Warren Sonbert: Short Fuse & Whiplash
+ Parsi by Eduardo Williams & Mariano Blatt

Pavilion presents a rare 16mm screening of the last two films by the late American experimental filmmaker Warren Sonbert. Sonbert’s work is characterised by a lyrical and polyphonic approach, in which intimate details and gestures lifted from his surroundings and relationships are transformed through intricate montage into gently epic expressions of modern life.

Short Fuse (1992) was made following Sonbert’s diagnosis with AIDS, and Whiplash (1995/97) was completed posthumously according to his instructions, after his premature death in 1995.

Both works mark Sonbert’s return to using ‘jukebox’ soundtracks after nearly two decades of making resolutely silent cinema. As a music writer as well as a filmmaker, Sonbert’s use of music – from Prokofiev to Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bernard Herrmann to Laura Branigan – pins his images with melodrama and emotion, though not in ways that are prescribed.

Sonbert’s films will be preceded by Parsi (2018), a kaleidoscopic video poem by Argentine artists Eduardo ‘Teddy’ Williams and Mariano Blatt.

Shot with a 360-degree camera and edited on a VR headset by Williams, Parsi follows the daily lives of individuals from Guinea-Bissau’s queer and trans community. At the same time, poet Mariano Blatt recites his ongoing poem No Es (It Isn’t) – a mantra of similes written over a lifetime and each beginning with the phrase “Parece que” (Seems like). The result is a world fluid in perpetual motion and observation.