Daria Martin
dal 6/5/2005 al 7/5/2005
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6/5/2005
Daria Martin
Kino Arsenal II, Berlin
The artist's film, 'Loneliness and the Modern Pentathlon', fastforwards 20th century avant garde ideals using as her vehicle an arcane Olympic sport. Tensions between aspiration and its limits in exhaustion, between forward-looking modernity and nostalgic romanticism, and between artifice and expression are further heightened and unraveled in this many-layered film.
Screening: 'Loneliness and the Modern Penthatlon'
Daria Martin’s short 16mm films create and explore fragile worlds of utopian aspiration, ‘Gesamtkunstwerks’ on the verge of collapse. Her newest and most ambitious film, “Loneliness and the Modern Pentathlon,†fastforwards 20th century avant garde ideals using as her vehicle an arcane Olympic sport, the Modern Pentathlon. Tensions between aspiration and its limits in exhaustion, between forward-looking modernity and nostalgic romanticism, and between artifice and expression are further heightened and unraveled in this many-layered film.
This work takes as its starting point the discipline of the Modern Pentathlon, an anachronistic but still surviving Olympic sport comprised of running, swimming, shooting, horseback riding, and fencing. Its five formalized events were chosen by Baron de Coubertin, founder of the Modern Olympics, to encapsulate the romantic adventures of a gentleman liaison officer who fights his way on horseback, foot, and finally through water, to deliver an urgent message.
“Loneliness and the Modern Pentathlon†archly hangs this rarified sporting discipline on the narrative structure of the British Angry Young Man film classic “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner'' (1962). This newly imagined version is also set in an isolated school in rural England and likewise plumbs themes of individualism versus collectivity. Yet, crucially, elements have changed . . . In “Loneliness and the Modern Pentathlon,†a charismatic headmistress (rather than headmaster), played by Rita Tushingham, an iconic star of British New Wave cinema, presides over the daily life of her charges. Her regard – sometimes tender, sometimes cool – is echoed by the observations of a roving camera in a flowing series of vignettes which accumulate in a loose and poetic rhythm rather than a strict narrative.
Played by both professional dancers and Olympic-level Pentathletes, this group of youths enact a form of the Modern Pentathlon through hybrid movements that are part dance, part sport, part experimental performance Underlining the unorthodox nature of their activities, a score composed by Zeena Parkins, the New York-based master of electric harp (and sometime collaborator with Bjork) ebbs and flows throughout the film.
Kino Arsenal II
Potsdamerstr. 2 - Berlin