Vivian Ostrovsky
Director · b. 1945 · Manhattan, New York, USA
Vivian Ostrovsky (born on November 17th 1945 in New York, United States) is an experimental filmmaker and curator. Despite being born in New York, Ostrovsky spent most of her childhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and did her secondary studies there. She then pursued her studies in psychology and film at the Sorbonne University in Paris. She began working for Ciné-Femmes, a group which fought for feminism and its recognition. In 1980, she became a filmmaker and abandoned her career as an activist. She organized a number of festivals, one of them being Jerusalem. Ostrovsky’s films explore the theme of transit and she situates herself after French filmmaker and critic, Yann Beauvais between the “journal film” and the “collage film”.
Movies8
Movie7.0"The film is a travelogue of sorts. In 1960 my family lived in Brazil when my father discovered his sister and brother in Moscow, who he hadn't seen for 40 years, were still alive. Since they couldn't leave the USSR we went to visit them regularly for about 15 years. At the time I had my 8mm then a super 8 camera with which I filmed the family, our outings, picnics, markets and their homes… I decided to use this material, which was not very interesting per se, by mixing it with Soviet found-footage of the same period (1960's, 1970's, 1980's). I used feature films, propaganda footage, newsreels, etc. The result is a kind of Khruschev-era mix with a collage of Soviet music and a voice-over of my memories of the Cold War period."
Nikita Kino
2003 · 1 votes
MovieDocumentaryA fragmented tribute to Ukranian-Brazilian novelist and fashion journalist Clarice Lispector that interrogates the idea of "in-betweenness," the intermission, a hiatus.
Hiatus
2018
Movie9.0"Readings. A place. Purity of lines. Fine angles. Dominance of whites and blues. Fragility of tapered glasses." A visual evocation of the writing of Katherine Mansfield.
Mansfield K.
1988 · 2 votes
MovieThe voices say a story. forget it. Of what time. And who speaks. Both of them. One or the other. later. Others may be. Of chance. Which would cross in this narrative. When. The times have intermingled. The winds meet. History. Pictures. The summer. Humble vacancy with furtive foliage. Fragile memory. Light is a trace of forgetfulness.
Été
1991
MovieAn unknown writer written under the pseudonym of Laure at the beginning of the century. Readings. Geography. The places of a writing. The forces that create, traverse and lose it. The two image strips will be contiguous on the same screen. Their continuous and simultaneous operation. Two mirrors. The voices and their silences are reflected in it. Fade away.
Laure
1984
MovieReadings. Heinrich von Kleist / Robert Walser. Contiguous. They talk about imagination. Walser imagines Kleist, Kleist nobody, but Penthesilea. In the new desert islands that are the enclaves of flowers of the city. Roses of sidewalks. Wild spaces with anonymity, truncated and without paths, in the banal stones of any career, inscribe and break the voices of an abrupt literary, hermetic and arid fragments in the image of places, almost no of place. Images figures of writing. In the blind corner. Without access. Very few signs.
Kleist
1993
Movie8.0DocumentaryBased on a correspondence between Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha and the filmmaker, this portrait was made for an exhibition at the MAM (Museum of Modern Art) in Rio de Janeiro. Ione Saldanha (1919-2001) was a contemporary of Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, and Vieira da Silva, all of whom were her friends. She abandoned painting on canvas for more sculptural supports like batten and bamboos which she shaped with color. Matisse was constantly present in her mind and work for inspiration.
CORrespondência e REcorDAÇÕES
2013 · 1 votes
MovieDocumentaryA new short film by Vivian Ostrovsky remembering Chantal Akerman, beginning with their first meeting in the early 1970s. Using her own footage of Chantal Akerman, the filmmaker remembers a few moments that illustrate Chantal's personality. Forty years of friendship condensed into four minutes...