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EVENT No.1 A Film by Sergio Calderón 2010 Synopsis EVENT No.1 is an “event” in my experience with images; that is, a significant “event” in my experience that has to do with the images, visual images. It was at a screening of The Belly of an Architect, when I was still a student. The Belly of an Architect is a film that can be just watched, observed, without paying attention to anything related to the plot, which I completely ignored in that first encounter. I didn’t ignore the music, which I couldn’t, or perhaps I didn’t want to separate from the images. But I didn’t want to speak about the film, nor about the Wim Mertens' soundtrack; the “event” wasn’t the film itself, but “something” within the film. An American architect goes to Rome to stage an exhibition about Étienne-Louis Boullée, a XVIII century French architect, a visionary architect. This dreamer of buildings constructed very little, but the visual image of those “impossible projects”—and I say this because of the scale of his projects, their grandiosity—is what I experienced as an “event,” and they stayed with me long after the film was over. I remember they screened it twice that season at the film library, and I immediately purchased a ticket for the following session. A few years later I was still longing for Étienne-Louis Boullée, for his projects. But a project is just an idea, an invention that comes from a desire; his projects didn’t really exist, most of them at least, or are we conquering the mountain just by seeing the mountain? And what about my desire, my project? I tracked down a vintage book about Étienne-Louis Boullée, subtitled Theoretician of Revolutionary Architecture; there isn't much literature available about him, at least not in English, so I had to content myself with this little source of information, the scarce images from the book, the drawings, the design sketches. And looking at them was like looking at a photo-album. Yes, I was there, like when I was looking at the film, years ago, The Belly of an Architect, at that moment; I was also looking at those unfulfilled desires, failed projects; the book came with images of projects that weren’t shown in the film, so I could see a little bit more; it could be said I had a better view of the mountain. But that wasn't enough, I was obsessed, I wanted to see more, be there, in that mood, in that place (indeterminated it was), and the pictures in the book were so small. But how to make them real, conquer them at last? I needed lands, and stone and labour, and I didn’t have the means to actually build them, but were those “impossible projects” meant to be built, lived in? I didn’t really desire to dwell on them. Then what? I wanted to depict them, explore them, grasp them. Those projects still wanted to be built, and I built a few of them, somehow; I did it with the only tools I knew. I drew them at first, on paper, with ink, but they called for motion; with the computer, another illusion, later I created some videos in 3D, then in 2D from those architectural plans, from the book. I chose one of them for EVENT No.1, a front shot from the project for the Cénotaphe à Newton and I gave it some action; the building, the landscape was finally alive; now it is a window to that image I was longing for. I also composed the soundtrack, a sound that belonged to that image, that couldn't be separated from it. And once it was projected, in a venue, finally had some significance, a real scale; like in the cinema, existed in the same way as a film, but it wasn’t The Belly of an Architect anymore, it was that “event” I experienced when I watched the film, a light in the darkness on that venue, empty, or almost empty, many years ago, and that echo, the remnants of a melody is now fading. Did I capture the desire, that illusion, did I fulfil my plan, my own plan, and climb that mountain which wasn’t from nature? After finishing EVENT No.1 I wasn’t obsessed with Étienne-Louis Boullée anymore, I was free from him, I could aim for other mountains. 29 November 2025 Credits Directed, Written and Produced by Sergio Calderón Original Music by Sergio Calderón Film Edited by Sergio Calderón Cinematography by Sergio Calderón Art Direction by Sergio Calderón RUNNING TIME: 40 seconds (Loop) Sales / Press |
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