BIEFF 2016 Catalogue

Transcription

THEME PROGRAMS
6 Concept
72 QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS CANNES FILM FESTIVAL:
PEACE TO US IN OUR DREAMS, BY SHARUNAS BARTAS
8 Festival Board
74 BERLINALE FORUM EXPANDED: Rebranding Humanity
10 Festival Team
80 ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL: You Run Through My Veins
11 UNATC / UNARTE Presentation
86 CINEDANS AMSTERDAM: Of Love and Other Demons
12 Partner Festivals
92 OBERHAUSEN FILM FESTIVAL:
18 International Competition Jury
20 Opening Gala
22 Closing Gala
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
24 TRANSGRESSIVE BODIES
International Competition I
Paradise in Ruins - Visual Art Activism
98 GOLDEN SHORTS: Best Films in Major Festivals
105 REBEL WITH A CAUSE: Theme Program for Teenagers
111 EXPERIMENTED IN ROMANIA
SIDE EVENTS
119 NISI MASA Experimental Film Workshop
32 DIGITAL DYSTOPIAS
International Competition II
40 JOURNEYS INTO SUBCONSCIOUS
International competition III
48 DANGER IS MY BUSINESS
International Competition IV
56 THE ARTIST IS PRESENT
International Competition V
64 URBAN RITUALS
International Competition VI
120 BIEFF opens LIKE CNDB 2016
121 Panel: The Lifespan of Cinematic Experimentation - Festival
Strategies and Beyond / BIEFF on MUBI
122 Săptămâna sunetului / Sound Week
Special Acknowledgments
to all the directors, producers and distributors whose films are screened in BIEFF 2016 and to the following persons and institutions:
Alessandro Raja - Festival Scope
Giorgia Huelsse - Films Boutique
Festival
Alis Vasile - British Council
Gilda Lazăr - JTI
Mihai Orășanu - MDV Film
Alina Cantacuzino - Cervantes Institute
Hilke Doering - Oberhausen International Short
Natalia Trebik - Le Fresnoy Studio National des
Alexander Peyre Dutrey - Embassy of Sweden
Film Festival
Arts Contemporains
Ana Glavce - TNT
Ioana Diaconu - MUBI Romania
Nicolae Mandea - National University of Theatre
Anamaria Pravicencu - Săptămâna Sunetului
Jing Haase - Filmkontakt Nord
and Film Bucharest
Andrei Rus - Film Menu
Johannes Klein - The Festival Agency
Nora Molitor - Berlinale Forum Expanded
Angelika Ramlow - Berlinale Forum Expanded
Jonathan Pouthier - Centre Pompidou
Octav Avramescu - Săptămâna Sunetului
Anna Abrahams - EYE Film Institute Netherlands
Joost Daamen - IDFA International Documentary
Paolo Bertolin - Venice Film Festival
Anne Sophie Trintignac - Luxbox
Film Festival Amsterdam
Paolo Moretti - Rome International Film Festival
Benoit Blanchard - UniFrance
Josephine Settmacher - Films Boutique
Pascale Ramonda
Brigitta Burger-Utzer - Sixpack Film
Juhani Alanen - Tampere International Short Film
Pauline Ginot - Autour de Minuit
Bogdan Drăgotoiu
Festival
Peter Greenaway
Boglarka Nagy - French Institute Bucharest
Jukka Pekka Laasko - Tampere International
Peter van Hoof - International Film Festival
Carmen Constantin - AFCN
Short Film Festival
Rotterdam
Crăița Nanu - Transilvania Film
Lara Zankoul
Radu Boroianu - Romanian Cultural Institute
Carsten Spicher - Oberhausen International Short
Lars Henrik Gass - Oberhausen International
Rémi Bonhomme - Semaine de la Critique, Cannes
Film Festival
Short Film Festival
Film Festival
Caroline Seebregts - Ambasada Regatului Țărilor
Laurențiu Brătan - Anim’est Bucharest
Roxana Trestioreanu - UNARTE National
de Jos
International Animation Film Festival
University of Arts Bucharest
Cătălin Bălescu - UNARTE National University of
Laurențiu Damian - UCIN
Ruxandra Andrei - Ideoplan
Arts Bucharest
Liliana Costa - Agência da Curta Metragem
Salette Ramalho - Agência da Curta Metragem
Cătălin Crețu - Centrul de Muzică Electroacustică
Liliana Ciurea - Ambasada Elveției
Sabina Ulubeanu
și Multimedia UNMB
Lorraine Creusot - French Institute Bucharest
Sergi Steegmann - The Match Factory
