Sponsored by the Consulate General of Spain, San Francisco

Known throughout Europe for his wildly gestural, vibrantly colored abstract paintings, Basque artist José Antonio Sistiaga treats color and light as raw materials and sole subject matter in his large scale immersive canvasses, expressing a vigorous and confrontational attitude towards free and direct sensual experience. While actively painting since the 1950s, Sistiaga has since the ’60s assembled an equally masterful body of film work, virtually unknown in the United States. Tonight we screen Sistiaga’s 1970 masterpiece and best-known film Ere Erera Baleibu Icik Subua Arauaren. Meticulously hand-painted over the course of two years the film is a silent, continuously transforming seventy minute experience of pure vibrating light and roiling texture-screened tonight as a brand new print, in all its 35mm Cinemascope glory! (Steve Polta)