footnotes to a house of love footnotes to a house of

FOOTNOTES TO A HOUSE OF LOVE
FOOTNOTES TO A HOUSE OF LOVE
Laida Lertxundi­—13 min, 16mm, color, sound, 2007
Laida Lertxundi, 2007, 13 minutos, sonido, color
A series of shots in a California desert landscape in which there is a play between
on frame and off frame, sound and image. There is an effort to create the space
of a story, without a story, by the use of real time/diegetic sound. Love is felt as a
force that determines the arrangement of the figures in the landscape.
Una serie de fragmentos, a modo de composiciones de imagen y sonido, rodadas
en el desierto de California en las cuales creamos un dialogo constante entre
sonido e imagen; de lo que aparece en pantalla y de lo que queda fuera de
campo. El film crea el espacio de una historia pero sin trama, guión etc. Y tal
y como indica su título, ensaya una serie de anotaciones a cerca del amplio y
misterioso tema: amor.
with
Sandy Ding,
Eliza Douglas
Laura Merando
Sally Oviatt
Lucas Quigle
Laura Steenberge
music
Leslie Gore
Ari Up
The Kinks
The Shangri-Las
Henry Flynt
Laura Steenberge
con
Sandy Ding,
Eliza Douglas
Laura Merando
Sally Oviatt
Lucas Quigle
Laura Steenberge
The Crystals
Música de
Leslie Gore
Ari Up
The Kinks
The Shangri-Las
Henry Flynt
Laura Steenberge
The Crystals
Writing on the film:
“Laida Lertxundi’s Footnotes to a House of Love,
also set in southern California, was in some ways the
aftermath to the apocalyptic buildup of SpaceDiscoOne. The desert, so often a stand-in for other
places imagined by Hollywood, here is barren and
bright, set to the tune of Leslie Gore and the Kinks
playing through an intrepid little tape deck. The
tinny sound carries through a broken-down house, a
house without walls and whose door falls down the
moment someone tries to open it. People drift by
and a couple makes love on a sheet laid out in the
sand; it’s not clear where the house ends and the
desert begins. The music plays in most of the film
like a radio signal, a relic of another time, now gone.
The film is pervaded with the sense of something
having happened, though we’re given only brief
glimpses of what came after.”
—Genevieve Yue, Senses of Cinema
“ìLaida Lertxundi’s Footnotes to a House of Love
is the type of thing you hope for at a festival:
something remarkable by someone you’ve never
heard of. Not much happens in the film ñ much to its
credit. A young couple inhabits a dilapidated house
in the California desert. They read, play the
cello, piss, but mostly just walk about. Their actions,
however, are entirely peripheral to the film. Footnotes
is most centrally about the presence of place, the
house and the desert beyond, and the possibilities
they seem to invite. Narratives and relationships are
only just hinted at and seemingly swallowed up by
the surroundings. There is a subtle mysteriousness
to the place that could easily have made it a site
for terror, or at least danger, but this is constantly
leavened by a gentle, disarming playfulness and
teasing.”
­— Patrick Friel, Senses of Cinema
“The Grand prize of Basque Cinema, Footnotes to
A House of Love, by Laida Lertxundi, begins by
weaving a series of brushstrokes in the form of
annotations, using fragmentation (and the partial use
of off frame) and long shots to transform the nonactor into non-character. Maneuver by which all is
left is the referent of the California desert landscape.
There is a break with cinematographic boundaries
and a departure into the terrain of video art.”
­— Cahiers Du Cinema, España
Crítica Chaiers Du Cinema España
Footnotes to a House of Love de Laida Lertxundi
hilvana una serie de pinceladas a pie de página
mediante la fragmentación (uso parcial del fuera
de campo) y el pleno general para convertir al
no-actor, en no-personaje. Maniobra que la que
sólo queda el referente del desierto californiano.
Ruptura de las fronteras cinematográficas para
invadir el terreno del videoarte.
­— Cahiers Du Cinema, España, 2008
Laida Lertxundi
Nacida en Bilbao, País Vasco en 1981. Hace cine
experimental y es programadora de cine para
Xcentric, en el Centro de Cultura Contemporánea
de Barcelona y programó también un ciclo de
cine experimental para Zinebi 48 ,Bilbao. En
participación con la exposición de arte feminista
WACK, en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo
de Los Angeles, programó un ciclo de cine
experimental y video arte en diálogo con los
feminismos desde 1971 al 2005.
Estudió cine en Bard College con los cineastas,
Peggy Ahwesh, Peter Hutton, y Jennifer Reeves
y después completó sus estudios de Master en
California Institute of the Arts con los cineastas
James Benning, Thom Andersen y Betzy Bromberg.
Su obra se muestra en ocasiones con sonido en
directo de los compositores Ezra Buchla y Corey
Fogel y ha sido proyectada en el Museo de Arte
Moderno de Nueva York, y varios espacios de arte
en Nueva York y California. Tras dar clase de cine
en el master de California Institute of the Arts, su
película mas reciente es Footnotes to A House of
Love, 13min, 16mm, color, sonido.