{"id":15054,"date":"2019-06-12T22:17:29","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T02:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/?p=15054"},"modified":"2019-10-22T23:13:59","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T03:13:59","slug":"margot-benacerraf-is-one-of-the-two-recipient-of-vaeas-paez-medal-of-art-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/margot-benacerraf-is-one-of-the-two-recipient-of-vaeas-paez-medal-of-art-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"MARGOT BENACERRAF is one of the two recipient of VAEA\u2019s Paez Medal of Art 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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June 13th 2019<\/div>\n
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A message from<\/div>\n
The Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ali Cordero Casal<\/div>\n
Chairman<\/div>\n
The Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts<\/div>\n
& the Board of Directors<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Today we celebrate VAEA’s 29th anniversary\u00a0and the 229th\u00a0 birth anniversary of\u00a0\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Antonio P\u00e1ez<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0with this important announcement.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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MARGOT BENACERRAF<\/div><\/h1>
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Margot Benacerraf, Paris, 1959<\/p>\n<\/div>

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We live in the age of images and no other medium has influenced more our perception of reality than film.\u00a0 The train arriving at the station captured on camera by the Lumi\u00e8re brothers in 1896 took us on an endless voyage throughout the human creative imagination.\u00a0 Since their inception in Western culture, films have\u00a0shaped our emotions transforming the way we perceive ourselves, and the world around us.\u00a0 Movies represent the ultimate spectacle; like opera – the creation par excellence of the Baroque period – they transform tales of everyday life into timeless stories, equally epic and lyrical, tragic or amusing, but always illuminating.\u00a0Every film possesses an instant of truth.\u00a0Movies still remain the most popular medium to disseminate creativity and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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About Margot Benacerraf<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Margot`s\u00a0 extraordinary energy; intellectual curiosity and artistic creativity have always remained steadfast, bringing everlasting beauty to the art of filmmaking.<\/div>\n
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Benacerrat is a distinguished Venezuelan filmmaker and film promoter, and a major figure in Latin American film history.\u00a0 Benacerraf was born in Caracas in 1926 to a Sephardic family from Spanish Morocco.\u00a0 While studying philosophy and humanities at the Central University of Venezuela [UCV] her innate creativity and everlasting curiosity prompted her to publish essays and plays that won immediate recognition in her\u00a0 native country and abroad.\u00a0 In 1949 she was invited by Columbia University to travel to New York, where she studied drama with the great German theatrical director Erwin Piscator.\u00a0 It was during this period in New York that she discovered cinema and filmmaking.\u00a0 After completing her scholarship she moved to Paris in 1950 where she studied filmmaking at the prestigious IDHEC [Institut des Hautes Etudes Cin\u00e9matographiques].\u00a0 In 1951 Benacerraf completed her first film Rever\u00f3n, a documentary on the everyday life and creative process of one of Venezuela’s most distinguished artists of the 20 Century, Armando Rever\u00f3n.\u00a0 The film captures with extraordinary subtlety the complex personality and creativity of the eccentric artist.\u00a0 The documentary was screened at the First Berlin Festival in 1952 with the unanimous acclaim of public and critics like Andr\u00e9 Bazin and Lotte Eisner.\u00a0 Araya, her second and most ambitious documentary, was released in 1959; it was screened in the Venice and Moscow film festivals, and at Cannes where it won the International Critics Prize.\u00a0 The film confers an epic dimension to the everyday life of the inhabitants of a salt mining town in the isolated Eastern Venezuelan coast.\u00a0 Araya became legendary among moviegoers and internationally revered by filmmakers and critics.<\/div>\n
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“The film, as Luchino Visconti’s La Terra Trema is a combination of extraordinary beauty, outraged social conscience and almost mythic grandeur. The experience was stunning in 1959. It`s every bit as stunning today.”<\/div>\n
