Vivian Ostrovsky

Funny collage of sea, sun and ice. A show from the beach with skiers, tigers, mermaids and much more.

The voices say a story. forget it. Of what time. And who speaks. Both of them. One or the other. later. Others may be. Of chance. Which would cross in this narrative. When. The times have intermingled. The winds meet. History. Pictures. The summer. Humble vacancy with furtive foliage. Fragile memory. Light is a trace of forgetfulness.

"Going through my mini DVs shot over the past decade, I rediscovered a forgotten night sequence of Chantal Akerman and Sonia Wieder-Atherton leaving a brasserie where we had dined together in Montparnasse. The excerpt stayed with me for a while. This prompted me to focus on Chantal’s sound work in her films and her very close collaboration with cellist, Sonia Wieder-Atherton with whom she made more than 20 films. And, since New York, Paris and Moscow were places the three of us had in common, I intertwined some of my images with hers."

"The film is a travelogue of sorts. In 1960 my family lived in Brazil when my father discovered his sister and brother in Moscow, who he hadn't seen for 40 years, were still alive. Since they couldn't leave the USSR we went to visit them regularly for about 15 years. At the time I had my 8mm then a super 8 camera with which I filmed the family, our outings, picnics, markets and their homes… I decided to use this material, which was not very interesting per se, by mixing it with Soviet found-footage of the same period (1960's, 1970's, 1980's). I used feature films, propaganda footage, newsreels, etc. The result is a kind of Khruschev-era mix with a collage of Soviet music and a voice-over of my memories of the Cold War period."

Portrait. She dances in the center of her area. Obscure to the look. She abandons us to her limit. Turn. Count the chips. Conjugate. Turn on yourself, in a blind echo. Cross the already deserted space.

A delightful update of Jacques Tati’s classic Les Vacances de M. Hulot (Mr. Hulot’s Holidays). Seagulls squawk, waves crash and swimmers cavort in endless summer days spent on the beach. TATITUDE suggests that sand, water and sun are the basic elements in a happy, carefree life, and maybe even the secret to eternal youth.

A single-screen version of the Portraits / Mirrors multi-projection. Featuring portraits of: Aloual, Gaël Badaud, Raphaël Bassan, Yann Beauvais, Jean-Michel Bouhours, Gérard Courant, Berndt Deprez, Bertrand Gadenne, Mythia Kolésar, Christian Lebrat, Stéphane Marti, Pascal Martin, Michel Nedjar, Dominique Noguez, Vivian Ostrovsky, Bernard Roué, Martine Rousset, Alain Sayag, Unglee, and Catherine Zbinden.

A Russian can say, “I hear the smell…” A maestro has a vision of what a symphony should sound like. In a silent film how can one make the spectator see the sound? A vivid and noisy assemblage of archival and contemporary imagery meditating on the past and presence of film audio.

An observation of humans' and animals' table manners as they gulp down breakfasts, lunches, cocktails and dinners in a variety of situations.

Brooklyn boxers and boucing balls.Catalan dancers and Provençals dogs. The Douro, the Danube, Biarritz, Brazil. In super 8 colours and black and white sounds.

A fragmented tribute to Ukranian-Brazilian novelist and fashion journalist Clarice Lispector that interrogates the idea of "in-betweenness," the intermission, a hiatus.

"Super 8 reels of Paris catwalks I shot in 1979/1980 were supposed to become an experimental short meditation on couture culture. Its authority has unraveled some since and Deleuze’s definition of style: 'creating a foreign language in one’s own language,' encouraged me to loosen the threads of this pursuit. To ponder how fashion and style are interwoven but also influenced by individual flare and whimsy, I stitched together Coco Chanel, Courrèges, Cole Porter and Kaiser Karl with vintage film moments. Then, as now, to grasp the whole cloth of this interface involves finding, but also Losing the Thread…"

The Title Was Shot was commissioned for a conference of film theoreticians in Berlin in 2009 entitled: The Cinematic Configurations of 'I' and 'We.' Composed of fragments from over 25 films dating from the 1920s to the 90s, this mischievous short features cowboys, Indians and damsels in distress. Tarzan, Jane, a transgender gorilla, and a menacing lion tango from frame to frame, prodded by Wittgenstein, Gilles Deleuze and Slavoj Zizek's philosophical considerations. A fast-paced, heart-pounding cinephilic farce.

Based on a correspondence between Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha and the filmmaker, this portrait was made for an exhibition at the MAM (Museum of Modern Art) in Rio de Janeiro. Ione Saldanha (1919-2001) was a contemporary of Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, and Vieira da Silva, all of whom were her friends. She abandoned painting on canvas for more sculptural supports like batten and bamboos which she shaped with color. Matisse was constantly present in her mind and work for inspiration.

A trip to Russia by two filmmakers in 1990, forms the bulk of this twin-screen projection, finished some 9 years later; Their super-8 footage mixed in with archival material (and a sprinkling of the classics such as Vertov and Eisenstein).

A humorous glimpse of what happens every morning on the wavy sidewalks of Copacabana Beach. Physical fitness, Brazilian style, with a dash of soccer and hints of Carmen Miranda.

With a super 8 camera from Paris to Berlin, from Amsterdam to Rio, from Jerusalem to New York shooting only at night. Hungarian crooners, Indian tribal chants, opera arias, and an occasional samba make up the sound track of this “hand-held” diary.

M.M. IN MOTION was four years in the making and draws upon Ostrovsky's filming of six Monnier choreographies (from 1988 to 1991) in rehearsals and performances. M.M. attempts to translate Monnier's essence, style and humor into cinematic terms using fragmentary, episodic and impressionistic images that capture the defining traits of her modus operandi.

An unknown writer written under the pseudonym of Laure at the beginning of the century. Readings. Geography. The places of a writing. The forces that create, traverse and lose it. The two image strips will be contiguous on the same screen. Their continuous and simultaneous operation. Two mirrors. The voices and their silences are reflected in it. Fade away.

Originally a text in fragments, more or less biographical, of different characters. Crossed stories, mixed times, memories and inventions. Coming from the voices encountered. They look like text like sisters. They are the voices of memory, the shadows cast by the characters, the voices of girls, the voices of indecision and evocation. We begin with this work: to read, to record (in analog, it takes breath). Here comes a place, a place found: the foliage of a vine in the South, crossed by the wind Mistral: a landscape. Where are we? Where the boy dies, would we see what he sees? Where was the child playing in the neighborhood? At the heart of the narrative, at the heart of the written word? That would happen. Harvesting images, shifting gears, Multiplying the generations with the listening of the voices, even in memory sometimes.

A new short film by Vivian Ostrovsky remembering Chantal Akerman, beginning with their first meeting in the early 1970s. Using her own footage of Chantal Akerman, the filmmaker remembers a few moments that illustrate Chantal's personality. Forty years of friendship condensed into four minutes...

Readings. Heinrich von Kleist / Robert Walser. Contiguous. They talk about imagination. Walser imagines Kleist, Kleist nobody, but Penthesilea. In the new desert islands that are the enclaves of flowers of the city. Roses of sidewalks. Wild spaces with anonymity, truncated and without paths, in the banal stones of any career, inscribe and break the voices of an abrupt literary, hermetic and arid fragments in the image of places, almost no of place. Images figures of writing. In the blind corner. Without access. Very few signs.

Absorb these images, “breathing slowly, quietly, and very calmly. Sinking softly, silently…” Drift into a relaxing reverie.