The House

Rotterdam 1998: the screening of The House will again make it clear that Bartas’ films have a high walk-out coefficient. That is because they are the opposite of the narrative fast food that is always programmed in cinemas and often in film theatres. Bartas shows what precedes the story and the cerebral ordering of the viewing. Staring, hesitant, apathetic eyes that do not know how to interpret what they see. Bodies that move hesitantly and uncertainly through dark spaces. Surrealistic scenes of chaos and decay. Bartas liberates the eye and the body from the word. He submerges the viewer in a pre-verbal world. The viewer addicted to narrative cinema is liable to turn tail and run. However those who do their best and dare to sit through The House will be richly rewarded. Bartas provides the purest possible cinema. His films without a story do the same with images as a symphony does with notes. They submerge you more and more in a mood shaped by the artist.