Asanasa
_Asanasa_ is a trippy trip through the boys-own histories of rocketry and space flight, a wry commentary on gendered fantasies of off-world exploration. The film comprises found footage specially sourced from a 16mm counter-archive, combined with meticulously hand-woven 35mm leaders and eccentric countdowns from the _Lost Leaders_ project. The original score was composed and performed Jackie Gallant, Soar's longtime collaborator (and drummer for Montreal band Lesbians on Ecstasy).
| Director | Matt Soar |
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The leader, that iconic visual identifier announcing to the theater that the film would soon begin. From my earliest encounters with the cinema, that famous countdown always inspired a certain fascination within me, calling up an excited anticipation but also an aesthetic pleasure all its own. I found myself captivated by the unfurling numbers on the screen, almost a film before the film. I appear to share this fascination with filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist Matt Soar, who collects leaders in all their various forms and uses them liberally in his artistic practice, notably with the Lost Leaders series that he began in 2011. The most recent edition, ASANASA (Lost Leaders #21) juxtaposes leaders taken from his personal collection with archival images from NASA in order to present a fantastical allegory highlighting the history of space exploration and that of cinema. The countdown metaphor is doubled back on itself in a mirror-text effect, simultaneously referencing the voyage through the imagination that cinema provides and the very real notion of voyaging through space. An impressive work that beautifully marries found footage and formalist experimental cinema.
Frédéric Savard
Archivist and programmer
- Année 2019
- Pays Quebec
- Durée 5
- Producteur Matt Soar
- Langue Without dialogue
- Résumé court A psychedelic and critical journey through the gendered imagination surrounding rockets and space exploration.
The leader, that iconic visual identifier announcing to the theater that the film would soon begin. From my earliest encounters with the cinema, that famous countdown always inspired a certain fascination within me, calling up an excited anticipation but also an aesthetic pleasure all its own. I found myself captivated by the unfurling numbers on the screen, almost a film before the film. I appear to share this fascination with filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist Matt Soar, who collects leaders in all their various forms and uses them liberally in his artistic practice, notably with the Lost Leaders series that he began in 2011. The most recent edition, ASANASA (Lost Leaders #21) juxtaposes leaders taken from his personal collection with archival images from NASA in order to present a fantastical allegory highlighting the history of space exploration and that of cinema. The countdown metaphor is doubled back on itself in a mirror-text effect, simultaneously referencing the voyage through the imagination that cinema provides and the very real notion of voyaging through space. An impressive work that beautifully marries found footage and formalist experimental cinema.
Frédéric Savard
Archivist and programmer
- Année 2019
- Pays Quebec
- Durée 5
- Producteur Matt Soar
- Langue Without dialogue
- Résumé court A psychedelic and critical journey through the gendered imagination surrounding rockets and space exploration.
