Update 01/02/2019: Ultramarine wins an Ammodo Tiger Short Award at IFFR 2019! Congratulations Vincent, Kain the Poet, Lander Gyselinck and the whole cast and crew!
Read more
World premiere screening of Vincent Meessen’s Ultramarine in the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam
25, 26, 29/01/2019
Ammodo Tiger Short Competition
25 Jan 2019 17:15 Pathé 2
26 Jan 2019 15:30 Pathé 2
29 Jan 2019 18:00 Pathé 2
Blue is the chromatic, historical and discursive filter through which a performance by African-American poet Kain unfolds. The famed precursor of hip-hop in the late 1960s delivers his “spoken word” as the Belgian percussionist Lander Gyselinck improvises to the flow of his utterances. Throughout the performance various museum objects— funeral figurines, automaton, astrolabe, mappa mundi, textiles —are juxtaposed to Kain’s own props. They invoke affective retrospections on exile and belonging, slave routes and colonial trade.
“So far, all that has given color to existence still lacks a history”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Ultramarine, refering to a deep blue pigment but also to overseas regions, is a visual poem constructed from locally chosen historical objects. The project has been commissioned by the Printemps de septembre (Toulouse, France) and will be premiered in september 2018 in this city historically connected both to ‘pastel’ blue pigment and to the ‘Gay Science’ of the troubadours. It will later travel for two upcoming solo shows in Montreal (Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery) and Toronto (The Power Plant).
Disrupting the Eurocentric written logic of historiography as well as that of museum classifications, Ultramarine sets a constellation of objects moving and enable them to expose their intertwined histories. The immersive experience of colour, a living, textured, spectral and polymorphic substance is here rendered inseparable from its political component and from cinema as magical practice. The film is conceived as a kind of “narrated exhibition” featuring Kain The Poet – the afro-american poet and performer, part of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) at the end of the sixties and creator of the mythic 1970 album Blue Guerilla. He colors history through spoken word, alluding to his own exile blues in Amsterdam. The music is improvised by drummer Lander Gyselinck.
Ultramarine is composed like a spectrum: it unfolds and intertwines fragments of meaning. This narrative form creates the possibility of connecting Kain’s poetic to a larger frame of investigation: museum objects and artworks stored in various Toulouse museum and in collections of the Occitan region. These objects, connected with the double sense of ‘ultramarine’ (both a color and a colonial reference) are put in dialogue with stage props and reproductions of art works that surround Kain in his Amsterdam exile since the 1980s.
Film credits
Vincent Meessen, Ultramarine, 2018
42 minutes, sound & colour
Directed & produced by Vincent Meessen
Jesus Wept (The Journey of K)
Abridged version, written and performed by Kain The Poet
Music improvised by Lander Gyselinck
With guest appearances by:
Dirk DeJonghe: 35mm film
Serge Nicolo & Germain Berdie: automaton
Noémi Panguiangani: figurines & tunic
Malek Terkemani: astrolabe
Valérie Alingrin: textiles
Gea Russell: photograph
Executive producer: Inneke Van Waeyenberghe
Director of photography: Vincent Pinckaers
Sound recording: Laszlo Umbreit, Rémi Gérard, Frédéric Alstadt
Image editing: Inneke Van Waeyenberghe
Sound editing: Laszlo Umbreit
Sound mixing: Rémi Gérard
Color grading: Miléna Trivier
Textile Installation: Diane Steverlynck
Assisted by: Émilie Lecouturier
First camera assistant: Artur Castro Freire
Second camera assistant: Lucy Mallet-Jemmings
Subtitles: Erik Lambert
Credits: Speculoos
Typefaces: Titra, Belgika
Produced by Jubilee, in collaboration with:
Le Printemps de septembre, Toulouse
Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal
The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto
With the support from:
Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF)
Vlaamse Gemeenschap
Nouveau Musée National de Monaco