Please note: these films may adversely affect photosensitive viewers.

Maysles Documentary Center presents a rare 16mm screening of three films by the late Mexican-born filmmaker Teo Hernández (1939-1993), who lived and worked in Paris from the late 1960s through the early 1990s. Exhibiting a liberatory relationship to movement, these works suggest an ecstatic fluidity between the camera, its subjects, and the erotically charged body of the filmmaker himself— yielding a rapturous, trance-like experience to the viewer that can border on the devotional and/or religious. 

This selection— a small sampling of a major oeuvre— testifies to a major force deserving greater notice in the history of 20th century structuralist cinema. 

Films Include:

L’eau De La Seine

1982-1984, 11 min.

Téo Hernandez films the water of the Seine and its reflections, like a luminous material. The technique of shooting "in motion" gives the images plastic effects.

-Light Cone (Translated from French)

Pas De Ciel

1987, 29 min.

Specially made for the first Danse / Image event at Chateauvallon, this film is the result of the meeting, then the confrontation, then finally the miraculous agreement between the weightless, vicious camera of Teo Hernandez and the improvisation of dancer-choreographer Bernardo Montet. A body between sea and sky, the silent presence of the wind, a few birds: elements of a fundamental mythology transformed into lyrical abstraction. 

- Dominique Noguez

Nuestra Señora de Paris

1981-1982, 22 min.

The camera, carried away by the agility and strength imparted by the arm, is a phallic extension. The vibration of the image, my convulsive rhythm, is an intensified and amplified sexual act.

-Teo Hernandez (Translated from French)