Public Lecture | 'At hand' by Matías Piñeiro

Thursday 16 November 2023, 19:30 - 20:30 hrs.
Nederlandse Filmacademie
Markenplein 1
1011 MV Amsterdam

Netherlands Film Academy (Cinema on the 2nd floor)

We invite you to join our Master of Film public lecture 'At hand' by Matías Piñeiro

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With the years, apart from hatching ideas and writing drafts for a screenplay, I have been trying to figure out a different approach. I believe that cinema doesn´t truly relate to the blank page. I might actually say that I am against the blank page, that it doesn´t fully belong to a filmmaking gesture. Cinema is a referential art: it refers to a world that is here and now to be recorded and photographed. So, if films are made of these sounds and images, why should we only tend to approach them through the written word, a medium that is ontologically different from that of the cinematic shot? Why shouldn´t we start a little closer?

Just as painters sketch their model’s hands multiple times or gymnasts drill their somersault endlessly before they finally go to the Olympics, filmmakers can try executing a similar practice that puts them in a direct contact with images and sounds.

During my Public Lecture “At Hand”, I will display the creative process that has allowed me to make the body of work we developed with my collaborators. Fostering an interdisciplinary weaving between cinema, literature and cinema, I will expand on the concepts of translation, profanation and closeness in my filmmaking and exhibit the actual tools that have enabled me in the last years to find the proper focus and rhythm for my films. I propose to have another start for making films. Let´s start with what we have at hand.

Matías Piñeiro was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1982. Writer and director of films, he currently lives in New York, USA. For the last ten years he has been developing a cycle of films based on the female roles in William Shakespeare´s comedies called “The Shakespeareads”. He teaches filmmaking at Pratt Institute (New York - USA) and coordinates the filmmaking department at Elías Querejeta Zine Escola (San Sebastian, Spain). He programed in Punto de Vista Film Festival (Pamplona, Spain) and Anthology Film Archives (N.Y., USA). At present, he is working in three film projects in diverse stages of production: the feature film You Burn Me based on a text by Cesare Pavese on the figure of Sappho and The lesson of the Master, an adaptation of the Henry James´ novella. 

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