Jean-Michel Frodon is a French journalist and historian of cinema. Rasha Salti, based between Beirut and Berlin, is a curator and writer of art and cinema. For Taipei Biennial 2020, Frodon and Salti collaborated with COLLECTIVE to present installation Interspecies Cinematic Encounters (2020).
Interspecies Cinematic Encounters explores the myriad ways in which cinema has imagined, represented, and incarnated encounters between beings that are commonly seen as belonging to different realms. Assembling excerpts from films where protagonists of our one plural world, or pluriverse, namely humans, animals, plants, minerals, water, fog, ghosts, and spirits come into contact, mediate, affect, fuse, or transform one another, the work invites viewers to wander and wonder, in a scenography of screens convening around poetic and sensate motifs.
The excerpts, between two and six minutes in length, are shown in a loop:
• The Assassin, dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 2015). Central Motion Picture Corporation, Taipei
• The Battle of Tabatô (A batalha de Tabatô),dir. João Viana (Guinea Bissau, 2013). Capricci, Paris
• The Box of Life (Sûndûq al Dunyâ),dir. Ossama Mohammad (Syria, 2002)
• City of Jade, dir. Midi Z (Taiwan, 2016).Seashore Image Productions, New Taipei City
• Comradeship (Kameradschaft), dir. Georg Wilhelm Pabst(Germany, 1931). Praesens-Film AG, Zurich
• The Cow (Gav), dir. Dariush Mehrjui (Iran, 1969).Farabi Foundation, Iran
• The Dead and Other Tales (Chuva É Cantoria Na Aldeia Dos Mortos), dir. João Salaviza and Renée NaderMessora (Brazil, 2018). LUXBOX, Paris
• Father (Otac), dir. Srdan Golubovic´ (Serbia, 2020).Film House Bas Celik, Belgrade
• Fire Will Come (O que arde),dir. Oliver Laxe (Spain, 2019). Pyramide, Paris
• Kongo, dir. Hadrien La Vapeur and Corto Vaclav(Congo, 2019). Pyramide, Paris
• Leila Attacks (Leila attaque), dir. Chris Marker(France, 2006). Les Films du Jeudi, Paris
• Leviathan, dir. Lucien Castaing Taylor andVéréna Paravel (USA, 2012).
• Monte, dir. Amir Naderi (Italy, 2016).
• My Joy (Schaste moe), dir. Sergei Loznitsa(Ukraina, 2010). Pluto Film, Berlin
• Paradise (Le Paradis), dir. Alain Cavalier(France, 2014). Pathé Films, Paris
• The River, dir. Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan, 1997).Central Motion Picture Corporation, Taipei
• Tropical Malady (Sud pralad), dir. ApichatpongWeerasethakul (Thailand, 2004)
Ocula 2020

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