Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

In 1973, Robert Altman`s THE LONG GOODBYE was both a critical and commercial flop. Set in a time transposed, neo-noir Los Angeles, Elliott Gould`s bumbling performance as gumshoe Philip Marlowe left Raymond Chandler aficionados dismayed, as did Vilmos Zsigmond;s kinetic camera work and John Williams` cheeky score. The film quickly disappeared from theaters and was never shown on television. While the film was released on RCA`s short-lived Video Disc format in 1981, the movie has not been seen since. All known prints were destroyed, and the original production elements perished due to a leaky sprinkler system in a Culver City in 1983. THE LONG GOODBYE was written off as permanently lost, an all too important missing link from Altman`s greatest period. It has for years remained a film that is impossible to reassess. Filmmaker and archivist Andrew Lampert’s serendipitously purchased a mysteriously film titled EL ADIOS LARGOS from a collector through the mail in 2002. Closer examination revealed that this 16mm, black and white, cropped, Spanish-language dubbed print was actually a reduction copy of Altman’s 35mm, color, widescreen, English-language masterpiece. Knowing the importance of his discovery, Lampert and a team of volunteer preservationists, including colorization expert Jody Blyer, set out on a decade-plus mission to preserve this unearthed gem using the latest digital technology. Lampert has gone to extensive lengths to painstakingly produce the most authentic, thoroughly accurate version that can be made given the considerable difference in materials.

Andrew Lampert is at the forefront of a new generation of artists engaging with film, video and performance, revisiting and extending the dialogue around an expanded cinema. Lampert pursues the alchemy between artist, art, and audience in a public space, especially that of cinema. Bringing unscripted and chance elements into cinema`s veneer of control, and often working with found material, he foregrounds the contingency of film as a medium. Reveling in cinema as a performative environment, Lampert reclaims this space from a mass media culture to emphasize its potential for immediacy and accident—and to make each of his screenings and performances a one-of-a-kind event. Lampert explores the cinematic experience as content, experimenting with the physical spaces between projector, projectionist, audience and screen, and with the experiences made possible through their convergence. The cinema becomes a site of abstract and magical production in his performances, videos and films, as Lampert investigates the gap between an artwork`s private intent and its public reception. Lampert`s media works defy strict categorization as films or videos. His projects are unified in their emphasis on the frame around the edges of narrative—the genres and clichés in which he cloaks on-screen action, the happy accidents during production, and the unexpected events during a screening that shape the audience`s response and foreground human activity in the cinematic context. Lampert was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1976. His work has been shown at the 2006 Whitney Biennial; The Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York; British Film Institute, London; The Kitchen, New York, and Light Industry, Brooklyn, amongst many other venues. Lampert`s work has also been featured in a number of international festivals, including the New York Film Festival and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. In addition to his work as an interdisciplinary artist, he is the Film Archivist at Anthology Film Archives in New York.