Film series curated by George Stolz
The MACBA presents, for the first time in Spain, a retrospective of the cinematographic work of Hollis Frampton's (Ohio 1936- New York 1984), filmmaker, photographer and pioneer in the digital arts. Frampton first became interested in photography at the age of nine when his uncle gave him the Kodak Brownie that would determine his life's work. As an adolescent he studied at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts where he met Carl Andre and Frank Stella, both of whom went on to become recognized artists. At the beginning of the 60's when he finished his University education at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Frampton moved to New York. There his passion for photography brought him into the world of avant-garde film and he became a member of the blossoming "New American Cinema" movement which reached its peek in the 60's and 70's.
To Frampton, film was the final "machine," the term he used to refer to his generation: "The Machine Age," and probably the last art that would be transmitted to us through the senses. Hollis Frampton was a professor at the State University of New York and created a center for Media Studies that attracted many well known filmmakers. This association closed just one month before his death in March of 1984.
Frampton is a key figure of Experimental Film from the 60's and 70's not just for his movies, but for his theoretical essays as well. He pertained to a generation of filmmakers who shared the advent of Conceptual Art and the expansions of the borders of Art and was a bridge between historical Experimental Film and the new video model.
The force behind almost all of Frampton's work comes from two points of tension: that which exists between still and moving images and that which exists between images and words. From the meeting of those two points came his most well known films; Nostalgia (1971) and Zorns Lemma (1970); which convey a rigorous and intellectual discourse which is still impregnated with an ephemeral and hypnotic poetry that one can only achieve on film. His essays on Film and Art attack the same ideas as his movies—take for example, Film in the House of the Word, Incisions in History/Segments of Eternity, and his Dialogues (written with Carl André)—and are eruditely written with a unique intelligence and an exquisite style.