José Val del Omar

José Val del Omar - Mannequins

Technique: Super 8

Artist Biography:

 

Includes the photograph "Laboratorio PLAT". Photographic print on cotton paper. 50 x 50 cm. José Val del Omar is the most recognized experimental filmmaker in Spain and one of the European leaders in audiovisual innovation. In 1974, Amos Vogel, director of the New York Film Festival, described him as one of the greatest undiscovered artists in international cinema. Val del Omar stands out as a unique figure in the history of experimental cinema. This is due not only to his technical innovations, but also to the evolution that is clearly evident in his four-decade career. It began in the 1920s with his poem-films connected to Dadaism and Surrealism, followed by expanded cinema in the 1950s and continued in the 1960s and 1970s with underground films. In the following years, he devised a number of extraordinary inventions as a result of his PLAT (Picto Luminic Audio Tactile) research laboratory. Bionic cyclo-tactile optics, Tactilvision, Apanoramic Image Overflow, and Diaphonic Sound are some of them. The Laboratory is part of the permanent collection of the Reina Sofia Museum. The "cinemista" (filmmaker + alchemist) Val del Omar, managed to merge aesthetics and technology in his work, creating visual and experimental poems. His work reaches dimensions never before explored, not only in the poetic content, but also in the sensory range in which we experience his films. In this sense, we can draw a parallel line between Val del Omar and the artists-inventors of the Renaissance. Val del Omar for more than 30 years advocated and promoted the use of the 8 m/m tape format. of the 8 m/m tape format that he baptized as substandard cinema. He was a pioneer in photographic miniaturization and in 1930 he made his first microfilm and later, on March 23, 1935, he organized the first public screening of this film at the Tivoli cinema. Although it would be Kodak who would manage to standardize its super 8mm film format - an improved version of its 8mm tape -, presented for the first time at the Tivoli cinema in 1935. Although it would be Kodak that would succeed in standardizing its super 8mm film format - an improved version of its 8mm tape - presented for the first time at the Uniatec congress in Milan in 1964, Val del Omar had already developed an 8.75mm tape 20 years earlier. France, unsuccessfully, tried to propose it as a standard at that congress. It was precisely the latter that was used for the more than 50 Misiones Pedagógicas documentaries. Val del Omar's great interest was to promote the implementation of this film format for television as a technological development that would allow a much simpler and democratic relationship between the public and cinema. Proof of this were the many actions he carried out, such as his participation in the Fotokina exhibition in Cologne in 1963, the Vía Libre España operation for the 1964 New York World's Fair, or the 1965 Barcelona film congress.