REDCAT presented the world premiere of “Words, Planets” (2017), a new 16mm film by CalArts alumna Laida Lertxundi (Film/Video MFA 07) on Tuesday night.

The program, titled “Landscape Plus,” includes four additional works: “Footnotes To A House of Love” (2007), “Cry When It Happens” (2010), “Vivir para Vivir” (2015) and “025 Sunset Red” (2016).

From the REDCAT screening program:

Laida Lertxundi (Bilbao, 1981) works with moving image, photography and printmaking documenting the California landscape while engaging with questions of affect and subjectivity in relation to geography.

Her main body of work is shot on 16mm in a process she calls “Landscape Plus,” which combines filmic records of people and places with an emphasis on diegetic sound and music, resulting in languid passages of cinematic language, bodily desire and existential awareness.

More often than not Lertxundi’s films avoid autobiography; however, “025 Sunset Red” centers around her upbringing as the child of communist radicals.

In the synopsis, she writes, “The film is a diaphanous, psychedelic foray into the domestic and the political, looking at ways that politics may erupt, shape a life, form a sensibility and become inscribed upon a body.”

Last year, “025 Sunset Red” played in several prominent film festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam.

In addition to festivals, Lertxundi’s films have screened in numerous museums and galleries such as SF MoMa (2017); the ICA, London (2016); White Chapel Gallery, London (2015); Glynn Vivian Gallery, Wales (2015); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (2015); Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellin, Colombia (2015); LUX, London (2014); Kunsterein, Hamburg (2014); MAK Schindler House, Los Angeles (2014); PS1 MoMA (2013); Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2013); Baltimore Museum of Art (2013) and Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich (2012.)

The REDCAT world premiere was followed by a discussion with the filmmaker.