Borja Rodríguez Gimeno

A tree taken in the shadow of the painter from Aix-en-Provence in the Retiro of Madrid with the help of a postcard of "The Seated Man" (1905-1906) and a Polaroid photograph.

‘3X2X1’ presents three individuals taking turns on a podium, never occupying the frame simultaneously. The film is built on the tension between repetition and variation, exploring the mechanics of cinema as a language that is never given in its entirety. The device transforms the montage into a system of alternation, in which continuity does not arise from the juxtaposition of images, but from the transition between the viewer and the watched. Shot in maka.lab (Milan) during the summer of 2024.

After hundreds of sleepless nights, I decided to film the full moon with my Super 8 camera and a roll of black-and-white film, believing it was the source and cause of my insomnia. The film was then imperfectly developed by hand, which created a tension between the two surfaces at play: the film and the moon. The title of this film was given to that roll by my dear friend Alexander Gabriel three years after I had filmed and discarded it. Only then, after an artist I respected had appreciated and named the work, did I decide to consider it a film.

A film 'adaptation' of the spanish coloquial expression 'a un tiro de piedra' (which literally translates to: 'in a throw of a stone'). It is used to describe a short distance from point A to point B. Taking this saying a starting point, I invite my friends to throw stones and to literally use the distance as a unit of measure while I film and stand stand 15 meters away from them [the lenght of a Super 8 cartridge]. Trying to work in the space between language, film and performance. All editing done in camera. The lenght/duration of the film is one single Super 8 cartridge run at 16FPS. Made with: Álvaro Feldman, Borja Rodríguez, Gaby Feldman, Magdalena Orellana and Martha Helga López Developed by: Álvaro Feldman in Acme Obscura

Dos bobinas francesas is a film composed of two Super 8 reels shot in France during a summer trip, both entirely edited in-camera and projected as they came out of the camera. In the first half, the film explores the house and garden of Paul Cézanne, located in the city of Aix-En-Provence, attempting to connect with the light and objects that surrounded the painter. The second reel, filmed in Arles, captures everyday phenomena in the city, postcard scenes of Van Gogh, empty streets, signs of local businesses, or games in front of mirrors, among other things.

The first of PocketBookFilm's open cinematic project. A collection of books and filmed portraits. A group of people gather in the Retiro Park in Madrid with their favorite paperback books. The camera records and interacts with the covers, the words, the gestures and the faces of the participants on a spring afternoon. Participants: Zuriñe Lafón, Álvaro Feldman, Magdalena Orellana, Daniela Delgado, Martha Helga, Elisabeth Tascón, Ramón de Fontecha, Pablo Marín, Luis Lechosa, Nicole Remy, Guille Hormigo, Jorge Calvo Ibar, Julio César Martín, Biviana Chauchi, Gaby Feldman and Sofía Tudela.

I wrote this text while I spent one summer afternoon in Bologna, sitting in front of an empty monumental cinema screen installed for the Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival in the city’s Piazza Maggiore. The subject of the text is the empty cinema screen itself. It is a first approximation of a writing practice performed in real time, in front of a specific phenomena and place. For its final form as a sound piece to be played in the setting of a darkened screening room, the original text was read aloud by Andrea Van Eyck in Madrid on October 4, 2024.

A fifteen meter Super 8 film arrives, with no sign of title or author, by mail to an archive. It does not show signs of having ever been passed through a projector. It gets lost before it ever has a chance of being preserved. This film, composed by means of a text, attempts to describe the now lost images contained in that reel.

This slideshow serves as documentation of a Super 8 cartridge filmed in the Anna Del Bo Boffino in Milan in July 2024. Under the same premise of the first film of the project, five people gather in a park, this time around a plastic chair, and exchange their favorite pocketable books. Summer activities such as throwing a plane make their way into the film. Moving images are brought to a stop in their final form as slides and, as is the case for an image in a book, the viewer is forced to imagine their movement. This is the result of a collaboration between PocketBookFilms and milano based artist collective, Hercole. Participants: Davide Ausenda, Laura Salomoni, Martina Caruso, Margherita Piazza, Alexander Gabriel and Lucas Variz.

On my first visit to the San Fermín festival in Pamplona, I shot a roll of Tri-X Super 8 film of the parade of Los Gigantes, figures that move through the streets accompanied by musicians responsible for giving rhythm to their dances. The images capture impressions of their movement and of the relationship that the city’s children establish with these curious beings, whose size appears spectacular when seen from their peculiar point of view.

One summer afternoon, I asked my maternal grandmother, Teresa, to pose for a portrait. Sitting on a bench, she holds her gaze facing the camera as I film an entire Super 8 reel, emulating an Andy Warhol screen test.