Bafici
Program
Venues and Tickets
Between the abstract and the unrecognizable –and barely sensed–, among pulsating bursts of light, color and textures interlinked with darkness, among the quietness of an isolated photogram and the movement from the projector, between visceral tones and formal rigor: Daïchi Saïto’s cinema moves easily through these thresholds and turns them into its home. In recent years, he has prompted a kind of filmography that enables the use of oxymoron, as it delicately stirs up anyone who comes across it. After going through many experiences (he worked in construction in homeland Japan, studied philosophy, and learned both Hindi and Sanskrit in India), Saïto ended up in Montreal, working with cinema’s photochemical materials alongside the Double Negative group, which he cofounded –an important piece of information, since handling celluloid material is an essential part of his films. Saïto came from a long relationship with literature – he acknowledges himself as a bibliophile rather than a cinephile– and later addressed cinema, as a way to move away the veil language places around it and start to actually see. And in the meantime, he revealed through his films all the latent possibilities that lie behind every image. Saïto establishes an intimate relationship with every photogram (which can be filmed and revealed by hand, or found), which he examines thoroughly before they get transformed using tools such as an optic copying machine, the inherent chance of photochemical processes, repetition, pauses, the absence of image, film editing, and sound design. The result can only be experienced properly in a film theater. Let this cascade of words about him be a mere curtain to be moved so you can surrender to this films and their ineffable and rampaging sensorial force. ED