Disturbing strangeness. "Dialogue Secret" by Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki

«Rebellion is at the core of Klonaris and Thomadaki’s art. Whereas, in the 1970s, the experimental film scene was dominated by a formal, often non-figurative approach, these two major figures of the cinematic avant-garde practised and theorised what they called the Cinema of the Body (Le Cinéma Corporel) focusing on the female body and identity as a site of visual and political exploration. In their hands, cinema became a powerful tool for subverting the Western patriarchal imaginary, and destabilising norms governing the body and its representations». Maud Jacquin

A visionary hallucination or a wakeful dream, Unheimlich I : Dialogue secret revisits the Freudian « uncanny » bringing to life a dazzling mental imagery. Suspended between movement and immobility, between shadow and light, the performers’ bodies move silently in a black void. Klonaris and Thomadaki have associated the Unheimlich with a « repressed pre and postpatriarcal feminine which leaps from the unconscious and unsettles identity categories as well as cinematic language codes ».

Texts : extracts from the Jeu de Paume programme of the retrospective «Klonaris/Thomadaki, Manifeste. Le Cinéma Corporel», curated by Katerina Thomadaki and Maud Jacquin, Paris, Spring 2016.

 

A programme dedicated to Maria Klonaris (1950-2014). In presence of Katerina Thomadaki.

 

Maria Klonaris & Katerina Thomadaki: 

Unheimlich I : Dialogue secret, 1977-79, 35mm colour, 70min, silent. Restored from Super 8 to 35mm by the French Film Archive/CNC under the supervision of the filmmakers and with additional funding by the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, Athens.