Robert Breer, {1974} Fuji

12 years ago : Robert Breer

Robert Carlton Breer (September 30, 1926 – August 11, 2011) was an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor. Son of an inventor and automotive engineer, Breer is known for experimentation with a range of film and animation techniques. Breer was drawn to film through painting in the early 1950s while living in Paris. His interest in geometric abstraction is evident in his first…

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Robert Breer, 1975

Two Swiss teams are racing to qualify for Olympic tickets in their country.

The three-member Swiss teams are gearing up in Doha this week to participate in the main draw of the Elite 16 events in the Qatari capital, which is part of the qualification process for the Paris 2024 Women’s Olympic tournament. The first round of the main draw of the 2024 Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour started on Wednesday. While one player was given a pre-seed in the main draw, the other two have advanced through Tuesday’s qualification rounds. The competition for the Brazilian quota may intensify as Agatha Bednarczuk and Rebecca Cavalcanti, who are currently lagging behind the top two Brazilian pairs in the rankings, have shown no signs of giving up hope and have ensured they qualify for the main draw.4In addition to the men’s main draw in Doha, the Netherlands, America, and Italy are also vying to create a stage for the Olympic ticket race.

Esmee Bobner and Zoe Verge-Depre, the highest-ranked Swiss women’s team in the Olympic rankings, secured two hard-fought wins in three sets on Tuesday but faced a setback in the main draw. They started by defeating Ukraine’s Mariia Hladun and Tetiana Lazarenko 2-1 (22-20, 15-21, 15-11) in the first qualification round and progressed with a 2-1 (18-21, 22-20, 15-7) win against France’s Lezana Placette and Alexia Richard. They have advanced to Pool B, where they will face formidable opponents such as Americans Terren Crabb and Trevor Crabb, Brazilians Barbara Seixas and Carol Solberg, and Italians Marta Menegatti and Valentina Gottardi.

Joana Heidrich and Anouk Verge-Depre, the next highest-ranked Swiss women’s team, also played two tough matches on Tuesday – a tight 2-0 (21-19, 24-22) victory against Poland’s Jagoda Gruszczynska and Aleksandra Wachowicz and a 2-1 (21-19, 11-21, 15-9) win against Spain’s Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno – and have moved on to Pool A, where they will face Swedish Nina Brunner and Tanja Huberli. They will face direct rivals for a Paris 2024 spot. World number one team Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda) of Brazil and Ana Patricia Ramos, as well as Tokyo 2020 Olympic gold medalists Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar of Australia, are the other two teams in that pool.

After a 2-1 (18-21, 21-19, 17-15) victory over Lithuania’s Stasys Van Den Dries and Matas Imantas, the Netherlands’ Steven van de Velde and Matthew Immers secured the first men’s team to qualify for the main draw from the Doha qualification. In the first round, they defeated Patrick Szkudlarek and Adrian Nausch of Austria 2-0 (21-17, 21-14). On Thursday, they will face the top-seeded Dutch pair of Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen in Pool B. Meanwhile, eligible world champions Ondrej Perusic of the Czech Republic and Anders Mol of Norway, as well as Brazil’s Andre Stein and George Wanderley, remain in the same pool.

Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot are the third Dutch pair hoping to boost their Olympic dreams. They are currently behind the other two teams in the rankings, partly because they have competed less in qualifying events. They will start their quest to select a team directly for Pool C. Australians Thomas Hodges and Zachery Schubert, strong contenders for Olympic berth, joined the pool after defeating Portugal’s Joao Pedrosa and Hugo Campos in a 2-0 (21-16, 21-14) shutout and Switzerland’s Marco Krattiger and Florian Breer in a comeback 2-1 (15-21, 21-18, 15-7) victory. Defending Olympic champions Anders Mol and Christian Sorum of Norway and their countrymen, as well as four American teams, including Trevor Crabb and Theodor Brunner, will also compete in Pool C.

Among the four American teams, another duo has secured a spot in the decisive round through a tough tiebreaker. After defeating Switzerland’s Adrian Heidrich and Mirco Gerson 2-1 (21-15, 19-21, 16-14) in the first-round three-setter, Chase Budinger and Miles Evans, the reigning Olympic champions, claimed another hard-fought victory with a 2-1 (21-18, 23-25, 15-13) win against the top-ranked American team of Chaim Schalk and Try Bornstein. Paolo Nicolai and Samuele Cottafavi of Italy, Poland’s Michal Bryl and Bartosz Losiak, and Tokyo 2020 bronze medalists Sherif Younis and Ahmed Tijan of Qatar are all gearing up for a challenging task against Budinger and Evans in Pool D of the Qatar company, their home favorite.

