Javier Téllez 4 1/2

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The most important works by the New York-based Venezuelan filmmaker, Javier Téllez, were presented for the first time in Europe in a solo show at the Kunstverein Braunschweig (18.4.-14.6.2009); the first monograph on the show is now available. Téllez's work operates in that classical interface between fiction and documentary formerly embraced by the auteur movies directed at Hollywood's pictorial hegemony, in order to challenge it their provocative film festivals. The retreat of the auteur movie into the sheltered sphere of the museum and gallery has - as is patently evident in the case of Javier Téllez - resulted in a massive concentration of the material's dimensionality. Perhaps the most successful variant is his film "La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc", in which he juxtaposes the reworking of the same silent film from 1928 with statements made by 12 psychiatric patients in a dual projection, which illustrates how easy it is to compare obsession and heroism with depression and schizophrenia, or how the question regarding what is normal or abnormal can be pitched.