What is the connection between rollerblading and modernism? Or the link between paddle pools and capitalism? Between tanning and productivity?

Cinema of the Dam'd and Hotel Maria Kapel have joined with artist Priscila Fernandes to answer these questions with an online film program on the theme of "Endurance." The program will feature three short video pieces by Fernandes, paired with Sydney Pollack’s acclaimed drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They (1969).

Fernandes’ work humorously explores the relationships between work, leisure and capitalism. Her artistic films paint pictures of bodies playing, relating, relaxing and dancing, often humorously and in bright colours. Pollack’s film, released in the waning days of the Hollywood studio system, launches a savage critique of American capitalism, while eerily predicting the excesses of reality TV.

In California, during the height of the Great Depression, drifter Robert (Michael Sarrazin) and misanthrope Gloria (Jane Fonda, never shadier) compete with other desperate couples in a gruelling dance marathon for a $1500 prize. The contest stretches on for weeks, as a sadistic emcee (Gig Young) and a rabid audience push the dancers to their limit. Sydney Pollack’s grim, but fascinating drama is one of the most pessimistic Hollywood films ever made. Hustling between the backstage power plays, and the dizzying dance-offs, Pollack exposes the cruelties of showbiz spectacle.

Fernandes will join us for a discussion on Zoom after the films.

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Schedule

Priscila Fernandes: 'Calibration Circle' (2011, 2 minutes)
Priscila Fernandes: 'Gozolandia' (2016, 17 minutes)
'They Shoot Horses Don’t They' (Sydney Pollack 1969, 120 minutes.)
Priscila Fernandes: 'Product of Play' (2011, 4 minutes)

Find our virtual cinema & more detailed directions on how to connect here. 

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About Priscila Fernandes
Priscila Fernandes (1981, Portugal) is a visual artist living and working in Rotterdam. Her practice is rooted in an ongoing research into education, play, and the dialectics of work and leisure. She works in a broad range of media, from video, installation, sound, sculpture, drawing, painting, photography and text. She is currently artist in residence at Hotel Maria Kapel.

About Hotel Maria Kapel - HMK
Hotel Maria Kapel is an artist-in-residence, exhibition space and cinema in Hoorn which supports national and international artists in the production of new work. HMK’s 2020 exhibition programme Slow Burn explores the politics of the artist residency and the creative sector in a time of ongoing precarity. This year HMK asks: How can we build practices of care within the limits of an exploitative system, with which we are all complicit?