With Daniel Lupo and Enrico Rossi taking the top spot in the men’s main draw’s final available slot, Italy’s Olympic ticket race is also heating up. The third-ranked Italian team celebrated a 2-1 (17-21, 21-14, 15-5) victory over England’s Joaquin Belo and Javier Belo in their opening match before managing a 2-0 (21-12, 21-19) win against the French hopefuls Arthur Canevet and Teo Rotar in their decisive selection sweep. Lupo and Rossi are joining Pool A, where the top-seeded Swedish duo of David Ahman and Jonathan Helvig, Brazil’s Evandro Oliveira and Arthur Mariano, and Germany’s Clemens Wickler and Nils Ehlers await their challenge.

LIGHT CONE is a nonprofit organization whose aim is the distribution, promotion and preservation of experimental cinema in France and around the world.

LIGHT CONE's primary mission is the distribution of the works in its collection, in their original format whenever possible, to cultural organizations such as nonprofits, cinemas, museums, universities, galleries and festivals.

LIGHT CONE's Documentation Center offers a unique collection of written and audiovisual documents for consultation by researchers and programmers. With the addition, in 1999, of the Experimental Film Archive of Avignon (AFEA), the Documentation Center includes over 5,000 print documents (books, periodicals, catalogues), nearly 12,000 audiovisual documents (digital files, DVDs, Blu-Rays, audio and video tapes...) and 1080 thematic records (biographical and institutional files).

Since 2015, LIGHT CONE Editions publishes ebooks on certain filmmakers in the collection. Currently available are Paolo Gioli by Jean-Michel Bouhours and Rose by Rose Lowder. A print publication of Robert Breer, A to Z has been recently released in partnership with AFEA Editions.

LIGHT CONE also undertakes actions to preserve film works through numerous digitization projects (having been in charge of the large digitization project for the 24/25 web portal in 2011), as well as a digitization program financed by a grant from the National Center of Cinematography (for the films of Patrick Bokanowski, Germaine Dulac and Rose Lowder). LIGHT CONE has taken the initiative to propose an agreement with the Cinémathèque Française regarding the preservation of original negatives.

In 2014, LIGHT CONE received the support of the region Ile-de-France as part of the program Fabrique de Cultures to create a residency program for the post-production of experimental video-based works. The Atelier 105 is open to all experimental filmmakers, whether or not they are members of the organization. A specially equipped workspace in LIGHT CONE's premises, including an editing station, sound mixing software, a color-correction monitor and computers dedicated to file encoding and DCP creation, is made available to the artists.

In the process of researching existing experimental film works, I really like one of Stan Brakhage's works called Stellar, in which some color overlays appear to be very mysterious and bold, and I would like to experiment with this in my work as well.

I was also inspired by the work which named Breathing produced by Robert Breer, this work is made up of a number of unpredicted lines, uncomplicated but interesting, Robert Breer uses those lines to materialise the abstract sense of breath. In my work, I would like to use messy lines to express some abstract emotions, for example, a woman might be excited, overwhelmed when she first finds out she is pregnant, at first, I didn't know how to express such emotions, but after seeing Robert Breer’s work I thought I could experiment with lines. And I also wanna use lines to manifest striae gravidarum that would appear on a pregnant’ s belly during late pregnancy.

Robert Breer, {1956} Image by Images IV

Robert Breer, Eyewash, 1959

Le Mouvement / The Movement / Paris 1955, Texts by Pontus Hulten ('MOUVEMENT-TEMPS ou les quatre dimensions de la PLASTIQUE CINÉTIQUE', and 'Petit Memento des Arts Cinétiques'), and Roger Bordier (’Cinéma', and 'L' Œuvre Transformable'), 'Notes pour un Manifeste' [’Le Manifeste Jaune’] by Victor Victor Vasarely, (pdf here), Galerie Denise René, Paris, New York, NY, and Düsseldorf, 1955/1975 [Exhibitions: Galerie Denise René, Paris, April 6 – 30, 1955; New York, NY, Anniversary Exhibition, April 1975] [ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. Photo © ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Photo: Franz J. Wamhof]. Feat. Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Yaacov Agam, Pol Bury, Jesús Rafael Soto, Jean Tinguely, and Victor Vasarely, plus sequences of the film directed by Pontus Hulten and Robert Breer realized in 1955 for the first show 'Le Mouvement' (1955)

Eyewash - Robert Breer (1959)

Psychedelic Art / Robert Breer - 1965

Robert Breer -Early 1950’s

Robert Breer Untitled 1952 Oil on Canvas