George Săbău, born 1937 in Arad, is a multimedia theorist and author of documentary and experimental films. His activity reflects a non-normative and intermedial strategy in film praxis which stems from a systematic study of the medium and from an imaginative usage of unconventional techniques. Upon his return to Arad after taking his diploma in Aesthetics, Săbău establishes a studio for film production at the School of Art, called Atelier 16, later known as kinema ikon. Officially dedicated to documentary film, the studio acquires an informal and experimental character due to the fact that part of the 16 mm celluloid received is saved by Săbău to explore alternative paths in film vocabulary. Defined as a theoretical project, kinema ikon gathers people outside the film domain, such as artists, musicians, architects, writers, the group coagulating around the personality of George Săbău. The sixty-two experimental films created by kinema ikon between 1970–1990 are situating within a theoretical framework based on the concepts of serio ludere and disnarration, which become as well the working methods. Their cinematic exercises are drawing upon these concepts, programmatically assuming their aesthetic autonomy and plays with avant-garde film techniques such as repetition, split screen, discontinuity of montage, hand painting and scratching the celluloid, Surrealist atmosphere. Săbău publishes his theoretical texts on film, video and multimedia in anthologies, catalogues and various art magazines, including intermedia edited by kinema ikon.
