The next 19 y 20 of September, the El Bartolí botanical garden, headquarters of Todolí Citrus Fundació in Palmera, and the gardens of the Hotel Montsant in Xàtiva will once again host a new edition of Avant-garde Cinema in the Garden, an exhibition dedicated to experimental and avant-garde cinema. Promoted by Todolí Citrus Fundació from 2022, This project proposes a dialogue between cinematographic creation and the unique citrus landscape created by art curator Vicente Todolí. Throughout these five years, The cycle has been articulating a journey through different ways of approaching nature through cinema, dedicating each edition to a specific topic: the garden, botany, the water and, on this occasion, the earth understood as a sensitive territory.
Under the title The sensitive field, This fifth edition proposes a mythical and nostalgic reading of nature through films and characters that advocate ways of life deeply integrated into the countryside and rural life.. Works inspired by the philosophy of poets such as Virgil, whose Georgics constitute an ode to the land and agriculture; or in the botanical view of Emily Dickinson, who wrote countless verses on botany; the works gathered in the program portraits of artists or gardeners who live in communion with nature, understanding it as something “sacred and valuable”; or psychedelic abstractions and explosions of color that reveal these filmmakers' fascination with the natural world.
The program brings together works by classic authors of experimental cinema such as Bruce Baillie, Marjorie Keller o Bruce Elder, alongside contemporary filmmakers such as Jodie Mack and Joel Schlemowitz. You can also see the film that emerged from the collaboration between the artists Peter Nadin, Aimée Toledano and Natsuko Uchino, a work that understands the cultivation of the land as an artistic practice and a form of knowledge.
Consolidated as one of the most unique cultural events of the Valencian rentrée, Avant-garde Cinema in the Garden offers every September the opportunity to discover cinema of extraordinary artistic and poetic value, usually far from commercial circuits and closer to the field of visual arts. The outdoor screening experience, in dialogue with the landscape of El Bartolí and the gardens of the Hotel Montsant, turns each session into an invitation to look at cinema from another perspective.
