cat­e­gori­sa­tions, right­ly, become meaningless.

“The main ques­tion I asked myself when look­ing for films to include in the FoR19 selec­tion relat­ed to ques­tion­ing what does real­i­ty tru­ly encom­pass, oth­er than a del­i­cate, frag­ile and often man­u­fac­tured opinion?

“There­fore, this year, we have select­ed films that exam­ine how cin­e­ma and art can dis­rupt the regimes of sur­veil­lance and cen­tral­is­ing con­trol deployed by gov­ern­ments and glob­al cor­po­ra­tions to main­tain an unten­able sta­tus quo. FoR19 line up pro­pos­es a trans­gres­sive, unruly cin­e­ma that forges a path towards equal­i­ty and multiplicity.”

Frames of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion runs at London’s ICA cin­e­ma from 12 – 20 April. For more info and to book advance tick­ets vis­it ica.art/for19