Singularity

Commissioned for "Catalonia in Venice" at last year's Venice Biennale by curator Chus Martínez, Albert Serra's monumental five-screen film project, Singularity is a major work by one of today's most visionary artist-filmmakers. In a series of interlocking episodes, Serra's baroque, sensual epic weaves an era-spanning narrative that recounts the strange presence of a group of people in proximity to a businessman and a mine. But the work's true subject is the solipsism and complacency of a society founded on exploitation — a society forced to constantly develop new forms of technology in order to subsist, and one where individual desires, everyday habits and general corruption work against the very idea of a "renaissance." Both a moodily unfurling 12-hour film and a jagged topography of febrile fragmentation, Singularity is an exciting reconsideration of cinema's possibilities for self-realization, and a confirmation of the importance of intellect, feelings, and sentience in our computer age.

ANDRÉA PICARD

Presented at 99 Sudbury, September 9–17. OPENING: September 9, 8pm–10pm.

Albert Serra’s new feature La Mort de Louis XIV also screens at the Festival as part of Wavelengths.

Image and artwork: courtesy of the artist and ANDERGRAUN FILMS