Curated and produced by FADO Performance Art Centre, and presented in the context of the 2013 Images Festival.
Film: Rope explores the relationship between cinematic space and the space of live performance, and our ways of interpreting and recollecting the experience of movement within the film frame.
In Dangling that Rope, Andrew James Paterson writes, “In Film: Rope, Gagliardi has accentuated the simultaneous clash and fusion of different disciplines by using as source material a film that has been controversial at a number of different levels: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948). Rope is something of an anomaly within the Hitchcock canon, as it is directed to appear as if consisting almost entirely of one continuous shot. In this respect, it breaks the modernist dictum that film should not appear simply to be recorded theatre. The film eschews montage altogether.”
Rope (1948) is considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most experimental films. Containing only four unmasked cuts, it was shot in single ten-minute takes (the length of a camera roll), tracking in and out of black surfaces (the back of a jacket or a piece of furniture) to create the illusion of even longer continuous shots. This virtuoso technique, which required the constant shifting of stage walls, furniture, and props to make way for the camera, was partly developed by the director in order to convey the illusion of theatrical real time and continuous space.
By paradoxically attempting to re-embody and transpose the movements and positions of the characters in the film in relation to a live audience, Film: Rope perversely exposes and explores the discontinuities and incongruities between cinema and live performance.
CREDITS
Created by Francesco Gagliardi
Performed by Cara Spooner, Francesco Gagliardi, Marcin Kedzior and Michael Caldwell
PROGRAM & EVENTS
Performances
April 12–14, 2013 @ 3:00pm
April 16, 2013 @ 7:00pm & 8:30pm
The Theatre Centre Pop-Up, 1095 Queen Street West, Toronto
FADO Artist Talk, moderated by Andrew James Paterson
April 14, 2013 @ 4:30pm
The Theatre Centre Pop-Up, 1095 Queen Street West, Toronto
Images Artist Talk: Performance and Media Art: Tools with Which to Deconstruct
With Francesco Gagliardi, Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater
April 15, 2013 @ 4:00pm
Urban Space Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto
© Francesco Gagliardi, Film: Rope, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.