Joaquim Jordà Residencies 2024: Screenings of Films by Serge Garcia and Richard Shpuntoff
Free, until full capacity is reached. Tickets may be collected at the Museo’s Ticket Offices or on the Museo Reina Sofía website from 10am on 18 September (a maximum of 2 per person). 20% of the visitor-capacity will be reserved for attendance without ticket collection on the day of the activity. Doors open 30 minutes before screenings
In this activity, American film-makers Serge Garcia and Richard Shpuntoff, selected for the second edition of the annual Joaquim Jordà Residencies, organised conjointly by the Museo Reina Sofía, Doclisboa and FIDMarseille, present a selection of their films, in addition to the projects they are working on during the residency.
Both film-makers stand out for their innovative use of non-fictional language. Garcia’s 16mm work about musical subcultures, clubbing and partying as spaces of liberation renders portraits of underground electronic music icons such as Terre Thaemlitz and Jacob Sperber, better known as Jackie House. Shpuntoff, meanwhile, draws on straight photography from the 1930s, following the path trodden by photographers such as Walker Evans, Lisette Model and Gordon Parks to depict life in New York’s working-class neighbourhoods, where personal memory and social struggles intertwine.
In these screenings, both directors introduce their work and reflect on different issues such as desire, gender, relocation, identity and urban planning.
Participants
Serge Garcia (Los Angeles, USA, 1985) is a film-maker and producer who lives in Berlin, where he films subcultures such as clubbing and noise and the leading figures involved, cultivating the genre of film portraiture and blending it with the nighttime world, activism and autobiography. Among other works, he has directed the short films Subterraneans (2018–2021) and Grand Central Hotel (2021), which was selected and lauded by festivals such as FIDMarseille, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Visionär Film Festival and Actoral - Festival des arts et des écritures contemporaines.
Richard Shpuntoff (New York, USA, 1965) is a film-maker and photographer who has lived in Buenos Aires since 2002. He has directed more than twelve short films selected for various international film festivals, in addition to the feature-length films Julio of Jackson Heights (2016), on the murder of Puerto Rican sex worker Julio Rivera in Queens in the 1990s, and Everything that Is Forgotten in an Instant (2020), which was globally premiered at the FIDMarseille festival and hailed as a lucid essay on American identity, migration and language.
Programme
El Grand 97, a Dominican bar in New York’s Bronx neighbourhood, was filmed by Shpuntoff in black and white, capturing the coffees, patrons and daily life and rhythm of the place. The use of long shots and the characteristic texture of 16mm film gives form to the depiction of the business, throwing into relief its unique atmosphere and the daily life that shapes it.
Shot in 16mm, this short film captures the effort of the dancing body as it prepares for a choreography, focusing on the subtlety of gestures required for conceiving a dance and performing it in front of camera.
— With an introduction by the director
In this work, Richard Shpuntoff reflects on identity, split between two cities and two languages, and the limits of spoken, written and film language. This extract is taken from the documentary-maker’s latest feature film but is presented here as a small independent piece.
— With an introduction by the director
This piece is a preliminary excerpt from the feature-length film the director is making during his time in the Joaquim Jordà Residencies programme and explores twenty years of the queer history of New York’s Queens neighbourhood.
An impressionistic portrait of Jackie House (Honey Soundsystem), the alter ego of queer artist and DJ Jacob Sperber, who talks to the camera as he gets ready to perform in front of the unique crowd at the SNAX Club, Europe’s biggest electronic music and S&M party.
Composer, writer and trans activist Terre Thaemlitz spends the night in a half-empty hotel. In the company of the director and without fully revealing her image, she reflects on her ambivalent relationship with gender identity and her place in mainstream society, complicated further by reaching middle age.
— With an introduction by the director
Via a montage of photographs taken in 35mm by the director, a set of reference-point images and snippets of previous works, Garcia presents the project around his first feature-length film, Return to Vega, which he is putting together with the support of the Joaquim Jordà Residencies programme.