Impressions en haute atmosphère

José Antonio Sistiaga (4 May 1932, San Sebastián) is a Basque artist and experimental filmmaker best known for his feature-length hand-painted “direct” film, … era erera baleibu izik subua aruaren … (1968–70).

Sistiaga exhibited his first film in 1968 at the Bilboa Short Film Festival. Titled … era erera baleibu izik subua aruaren … (a nonsense phrase coined by Sistiaga’s friend Rafa Ruiz Balerdi), it won a prize for best experimental film. This 10-minute short, hand-painted in a fairly conventional cartoon style, was later renamed De la Luna a Euskadi (“From the Moon to the Basque”).

The artist began painting his abstract magnum opus in 1968. It took 17 months of 10-12 hour days to complete. The silent, 75-minute … era erera baleibu izik subua aruaren … was first exhibited at Madrid in 1970. Subsequent screenings took place in London, Paris, Barcelona and New York City.

Each of the approximately 108,000 frames in … era erera is completely unique, and appears onscreen for only 1/24th of a second. No optical printing techniques or special photographic effects were employed in its production.

… era erera baleibu izik subua aruaren … is the first feature-length example of “direct” cameraless filmmaking, a painstaking technique dating back to the early 1900s. Other well-known artists in the genre include Len Lye, Harry Smith, Norman McLaren (whose work Sistiaga cites as a direct influence) and Stan Brakhage.

In 1988-89, Sistiaga painted Impresiones en la alta atmósfera (“Impressions from the Upper Atmosphere”) in 70mm 15-perf horizontal format, intended for exhibition in giant-screen IMAX and Omnimax theaters. A new work in the same format, Han (sobre el sol) (“Han (About the Sun)”) was begun in 1992.

Two additional 35mm films using a different technique, Paisaje inquietante Nocturno (“Disturbing Nocturnal Landscape”) and En un jardin imaginado (“In an Imaginary Garden”), were completed in 1991. —Wikipedia