Pablo Pijnappel
Andrew Reid
Galerie Fons Welters - Playstation
28 Nov 2003 – 17 Jan 2004
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Playstation is proud to present the film Andrew Reid by Pablo Pijnappel (France, 1979). Pijnappel, from Dutch/Brazilian origin, graduated this year from the VAV-department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. His last film, 1921-1977 1979-, took part in various film festivals both home and abroad, and was broadcasted nationwide by the VPRO as part of the World Wide Video Festival.
The lead character in Andrew Reid is Pijnappel's stepfather, and to a certain extent the film could be interpreted as autobiographical. It consists of two parallel narratives, in which fact and fiction are slowly interwoven. The backbone of the film consists of telephone conversations between the artist and Reid - conversations in Portuguese, that appear on a black screen, typed-out, translated into English. They are discussing a planned meeting in Amsterdam or Paris, and Reid's preparations for this trip to Europe.
Pijnappel visualised the film's other narrative by means of a familiar artistic practice: the appropriation of existing film fragments. Through a meticulous selection of footage taken from such classics as Blow Up, Fitzcarraldo, and Taxi Driver, the artist illustrates the life story of his illustrious stepfather - a story which is simultaneously narrated on the voice-over track. The combination of the highly improbable, and from time to time totally hilarious biographical facts that we are presented with, and the montage of existing film footage, is irresistible: by emphatically choosing for transitional shots, and large totals, instead of famous scenes, Pijnappel leaves a lot to the imagination of the spectator. The tension in the two narrative strands mounts gradually in equal portions: the more his life story becomes fantastic and improbable, the shakier his story gets through the telephone.
Andrew Reid could be viewed as an investigation into the interaction between word and image, and into the effectiveness of the word when the image is absent: the typed-out phone conversations never get boring, because they are being fed by the life story of that weird guy at the other end of the line, in the film's other narrative. But, in the first place, Andrew Reid is a subtle piece of screenwriting, and crafty play with tension (is he coming? Or isn't he coming? Why is he being so vague about things? Is he doing criminal stuff?) - triggering the imagination of the spectator in an intelligent fashion.
[Xander Karskens]