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–\u00a0Stuart<\/span>\u00a0Klawans<\/span>,\u00a0Film reviews, \u00a0The Nation\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Directors Luis Bu\u00f1uel, Roberto Rosellini and Glauber Rocha praised her cinematic work and writers Miguel Otero Silva and Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez often expressed their desire to have her making the film version of their literary works.<\/div>\n
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Margot Benacerraf was a pioneering figure in many ways, as a Latin American female filmmaker and a tireless promoter of Venezuelan and Latin American culture and cinema. In 1965 she was appointed the director of Venezuela’s INCIBA [Instituto Nacional de Cultura y Bellas Artes], the country’s most important cultural institution. She particularly insisted on promoting cultural and educatorial events in the country most isolated regions. In 1966 she founded Venezuela’s National film Archives [Cinemateca Nacional] and actively contributed to the organization of The Union of Latin American Cinematheque UCAL].<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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About Schnabel\u00a0&\u00a0Benacerraf\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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This year VAEA is honoring with the Paez Medal of Art 2019 for the first time two filmmakers, these artists use film as a medium of expression after exploring others. Margot Benacerraf studied philosophy and literature and has always been a conscious writer; by using faces, shapes, and movement she composes in her films a minute- essay on the human condition. Julian Schnabel is a gifted artist who burst onto the art scene in the 1980s, seeking a way out of abstraction; he created iconoclast works that later on in his artistic career flawlessly transformed into moving images; configuring an eloquent narrative of forms. Challenging film critic Andr\u00e9 Bazin’s proposition that film and painting are mutually exclusive, Schnabel seeks in the subject of painting the connection to that centrifugal creative force that prolonged indefinitely into the universe. In a similar manner, the young Margot Benacerraf played with her camera to mimic the ritual dance of the artist she was filming to discover that she was also painting the evanescent reality of a film. The creative process equally fascinates Margot Benacerraf and Julian Schnabel: how does creativity work? Is it possible to capture it on camera?<\/div>\n
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Both filmmakers attempt to recreate those moments when mind and body coincide to produce art, unveiling in the process the limits of human reasoning to understand the complexities of the creative mind. In their films Reveron (1959) and Van Gogh (2018), Benacerraf and Schnabel explore the infinite realities elicited by painting, appealing ultimately to the fundamental fraternal quality motivating every artistic creation.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Texts by: Mario Valero, Assistant professor<\/div>\n
Fashion Institute of Technology New York<\/div>\n
VAEA’s advisory board member<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Vivimos en la era de las im\u00e1genes y no hay otro medio que m\u00e1s haya influido en nuestra percepci\u00f3n de la realidad, que el cine. El tren llegando a la estaci\u00f3n es capturado por la c\u00e1mara de los hermanos Lumi\u00e8re en 1896 nos llev\u00f3, en un viaje sin fin, a lo largo de la imaginaci\u00f3n creativa humana. Desde su inicio, en la cultura occidental, las pel\u00edculas han plasmado las emociones que transforman la imagen en que nos percibimos a nosotros mismos y al mundo que nos rodea. Las pel\u00edculas representan el espect\u00e1culo final; como la \u00f3pera – la creaci\u00f3n por excelencia del periodo barroco \u2013 las an\u00e9cdotas de la vida cotidiana se transforman en cuentos atemporales, igualmente \u00e9picos y l\u00edricos, tr\u00e1gicos o divertidos, pero siempre iluminadores. Cada pel\u00edcula tiene un instante de la verdad. Las pel\u00edculas siguen siendo el medio m\u00e1s popular para difundir la creatividad y la cultura.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Acerca de Margot Benacerraf<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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La energ\u00eda de Margot es extraordinaria; su curiosidad intelectual y su creatividad art\u00edstica siempre se han mantenido firmes, con la belleza eterna y con el arte de la cinematograf\u00eda.<\/p>\n

