Unnatural Realness: Jorge Jácome’s Past Perfect and Flores

Unnatural Realness: Jorge Jácome’s Past Perfect and Flores

Jorge Jácome, Past Perfect (still), 2019. Courtesy of Portugal Films, Lisbon.

Unnatural Realness: Jorge Jácome’s Past Perfect and Flores

Admission starts at $5

Date
July 12, 2022, 7pm
172 Classon Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
USA

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, July 12 at 7pm for a screening of Jorge Jácome’s Past Perfect (2019) and Flores (2017), introduced by the artist via pre-recorded video.

If we think of queer as new ways of living or new ways of thinking—for example, the idea of a queer time, or a queer landscape—it’s always about not thinking in a normative way. And yes, I always go about a project in that sense, thinking about it in a non-normative way… I often think about why I do this, and I believe that it’s related to the fact that I’m never comfortable during shootings, for example, when I have a camera—it’s not a natural process for me. I always have doubts in regards to the image that I’m creating. And the more realistic the image, the less I have a relation to it. So every time that I’m doing a super realistic image, on digital or film, I feel like I’ve seen this image before, and I can’t relate with this sensation of realness.
—Jorge Jacome, filmsinframe.com

Exploring the relationship between the act of watching a film and the act of sleeping and dreaming, Jácome in his works creates experiences of different temporalities that queer normative ways of conceiving time, landscape, politics, and relationships. What is real here is not necessarily natural and vice versa.

Films

Past Perfect (2019, 23 minutes)
“Many cities or countries have a distinct malaise. They are places that could be Portugal, so sunk in a painful longing of the past, and where each tension of the present is only the tip of an iceberg that is explained in successive retreats that can go straight until origin of the species, at least. This feeling common to many latitudes is often presented as a diagnosis, a denial of a painful present as opposed to the desire to return to a glorious past.” —Pedro Penim

Flores (2017, 26 minutes)
In this anthropocenic plot twist merging documentary and science-fiction, the entire population of Azores is forced to evacuate to the mainland when an uncontrollable infestation of hydrangeas—already abundant due to the terrain’s volcanic soil—overruns the islands. Two young soldiers, bound to their homeland by the beauty of the landscape, guide the viewer through the stories and sorrows of those forced to leave, and the soldiers’ own desire to resist by choosing to remain on the islands. The filmic wandering becomes a nostalgic and political reflection on territorial belonging and identity in the wake of ecological disaster.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Category
Film, Nature & Ecology
Subject
Video Art, Experimental Film, Fiction, Documentary, Militarization, Anthropocene, History

Jorge Jácome (b. 1988) is a filmmaker and artist based in Lisbon. In his works, which blur the lines between documentary and fiction, he investigates relations between utopias, nature, disappearance, and desire. His films have been shown in festivals and exhibition contexts, such as the Berlinale, TIFF, San Sebastian, NYFF, 25 FPS, Winterthur, IndieLisboa, Curtas Vila do Conde, Palais de Tokyo, Tate Modern, MoMa, and Tabakalera among others. He is a recipient of the Critics FIPRESCI Prize (Forum) at the Berlinale with Super Natural (2022); Best Film Award at the Hamburg Short Film Festival and Grand Prize at Indielisboa with Past Perfect (2019); Grand Prix at 25 FPS, Best Film Award at the Hamburg Short Film Festival, Punto de Vista, BIEFF, and New Talent at IndieLisboa with Flores (2017), among others. Parallel to his work as a filmmaker he works as an editor of projects by other filmmakers, and regularly collaborates in performing arts projects.

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