*Photograph by Andrea Ancira, Research document from the Fond Teo Hernández, safeguarded at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky, and presented in the public program “La langue de Teo” at Villa Vassilieff, from February to April, 2016.

SYNOPSIS

An incestuous portrait of the Our Lady of Paris Cathedral reveals the feminine nature of this monument. Part of the Paris Saga, this work is a viewpoint of light and shadow, of good and evil, an articulation of the filmmaker’s most intimate sexual and architectural fantasies surrounding his mother.

BIOGRAPHY

Teo Hernández was a Mexican experimental filmmaker who filmed mainly in a Super 8 format. In 1958, he created, together with Antonio Campomanes, the Center for Cinematographic Experimentation (CEC) in Mexico. From 1966 onwards, he lived and worked in Paris, where he created MétroBarbèsRochechou Art (1980), an experimental film collective, along with Gabriel Badaud aka Gaël, Michel Nédjar and Jacques Haubois aka Jakobois. In his exploration of the relation between image, movement and body, he maintained a close collaboration with Studio dm (1983), a dance company founded in Paris by Bernardo Montet and Catherine Diverrès, who shaped a choreographic praxis strongly tied to literature and butoh. In France, his works have been linked to Cinéma Corporal or The School of the Body, an artistic research movement surrounding gender and body identity. After his death, his work was bequeathed to Michel Nédjar who has kept it safeguarded at the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Pompidou Center in Paris ever since.

Collaborators: based on an original idea by Juan Blanco
Editing: Teo Hernández
Super 8 Film, color, w/sound
Purchased in 1986
Inventory Number: AM 1986-F1081
Collection: Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre de création
Industrielle