Premiere screening of two visually innovative video documentaries as a performance with live music and HD projected visuals.
Paul Neagu - Horizontal Rain. A video poem dedicated to the memory of Romanian sculptor Paul Neagu (1938-2004). Neagu, who worked in London for many years, was the complex and uncompromising artist considered by many to be the spiritual heir to Constantin Brancusi.With the kind support of Paul Neagu Estate.
The Personal and the Political - Uncle Izu. Death of a utopia. A painful, intimate and sometimes funny exploration of the stories behind WW2 communist resistance fighters later betrayed by their own Party.
The films, performance and ethnographic records question the nature of memory and truth.
Composer and performer: Alexander Balanescu Documentary writer-director, cinematographer and editor: Yossi Balanescu
Romanian born Alexander Balanescu leads the energetically creative Balanescu Quartet. He is a truly interdisciplinary artist - composer, improviser, and a performer for stage and screen. He has collaborated with artists and musicians crossing many boundaries and genres such as pop stars the Pet Shop Boys, Kate Bush and Talking Heads' David Byrne, as well as working in partnership with John Lurie, Michael Nyman, Gavin Briars, Keith Tippett and Philip Glass, to mention but a very few. Balanescu's collaboration with Ada Milea, an innovative two-hander 'opera' The Island based on a play by the Romanian Surrealist poet Gelu Naum, has been touring Europe to great acclaim and was shown at the Institute last year. His last MUTE Records album 'Maria T' is an homage to the legendary Romanian folk singer Maria Tanase. Balanescu's recent work includes Transtango with Argentine composer Pablo Mainetti.
Yossi Balanescu-Bal is a visual artist and director/producer of film documentaries and of experimental fiction. He has exhibited in Bucharest, Tel Aviv, Florence, Geneva, Paris and London. His work is in art collections in Paris, Geneva, Bucharest, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Florence, Rome and London. He has served as a founder member on the editorial board of Vertigo film magazine, is artistic director of the Eat Our Shorts Film Festival and chairs the National Association for Higher Education in the Moving Image, NAHEMI. He is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at London Metropolitan University.
When: 12 December, 6.30-9.00 pm;
Where: Romanian Cultural Institute, 1 Belgrave Square, London SW1X8PH
Admission: free. Please reserve your seat at 0207 752 0134 or office@icr-london.co.uk.
