Presto, Perfect Sound

During the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Witte de With presents an exhibition of two films by Brussels-based artist Manon de Boer (b. 1966, India): Sylvia Kristel – Paris (2003) and Presto, Perfect Sound (2006), screened inside the ‘institutional zone’ created by Liam Gillick’s architectural meta-structure.
De Boer analyzes the possibilities of film in visual art. Her work was included in the 2007 Venice Biennale and will be presented at the 2008 Berlin Biennale. She won the Prix Marseille Espérance at FID, Marseille (2006) and Best Experimental Film at the 14th Curtas Vila do Condo Film Festival, Portugal (2006).
De Boer’s films often challenge the conventions of the documentary genre. Her work captures the post-modern shift from communal to individual and fractured narratives. Drawn to individuals with unusual personal histories (often actors, musicians or intellectuals), she creates intimate portraits that question their own veracity, revealing the near impossibility of narrating one’s life as a coherent biography. In working with the same people over extended periods of time, de Boer explores the disjunctions between lived time and recorded history.