Saturday November 19, 2pm: Authorship and Why We Make Things with Filmmaker Oliver Laxe
Learn about Laxe’s newest film-in-progress and what he thinks about authorship and why we make things in a discussion at The Project Room. And join Laxe for the premiere of You All Are Captains at the Northwest Film Forum.
Oliver Laxe is a French Spanish filmmaker who moved to Tangiers four years ago where he created and now runs “Dao Byed”, a 16mm film workshop with children. This workshop led to his first feature film, You All Are Captains (2010), a portrait of the daily lives of a group of youth in Tangiers, Morocco and an examination of their increasingly stressed relations with the director, whose specious motives tip off others around him that his concerns lie more with his own film than the children he’s working with.
From the director:
“The spectator had to be aware that the cynical and stupid person I play in the film is the same person who “feels” when making the film. This becomes obvious when I jump out of the film and get behind the camera, where my presence is strangely enough stronger. I wanted You All Are Captains to be a romantic film without seeming to be one.”
More From the Artist:
Born in Paris in 1982, I’m the son of Spanish emigrants. After finishing my studies in Cinema and filmmaking in Barcelona at the Pompeu Fabra University I moved to London, where I filmed in 2006 Y las chimeneas decidieron escapar, a 16mm short film made in collaboration with Enrique Aguilar. This film, screened at the Gijon International Film Festival, won the Val del Omar award at the Granada Experimental Film Festival, and the INJUVE Award from the Spanish Ministry of Culture. I then ventured to Africa, spending the last four years in Tangier where I filmed in 2007 Suenan las trompetas – ahora veo otra cara, a short film homage to Andrei Tarkovkski for the Spanish edition of the Chris Marker movie Une journée dans la vie d’Andrei Arsenevich. This film was screened at the National Gallery of Dublin and the Reina Sofia Modern Art Museum. I also filmed in 2007 a medium-length film in 16mm titled París #1, which won the First Prize at Filminho, a meeting of Portuguese and Spanish filmmakers, and at the Playdoc Documentary Film Festival 2009. This film was also screened at the BAFICI, the IndieLisboa International Film Festival, L’Alternativa in Barcelona and Las Palmas International Film Festival. Since my arrival to Tangier I have been developing and implementing Dao Byed, a 16mm filmmaking workshop for disadvantaged children. This project was invited to participate on the 2009 edition of the Berlinale Talent Campus.
You All Are Captains, born from this experience, is my first feature film.
This event is in partnership with Northwest Film Forum