IndieMovingImage is a new proposal by the International Festival of Independent Cinema IndieLisboa. The initiative aims to present works of moving image: film and video by artists and filmmakers produced for installation contexts. With this proposal we intend to include this mode of cinematic production in the event, in order to enrich the festival’s programming, but also to participate in the international debate about the future of cinema, particularly in its relationship to contemporary art. Another aim is to strengthen the dialogue of the festival and of the cinema industry in general with the contemporary art circuit, commercial galleries as well as with non-commercial spaces, both institutional and independent. The format in 2013 celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Festival by presenting various artists who have participated in previous editions of IndieLisboa. The collective exhibition is named Readings of the Real, a title that indicates the aim of reflecting about moving image as a tool for thinking about the contemporary situation in Portugal and internationally.

Curated by João Laia

Camille Henrot - Coupé/Décalé, 2010

35mm film transferred on Betanum, 5'20'' 

Courtesy of the artist and kamel mennour, Paris

Coupé/Décalé is an experimental film that alludes to an ethnological style, but which has been cut manually – literally and figuratively – in order to create a slight distance. Through this manipulation, a continuous line appears, separating the image into two parts, one second out of sync. The creation of this film led the artist on a veritable antipodean odyssey to Pentecost Island in the Vanuatu archipelago; the artist undertook this journey in order to witness firsthand a ritual presumed to be a rite of passage into adulthood, which had been organised for tourists. The staging of ritual reveals the movement of ideas and the mimesis inherent in any culture; the artist’s manipulation of the film attempts, in turn, to highlight the deconstruction of the original tradition and its reconstruction in the contemporary staging.  Coupé/Décalé is about the mechanic of mimicry where that which is copied is not a proper cultural form, but the outsider's conception of it - on this occasion, the reversal in which Western culture has imitated an Eastern tradition that has since been modified to agree with the Western perception of it.