IVAN LADISLAV GALETA IS PAF CULT
Ivan Ladislav Galeta, the Croatian filmmaker, performer, experimentalist, and pedagogue, will be one of the main guests of this year's Festival of Film Animation. Although his name is quite unknown in our country, he is a crucial figure in the history of animation and generally the film art, which is evidenced by his work being displayed in prestigious cultural institutions, e.g. in the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where he has five films.
After gaining several university titles, Galeta worked at various European universities, he also used to give performative kind of lectures in museums and galleries, from 1977 to 1990 he was the director of the Multimedia Centre at the Zagreb University, the first institution in Croatia that systematically screened home and international experiments from film and video sphere. These days, Galeta is a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where in the past ten years he has initiated the origin of subjects focused on animation and new media.
At the beginning of his art career Galeta was involved in filming octal symbolical pictures full of "ecstatic emotions" (Metanoia, 1969; Remembering the 2001 Space Odyssey, 1971) and documentary series (Films 1-10, 1975-1980). In the 1980s he has taken the road of experiment and exploration of various media as well as objects that are captured by them. He uses various techniques to distort the film and audio track (Forwards and Backwards: Piano, 1977), experiments with time delay within double projection of one film material on one screen (Two Times in One Space, 1978), makes usage of mirror effect (Mirror ping-pong, 1979), panoramic projections (Left-right: Pedestrians, 1979), or projections on more TV screens at the same time (TV ping-pong, 1977). It leads to unusual images as to composition and space, which activate the viewer's imagination by its multistratification, and initiate metaphysical thinking.
Except the film experiments he also does performances in public spaces, which for Galeta are always a place for art activity and object as well as photographic installations.
Ivan Ladislav Galeta will show personally his work in Olomouc and he is sure to apply his own rich experience as a performer in his lectures, the result of which will be a unique art experience that is fascinating the same as his films.
