Pelicula Films Portraits: Break the artist’s intimacy

Pelicula Films is a Montreal-based production company that was featured, along with its CEO, on April 1. Photo taken from Pelicula Film’s Facebook page.

The Phi Centre hosted an evening of film portraits on April 1 featuring Pelicula Films and Oz Yilmaz

Art is everywhere. Well, the final artworks are. But what about the work process behind it? With the launch of its project Portragram at the Phi Centre, Montreal-based production company Pelicula Films decided to shed light on a whole lot of emerging visual artists—featured were Stephen Scofield, Peter Krausz, François Morelli, Pelicula Films CEO Oz Yilmaz, Karim Jabbari, Adeline Benhammouda, Pamela Vergara, Gabor Szilasi and Yassin Narcy Al Salman.

Pelicula Films is a Montreal-based production company that was featured, along with its CEO, on April 1. Photo taken from Pelicula Film’s Facebook page.
Pelicula Films is a Montreal-based production company that was featured, along with its CEO, on April 1. Photo taken from Pelicula Film’s Facebook page.

Freshly founded in 2015, Pelicula Films has a goal to produce creative images and, according to the company’s website, go beyond the industry standards in terms of films, commercials and documentaries.

On April 1, Pelicula Films teamed up with the Vues d’Afrique international film festival for its Portrait Premiere event, the first part of which featured Portragram. The second part showcased six short films from the 2016 edition of the Rallye Expos, an annual collection of artistic installations on African and Creole countries. The 32nd edition of the Vues d’Afrique festival will run from April 17 to April 24 at the Cinémathèque Québécoise de Montréal.

Portragram celebrates the stories behind several artists with a selection of nine cinematic portraits running five minutes each, all directed by Walid Kafi.

Five minutes is short, yet the aesthetically pleasing mini-portraits presented by Pelicula Films are successful at completely immersing the viewer into the intimate world of the creator and the place where the magic happens. The Romanian-Canadian painter Peter Krausz is one of the artists featured in the portraits. The birth of the painter and his art happens against a transcendent backdrop of classical music.

From the craft to the artwork, the relationship between Krausz and his warm colour landscapes comes alive. Krausz hopes this documentary of his work will be presented in as many places as possible. He didn’t find it challenging to open the doors of his studio. “For me it has been quite easy [to work with director Walid Kafi], since I’ve been teaching at UdeM for years,” Krausz asserted on letting people get into his artistic universe. “We owe this to others, to artists.”

In Portragram, the artist suddenly becomes the subject of the art itself. This will to build a bridge between the art and the artist, as explained by Kafi, is part of a broader project of 50 portraits to be completed in 2017. Behind Pelicula Films’ selection lies a purpose: none of these artists’ works have been shown at a film festival, which led Yilmaz, who works in photography, and director Walid Kafi to help talented photographers, painters, a sculptor, a mosaicist, a woodworker, a performance artist and a musician from the Quebec art scene express themselves. “It is beyond our obligation as citizens to support something that is unique and be proud of those artists that represent us,” Yilmaz said in a question-answer session with the audience after the screening. His solo black-and-white photography exhibition, displayed on site, came as a foretaste of the event.

“Art built cultures,” Yilmaz said to close the event, reminding of Pelicula Film’s initial objective. “We are doing this for the next generation, so young people can come forward as artists.”
For more info on Pelicula Films, visit pelicula.ca

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