Guest: Mathias Bracke – hand-painted films & live sound

Art Cinema OFFoff is honored to welcome Ghent artist Mathias Bracke. For the very first time, he will bring a selection of his hand-painted films to the big screen. Bracke began experimenting with painting on film in 2020 and is now, five years later, sharing his work with the public. For each of his films, Mathias creates a soundtrack that combines his own music, field recordings and found sounds. For the occasion of this premiere, Mathias will accompany his films live with tape loops and homemade mechanical constructions.

Mathias Bracke on his inspirations for working directly on film and the creative process behind his hand-painted films:

It was during my work for CINEMATEK, when I got my hands on Louis Van Maelder’s film Le canard géométrique (1966), that I first discovered the magic of working on film material without a camera. As a student, I had already seen fragments of Stan Brakhage and Norman McLaren, but their artistic impact had never really sunk in at the time. Perhaps I was too young for it then, or simply not mature enough.

However, after seeing Louis Van Maelder’s work, a huge ​“rabbit hole” opened up for me into all kinds of experimental film. In 2020, I started experimenting with film myself. First, I did some small tests with different materials and techniques until I found a way to work with them more extensively and deeply.

Most of my films have been created over a longer period of time. Sometimes I work very intensively and make several films in one year, after which I put the manual, analog work aside for a while or rework a film that I was not entirely satisfied with. After I have them scanned, the digital files often remain untouched for quite some time before I start working with them again. I often find it challenging to determine exactly what I want to do with them.

When I first started working digitally with my hand-painted films, it felt as if some of the magic of creation was lost. Suddenly, everything could be adjusted – the possibilities seemed endless: colors, contrasts, and so forth. However, after a long period of searching, I decided to make ​“as few” digital interventions as possible: only adjustments in speed, layers and sound addition.

When I was asked to provide live musical accompaniment for the films, I was a little hesitant at first. After all, the films already had their own soundtracks. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The original soundtracks are a montage of my own music, field recordings and found sounds. So the live accompaniment will sound different, but it will remain true to the same spirit.

Currently, I mainly work with analog and mechanical elements – a combination of live recordings on tape loops and simple, homemade mechanical constructions. This creates a soundscape of meditative, asynchronous, unpredictable rhythms and sometimes chaotic sounds. I like the fragility and the ​“accidents” that tape offers me.

In dialogue with Mathias Bracke’s films, we are showing three masterpieces of hand-painted cinema that inspired him in the creation of his own work.