Archives : film

By Vivian Ostrovsky
Editing: Ruti Gadish
On the Fly Prod. 2020

12’, b/w & clr
Screening formats: Digital file – DCP
French with English subtitles

Going through my mini DVs shot over the past decade, I rediscovered a forgotten night sequence of Chantal Akerman and Sonia Wieder-Atherton leaving a brasserie where we had dined together in Montparnasse. The excerpt stayed with me for a while.
This prompted me to focus on Chantal’s sound work in her films and her very close collaboration with cellist, Sonia Wieder-Atherton with whom she made more than 20 films.
And, since New York, Paris and Moscow were places the three of us had in common, I intertwined some of my images with hers.

By Vivian Ostrovsky & Sonia Wieder-Atherton
Editing: Ruti Gadish
On the Fly Prod. 2020
1’40 clr

Confined-undefined-redesigned and resigned.
What remains?
Music!

By Vivian Ostrovsky
Editing: Ruti Gadish
On the Fly Prod. 2019
4’, b/w & clr
Screening formats: Digital file – DCP

A Russian can say, “I hear the smell…”
A maestro has a vision of what a symphony should sound like.
Jean-Luc Godard “listens to the light”.
In a silent film how can one make the spectator see the sound?
A vivid and noisy assemblage of archival and contemporary imagery meditating on the past and presence of film audio.

An intimate – yet humorous – act of cultural resistance, the cinema of Vivian Ostrovsky is a gesture, implying the filmmaker’s entire body – as she travels around the world, carrying the gear, framing with a camera-eye. She digs in archival footage for an immense repertory of cinematic gestures performed by others – and playfully edits them with her own Super-8 shots. Multi-culturalism and polyglotism are woven into this poetics of displacement.
Bérénice Reynaud

Playing with images and sounds, Vivian Ostrovsky succeeds in foiling the artifices of cinema experimental and not, making it look natural. She quietly endeavors to transform habits of‎ cinematographic creation and consumption, reminiscent of Kubelka’s analogies between cinema and culinary arts.
It’s all a question of measuring and savoir-faire: accompaniment as art.
Yann Beauvais

Vivian Ostrovsky’s new take on old school experimental filmmaking feeds off the quirky, poetic, micro-events and rhythms of daily life. Her directorial expertise spans both uproarious and meditative fugues of footage found and shot and encompasses inventive, often-personal, long-form documentary. Viewers become enmeshed, induced to feel these films vividly, as though they are somehow their own memories.
Kelly Gordon

to buy the DVD

by Vivian Ostrovsky
Edit: Ruti Gadish

On the Fly Prod 2018
06′ b/w & clr
Screening formats: Digital file – DCP
Portuguese with English subtitles or French subtitles

The protagonist of this film is the reclusive, introspective Ukranian – Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector
(1920 – 1977). It is based on a single TV interview broadcast only after her death.
What she says in the 1977 interview is still very pertinent and corresponds to a feeling of ‘in-betweenness’ which I
myself feel today.

By Vivian Ostrovsky
Images: Vivian Ostrovsky
Editing: Ruti Gadish

On the Fly 2017
07′, b/w & clr
Screening formats: DCP –  digital file

Dizziness, in the sense that it inspires artists and filmmakers to move beyond their known borders.
Or how a state of altered perception, instability, and confusion can be a catalyst for exploring new surroundings.
Let go of the ground and attain giddiness or perhaps even foolishness?

Mais ailleurs c’est toujours mieux

by Vivian Ostrovsky
Edit: Ruti Gadish

On the Fly Prod 2016
4’, b/w & clr
Screening formats: Digital file – DCP
English Subtitles

A new short film by Vivian Ostrovsky remembering Chantal Akerman, beginning with
their first meeting in the early 1970s. Using her own footage of Chantal Akerman, the
filmmaker remembers a few moments that illustrate Chantal’s personality. Forty years
of friendship condensed into four minutes…

By Vivian Ostrovsky
Edit: Ruti Gadish
Sound edit: Ruti Gadish, Vivian Ostrovsky
Sound mix: Sharon Shama
Titles: George Griffin

On the Fly Prod 2014
8′, b/w & clr
Screening formats : DCP – Digital file on server

Super 8 reels of Paris catwalks I shot in 1979/1980 were supposed to become an experimental short meditation on couture culture. Its authority has unraveled some since and Deleuze’s definition of style: “creating a foreign language in one’s own language,” encouraged me to loosen the threads of this pursuit. To ponder how fashion and style are interwoven but also influenced by individual flare and whimsy, I stitched together Coco Chanel, Courrèges, Cole Porter and Kaiser Karl with vintage film moments. Then, as now, to grasp the whole cloth of this interface involves finding, but also Losing the Thread…

By Vivian Ostrovsky
Images: Vivian Ostrovsky
Edit: Ruti Gadish
Dream Sequence Animation: George Griffin
Mix: Sharon Shama

Jet Lag Prod 2013
10’, b/w & clr
Screening formats: Digital file – DCP
Portuguese with English subtitles

Based on a correspondence between Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha and the filmmaker, this portrait was made for an exhibition at the MAM (Museum of Modern Art) in Rio de Janeiro.
Ione Saldanha (1919-2001) was a contemporary of Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, and Vieira da Silva, all of who were her friends. She abandoned painting on canvas for more sculptural supports like batten and bamboos which she shaped with color. Matisse was constantly present in her mind and work for inspiration.
This vignette was meant to give an idea of the artist as a person and of her work.

By Vivian Ostrovsky
Image: Vivian Ostrovsky
Edit: Ruti Gadish
Sound edit: Vivian Ostrovsky, Ruti Gadish

Jet Lag Prod 2011
6’, super8, b/w & clr
Screening formats: Digital file