Films Breed Films – Péter Forgács and Jay Rosenblatt

Found footage and archives are Forgács and Rosenblatt’s raw materials.

Their attitude towards film as medium and their use of private and collective history, are also related. Because both seem to use art to “re-contextualize… ‘the world’ and its ephemeral visual recordings” (Fórgács), it is tempting to show them together.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY DUDAS | 1991

Dir. Peter Forgács  | 44 min.

based on several Dudas films such as 'Deadly Spring' (1930) silent and rare 9.5mm cinema,

carefully cross-cut with the sound version hit, Deadly Spring with Katalin Karády and Pål Jávor (1934). Homage to early Hungarian cinema and Karády.

VENOM – A DIVA IN EXILE |2016

Dir. Peter Forgács |29 min.

Hungarian singer and movie star Katalyn Karády. is the diva in question. Based on a short story by Zsófia Bán and using 1950s film shot by Bán’s father, we follow a fictional account of “K”’s 15-year tropical exile in Brazil. Central to Forgács films are “the nature of memory, the construction of history, and the phenomenology of film-making itself.”

THE CLAUSTRUM (2014

Dir. Jay Rosenblatt |16 min.

Based on psychoanalytic case studies, The Claustrum uses archive footage to follow three women who believe they’re sick and need to be treated to be able to function in a patriarchal society.