Night of the Experimental Film

Art Cinema OFFoff presents – i.c.w. Ancienne Belgique – the Night of the Experimental Film. Following an enforced silence, the Night is back. This new edition focuses on French filmmaker Philippe Garrel (°1948) and his connections with the Parisian and New York underground. German model, singer and actress Christa Päffgen (1938 – 1988), better known as Nico, appears in all al the films and is the muse of this Night.

The Night traditionally combines films on their original medium with (inter)national live music and new soundtracks. The program was curated by the Ghent record label B.A.A.D.M. – run by graphic designers Joris Verdoodt and Mathieu Serruys – and it is one in which Serruys himself also plays a musical role, alongside a few artists from the contemporary Swedish electronic scene: Maria W Horn, Mats Erlandsson and Linus Hillborg.

The focus is on two rarely shown films from Philippe Garrel’s underground period: Athanor (1972) and Le Berceau de cristal (1975). OFFoff received unique permission to screen them. Together with La Cicatrice intérieure (1972), that OFFoff screened in 2012, they form a triptych dedicated to his beloved Nico. A triptych about which Garrel remarked: ​“C’était sans doute l’influence de Warhol”. They met in 1969 and that same year Nico took Garrel along to the Factory, where she had already been working with Andy Warhol for four years as one of his Superstars. That was where Garrel showed Warhol his recently completed Le Lit de la vierge (1969) and Warhol showed him Imitation of Christ (1967), his latest film with Nico. The two dandies loved each other’s work. Garrel was seduced by Warhol’s autonomous productions about and with a small community of friends. Garrel stated: ​“Après cette rencontre, ma manière a changé”, and even called Warhol ​“un ciné-père”. ​‘Nico Crying’, one of Warhol’s finest odes to her, could not be missing from the program. Warhol also used this reel as the ending for Chelsea Girls (1966), a film that Garrel – although he didn’t see it until 1975 – labelled ​“le seul film de ce genre qui m’ait vraiment marqué”. In all, Garrel made a total of seven films with Nico.

The French actor and filmmaker Pierre Clémenti had already spent time at The Factory in 1967. Clémenti was once in a rock band with Garrel, was involved with him in the radical filmmaker collective of the Zanzibar group in the late ​‘60s, and acted in his films – including Le Berceau de cristal. They were both involved in ​‘La bande de la Coupole’, named after the brasserie in Montparnasse where a lot of actors, artists, film- and theatre-makers met up in the late’60s – pretty much the equivalent of Max’s Kansas City for Warhol and The Factory. With Positano, Clémenti created a beautiful, psychedelic portrait of the most important artistic group of friends around Philippe Garrel during the trip on which he had met Nico.

Here you can read an ode (in Dutch) to Nico, who once visited Ghent together with Philippe Garrel, written by poet, teacher and former artistic director of OFFoff, Sofie Verdoodt.