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CinemaPRO -
Friday, December 12, 2014 - 20:30
Editing:
Michael Robinson
Sound:
Michael Robinson
Romanian premiere
In THE DARK, KRYSTLE, footage from the popular 1980s soap opera Dynasty is skilfully turned into an unsettling psychodrama that pits against each other the polar-opposite female protagonists of the TV show, Krystle and Alexis. Making use of soap opera’s good-evil archetypes and their trademark emotive gestures, Robinson’s dramatically-precise montage and electronic score transports the characters in a multi-layered, metaphysical realm. Recalling David Lynch’s split-psyche narratives, The Dark, Krystle transcends its source material to become a wholly original and self-contained work of cinema. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF).
Director:
MICHAEL ROBINSON (b.1981) is an American film, video and collage artist whose work explores the joys and dangers of mediated experience, riding the fine lines between humor and terror, nostalgia and contempt, ecstasy and hysteria. His work has shown in both solo and group shows at a variety of festivals, museums, and galleries including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, the British Film Institute London Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art P.S.1, or the Sundance Film Festival. He was featured as one of the 50 Best Filmmakers Under 50 by Cinema Scope magazine in 2012, and listed among the top ten avant-garde filmmakers of the 2000's by Film Comment magazine.
Contact:
michaelblayneyrobinson[at]hotmail[dot]com
Festivals, awards:
- Oberhausen International Short Film Festival 2014
- Best Experimental Film - Melbourne International Film Festival 2014
- Vienna International Film Festival 2014
- BFI London Film Festival 2014
- Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Montreal 2014
- New York Film Festival: Views from the Avant-Garde 2013
Curator's statement:
Of Robinson, curator and writer Colin Beckett said in a lecture on the current state of experimental cinema that his films "romanticize the ironic and ironize the romantic, refusing pride of place to either one of them". THE DARK, KRYSTLE (which premiered in the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde last fall) is one of Robinson’s most focused forays in this regard, using as its source material two women, one suffering and the other scheming, from the Eighties soap opera Dynasty. A montage of Krystle’s tormented expressions presents her in varied states of dress and distress, her bangs windblown in one shot, her hand clutching a Danielle Steele novel in another; the second part of the film answers the first with a montage of Alexis drinking an astounding variety of alcoholic beverages. Accompanied by Alexis’s taunts played as voiceover, Robinson’s montage is dense and accumulative, underlining the sadistic psychodrama at the heart of the show.” (Genevieve Yue, Film Comment)
Of Robinson, curator and writer Colin Beckett said in a lecture on the current state of experimental cinema that his films "romanticize the ironic and ironize the romantic, refusing pride of place to either one of them". THE DARK, KRYSTLE (which premiered in the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde last fall) is one of Robinson’s most focused forays in this regard, using as its source material two women, one suffering and the other scheming, from the Eighties soap opera Dynasty. A montage of Krystle’s tormented expressions presents her in varied states of dress and distress, her bangs windblown in one shot, her hand clutching a Danielle Steele novel in another; the second part of the film answers the first with a montage of Alexis drinking an astounding variety of alcoholic beverages. Accompanied by Alexis’s taunts played as voiceover, Robinson’s montage is dense and accumulative, underlining the sadistic psychodrama at the heart of the show.” (Genevieve Yue, Film Comment)