"Balkan Baroque" de Pierre Coulibeuf

Starring Marina Abramović (1999-2007)

"A autobiografia, real e imaginária de Marina Abramović, a vida estética de uma mulher no seu tempo, apresentado uma história pessoal fortemente marcada pela Jugoslávia de Tito, a violência quotidiana, a experiência dos limites físicos e psíquicos.", parte do texto que acompanhava o filme no Museu Berardo, tradução da sinopse do filme.

"At the outset of the project, there was my encounter with a woman endowed with an exceptional physical presence. Marina was potentially an actress. Balkan Baroque takes its inspiration - in part - from performances by the artist (in particular, the performance piece Biography) but, in a more profound way, the film transposes the mental universe of Marina Abramovic.

Balkan Baroque is guided by several principles: discontinuity (black and white as structuring elements); ritualisation and frontality; fiction (and not the documentary). The black of memory, from which arise the white images of the past (the artistic rituals). The images from memory are combined with fancies, fantasies and dreamlike waking images, as well as rituals of life (the kitchen, the dining room, the gymnasium...). The discontinuity of memory, which blends images from the past with imaginations, life rituals with artistic rituals. Depending on its visual component, the film becomes the equivalent of an ‘involuntary memory’, with its breaks, its oversights, its absence of chronology. Thus, one can consider the film of the image and the film of the chronological, narrative voice. (Thanks to the form of statement, the narrative voice gives rise to other images in the spectator¹s mind.) The visual and sound components are autonomous and constitute the audio-visual image. But the visual image and the sound image communicate with each other in an underground manner, with numerous effects of resonance.

The performances are adapted - in other words, transformed by the cinematic point of view (the shot imposes its law; Marina Abramovic becomes an actress). In the film, they take on a mental appearance, like memory-images or insistent, shimmering images that suddenly force their way through, climb as far as awareness and dilate the present. Balkan Baroque creates a character whose identity is multifaceted and continually inventing itself. In this sense, the film creates its own reality, standing ‘on the borderline’ between real and imaginary, without one’s truly knowing what is real and what is imaginary. Thanks to this distance, this interval, Marina Abramovic can appear behind multiple masks, scoff at the performance and constantly scramble her identity." (Pierre Coulibeuf, daqui)














Marina Abramović, the Star


Marina Abramović, Art Must Be Beautiful


from Balkan Baroque


from Balkan Baroque, again.

os americanos, depois da vírgula, deixam dois espaços. assim como gosto de Marina Abramović. e resta dizer que este foi um dos filmes que mais gostei numa das recentes exposições do Museu Berardo. Agora, depois do Courboisier, é tempo de ir ver o Não Te Posso Ver Nem Pintado. Afinal já estou atrasada três dias.