Format VOD
Original format 16mm
Year 1969
Language(s) French
Artist(s) Peter Gidal
Running time 174 min
Films
CLOUDS (1967) 10'
FOCUS (1971) 7'
UPSIDEDOWNFEATURE (1967-72) 62'
EPILOGUE (1978) 9'
GUILT (1988) 40'
FLAREOUT (1992) 15'
ASSUMPTION (1997) 1'30
NO NIGHT NO DAY (1997) 14'
CODA I (2013) 2'
CODA II (2013) 2'
ROOM (DOUBLE TAKE) (1967) 10'
Description
"It's upside down, right side up, negative, inverted—as though Gidal had pushed all his medium's navigational tools to their absolute zero and, in doing so, groped towards a place that appears on no map, a kind of true magnetic north of cinema itself. The viewer, held in this liminal space, this threshold, is by turns (or simultaneously) hypnotized, disoriented, captivated, frustrated and delighted. And it's not just about cinema: Upside Down Feature is packed with radios performing Cage-like sweeps across their dials; typewriters; still cameras; even Man Ray photographs depicting dust on Duchamp's Large Glass. The leitmotif of clocks (their faces, naturally, inverted) is fitting: what we're witnessing, ultimately, may be a countdown, unfolding on the other side of the screen, of all screens; the exhilarating spectacle not only of a medium, but of media itself, in a state of immanence, of almost-emergence."
— Tom McCarthy