Benacerrat es una distinguida cineasta venezolana, promotora de la cinematograf\u00eda, as\u00ed como una figura importante en la historia del cine latinoamericano. Benacerraf naci\u00f3 en Caracas en 1926 en una familia espa\u00f1ola sefard\u00ed de Marruecos. Mientras estudiaba filosof\u00eda e humanidades en la Universidad Central de Venezuela [UCV], su creatividad innata y su curiosidad eterna la impulsaron a publicar ensayos y obras de teatro que ganaron el reconocimiento inmediato tanto en su pa\u00eds de origen, como en el extranjero. En 1949 fue invitada por la Universidad de Columbia a viajar a Nueva York, donde estudi\u00f3 drama con el gran director teatral alem\u00e1n Erwin Piscator. Fue durante este per\u00edodo en Nueva York, que ella descubri\u00f3 su inclinaci\u00f3n genuina hacia el cine y la realizaci\u00f3n cinematogr\u00e1fica. Despu\u00e9s de completar su beca se traslad\u00f3 a Par\u00eds en 1950, donde estudi\u00f3 cine en el prestigioso Instituto de Altos Estudios Cinematogr\u00e1ficos (IDHEC). En 1951 Benacerraf complet\u00f3 su primera pel\u00edcula: Rever\u00f3n, un documental sobre la vida cotidiana y el proceso creativo de uno de los m\u00e1s distinguidos artistas del siglo XX, Armando Rever\u00f3n de Venezuela. La pel\u00edcula capta con extraordinaria sutileza la compleja personalidad y la creatividad de este exc\u00e9ntrico artista. El documental se proyect\u00f3 en el Primer Festival de Berl\u00edn en 1952, con el reconocimiento un\u00e1nime de p\u00fablico y cr\u00edticos como Andr\u00e9 Bazin y Lotte Eisner. Araya, su segundo y m\u00e1s ambicioso documental, fue lanzado en 1959; se proyect\u00f3 en los festivales de Venecia y Mosc\u00fa y en Cannes, donde gan\u00f3 el Premio Internacional de la Cr\u00edtica. La pel\u00edcula confiere una dimensi\u00f3n \u00e9pica a la vida cotidiana de los habitantes de una ciudad minera de sal, ubicada en la aislada costa del este venezolano. Araya se torn\u00f3 legendaria entre los cin\u00e9filos y fue internacionalmente reverenciada por cr\u00edticos y cineastas.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cLa pel\u00edcula, al igual que La Tierra Tiembla de Luchino Viconti, es una combinaci\u00f3n de belleza extraordinaria, conciencia social indignada y de casi una grandeza m\u00edtica. La experiencia fue impresionante en 1959. Y cada parte de ella est\u00e1 actualizada hoy por hoy\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
– Stuart Klawans, cr\u00edticas de cine, La Naci\u00f3n\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Directores como Luis Bu\u00f1uel, Roberto Rossellini y Glauber Rocha elogiaron su obra cinematogr\u00e1fica y los escritores Miguel Otero Silva y Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez a menudo expresaron sus deseos de realizar la versi\u00f3n literaria de sus obras cinematogr\u00e1ficas.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Margot Benacerraf fue una figura pionera en muchos aspectos, como cineasta femenina de Am\u00e9rica Latina e incansable promotora de la cultura y del cine venezolano y latinoamericano. En 1965 fue nombrada directora del Instituto Nacional de Cultura y Bellas Artes (INCIBA) de Venezuela, la instituci\u00f3n cultural m\u00e1s importante del pa\u00eds. Ella insisti\u00f3 particularmente en la promoci\u00f3n de eventos culturales y educacionales en las regiones m\u00e1s aisladas del pa\u00eds. En 1966 fund\u00f3 Archivo Nacional de Cine de Venezuela [Cinemateca Nacional] y contribuy\u00f3 activamente a la organizaci\u00f3n de la Uni\u00f3n Latinoamericana de Cinemateca (UCAL).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Acerca de Schnabel\u00a0&\u00a0Benacerraf\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Este a\u00f1o VAEA est\u00e1 honrando por primera vez, con la Medalla P\u00e1ez de Arte 2019, a dos cineastas, estos artistas utilizaron el cine como un medio de expresi\u00f3n, despu\u00e9s de explorar otros. Margot Benacerraf estudi\u00f3 filosof\u00eda y literatura y siempre ha sido una escritora consciente, en tan solo minutos ella, utilizando caras, formas y movimientos, \u00a0cre\u00f3 ensayos sobre la condici\u00f3n humana, para sus pel\u00edculas. Juli\u00e1n Schnabel es un artista dotado, que irrumpi\u00f3 en la escena del arte en la d\u00e9cada de 1980, se caracteriza por su b\u00fasqueda de una salida a la abstracci\u00f3n; cre\u00f3 obras de iconoclastias, que m\u00e1s adelante en su carrera art\u00edstica, sin problemas, se transformaron en im\u00e1genes en movimiento, configurando una elocuente narrativa de formas. Ante el reto cr\u00edtico de Andr\u00e9 Bazin que plantea que el cine y la pintura son mutuamente exclusivas, Schnabel busca en el tema de la pintura, la conexi\u00f3n de la fuerza creativa centr\u00edfuga que se prolonga indefinidamente en el universo. De manera similar, la joven Margot Benacerraf jug\u00f3 con su c\u00e1mara para imitar la danza ritual de la artista que estaba filmando, para descubrir que ella tambi\u00e9n estaba pintando la realidad evanescente de una pel\u00edcula. El proceso creativo fascina por igual a Margot Benacerraf y a Juli\u00e1n Schnabel: \u00bfC\u00f3mo funciona la creatividad? \u00bfEs posible capturarla en c\u00e1mara?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Ambos realizadores intentan recrear los momentos en que la mente y el cuerpo coinciden para producir el arte, la revelaci\u00f3n en el proceso de los l\u00edmites de la raz\u00f3n humana, para entender las complejidades de la mente creativa. En sus pel\u00edculas Rever\u00f3n (1959) y Van Gogh (2018), Benacerraf y Schnabel respectivamente, exploran las infinitas realidades producidas por la pintura, en \u00faltima instancia, apelando a la calidad fraterna fundamental de motivar a cada creaci\u00f3n art\u00edstica.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Textos de: Mario Valero, profesor asistente<\/span><\/div>\n
Fashion Institute of Technology of New York<\/span><\/div>\n
Miembro de la junta asesora de VAEA<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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About the P\u00e1ez Medal<\/h3>\n

