Project BFVPP
With video works by Anna Bella Geiger, the BFVPP project launches at the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil
Devoted to promoting access and preserving films and video works created by Brazilian artists between 1960 and 1984, the Brazilian Film and Video Preservation Project (BFVPP) launches with the Anna Bella Geiger Dossier. An initiative by the Ostrovsky Family Fund (OFF), the project is carried out in partnership with the Associação Cultural Videobrasil and will be launched in the opening week of the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, in an open talk with Anna Bella and the American filmmaker and curator Vivian Ostrovsky.
The event takes place at Sesc 24 de Maio, and will also present an intervention for the 40-Year Special exhibition—part of the Biennial—with seven of Anna Bella’s videos, selected by Clarisse Rivera, being shown on four cube TVs.
One of Brazil’s most celebrated contemporary artists, a pioneer in the use of video in the country, Anna Bella Geiger (Rio de Janeiro, 1933) had ten of her audiovisual artworks restored and digitized by the project, maintaining the standards of the original pieces. These videos, which will incorporated in the Videobrasil Collection, will be available in the Video Library of the 40-Year Special exhibition and, after the event, at the headquarters of the Associação Cultural Videobrasil in São Paulo (schedule by email).
The works that can be consulted are, in chronological order: Passagens I (1974), Passagens II (1974), Centerminal (1974), Declaração em retrato I (1974), Declaração em retrato II (1975), Mapas elementares I (1976), Mapas elementares II (1976), Mapas elementares III (1977), Local da ação (1978) and Quase mancha (1981).
Anna Bella is the first of the artists selected by BFVPP to have her works restored and made available to the public. The project will continue with five other pioneers who experimented with moving images on different media (Super-8 film, U-matic, 1/4 inch, among others): Analívia Cordeiro, Iole de Freitas, Regina Silveira, Regina Vater and Sonia Andrade.
Including works of these artists in the Videobrasil Collection is of great relevance to the Association, as explained by Solange Farkas, both for the quality and importance of the productions and for covering a period prior to the creation of the VB festival, in 1983. “To Videobrasil, whose collection chiefly comprises works created from the 1980s onwards, it is extremely important to include these works from a previous generation, made by these women who were pioneers in experimenting with video in the 1960s and 1970s.”
In order to encourage the reflection around the artists' work, BFVPP also publishes, on its website, original critical texts elaborated for the project. The first essays, addressing Anna Bella’s production, are written by the Brazilian art critic, curator and professor Marisa Flórido Cesar, and by the Honduran writer and critic based in Germany Pablo Larios. Furthermore, like Anna Bella, all artists will get an audiovisual essay featuring testimonials and excerpts from their works.
The Ostrovsky Family Fund (OFF), an American foundation focused on the arts, human rights and social justice—with a special penchant for the moving image—is also responsible for granting one of the prizes at the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil. THE OFF PRIZE, worth R$ 35,000, will be awarded to a young artist, chosen by the jury which includes Adrienne Edwards (USA), Gabriela Golder (Argentina), Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons (Cuba), Patrick Flores (Philippines) and Vivian Ostrovsky (USA).