The P\u00e1ez Medal of Art is awarded once a year to an individual or group that has had an impact and contributed to the excellence, growth, support and proliferation of the arts in Venezuela and the United States; Previous recipients include: Gustavo Dudamel in 2018, Bob Colacello in 2017, Marisol Escobar in 2016; Annie Leibovitz in 2015; Sof\u00eda Imber in 2014, Robert Wilson in 2013 and Carlos Cruz-Diez in 2012.<\/p>\n

Press information available in Spanish & English by request at\u00a0contact@vaearts.org<\/a><\/div>\n
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Mad\u00e1me Cinema (released 2019)
\nA documentary about the life of Margot Benacerraf by filmmaker Jonathan Rever\u00f3n
\nAvailable to friends of VAEA and the press by request at\u00a0contact@vaearts.org<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>

About VAEA<\/h3>\n

The VAEA is a NY based 501(c)3 public charity, founded on June 13, 1990 with the mission of promoting the best of Venezuelan and US cultures through bi-national cultural, educational and social programs.<\/p>\n

For additional information<\/strong> visit VAEArts.org<\/p>\n

For sponsor opportunities and early table reservations contact:<\/p>\n

Ali Cordero Casal, Chairman, alicorderocasal@vaearts.org<\/p>\n

+1 3053228899<\/p>\n<\/div>

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