Codrin Tofan - Embassy of Israel Bucharest
Lucian Pricop - UCIN
Simona Pop - Embassy of Sweden Bucharest
Christoph Terhechte - Berlinale Forum Expanded
Ludovic Chavarot - Clermont Ferrand
Shelly Hagler Livne - Embassy of Israel Bucharest
Christophe Leparc - Quinzaine des Réalisateurs,
International Short Film Festival
Ștefan Bradea - Transilvania Film
Cannes Film Festival
Luiza Domnișoru - Dacia Automobile
Ștefana Mărmureanu - Romanian Cultural
Cornelia Popa - Cinelabs Romania
Magdolna Csegedi - Balassi Institute Bucharest
Institute
Cristian Petcu - Romanian Cultural Institute
Marina Neacşu - Goethe Institut
Thania Dimitrakopoulou - The Match Factory
Cristophe Pomez - French Institute Bucharest
Marion Poeth - Cinedans Dance on Screen
Theo Tsappos - The Swedish Film Institute
Daniela Russo - LUX Artists’ Moving Image
Festival Amsterdam
Theus Zwakhals - LIMA Amsterdam
Dietmar Schwärzler - Sixpack Film
Marius Comărniceanu - WinMedia
Tudor Ciortea - Noumax
Elisabeth Marinkovic - Austrian Cultural Forum
Martijn te Pas - IDFA International Documentary
Ulrich Ziemons - Berlinale Forum Expanded
Bucharest
Festival Amsterdam
Valeska Neu - Films Boutique
Evelin Hust - Goethe Institut
Martine Dekker - Cinedans Dance On Screen
Vava Ştefănescu - Centrul Național al Dansului
Florin Oslobanu - Control Club
Festival Amsterdam
CNDB
François Bonenfant - Le Fresnoy Studio National
Mary Scherer - Video Data Bank
Vesa Puhakka - AV-arkki
des Arts Contemporains
Miguel Dias - Agencia Da Curta Metragem
Virgil Nițulescu - Muzeul Țăranului Român
Gabriela Petre - “Vito Grasso” Italian Cultural
Miguel Valverde - Portugal Film & IndieLisboa
Yvonne Irimescu - NexT International Short Film
Institute Bucharest
International Independent Film Festival
Festival
Gabriela Albu - Cinema Muzeul Tăranului
Mihai Chirilov - Transilvania International Film
and to all BIEFF 2016 volunteers.
Bucharest International Experimental Film
Festival BIEFF - Concept
Copel Moscu, Festival Director
Adina Pintilie, Artistic Director
Created under the patronage of the
National University of Theatre and Film
“I.L. Caragiale” and the National University
of Arts Bucharest, with the support of the
Administration of the National Cultural
Fund, BUCHAREST INTERNATIONAL
EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL BIEFF has as
its main focus the courage to experiment in
cinematic language.
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BIEFF is the first showcase of avant-garde
cinema and visual art in Romania, a noncommercial event with educational purpose,
aimed at bringing in front of the audience
highly innovative films and filmmakers with
strong personal views on contemporary
reality, which also daringly explore the
boundaries of cinematic language. A cinema
of total creative freedom and lack of
compromise. 6
We believe BIEFF is a highly necessary event,
particularly for Romania, whose cinema
already proved its amazing strength in
the past few years, through outstanding
voices such as Cristi Puiu, Corneliu
Porumboiu, Cristian Mungiu, Radu Jude and
others, yet mainly in the area of realistic
narrative fiction. On this flourishing creative
background, BIEFF comes as a natural
complementary reaction, its main goal being
to broaden perception, to open a whole new
artistic territory, both for the general and
the specialized audience, particularly for film
and visual art students and professionals. Therefore we present films which
are lessons of cinema, emblematic pieces,
eye-openers in regard to the unlimited
possibilities offered by the cinematic
medium, the ways to transcend any possible
borders between fiction, documentary and
visual art, the transgression of boundaries on
every level, from concept, structure, rhythm,
to the construction of the shot.
BIEFF is also the first event in Romania
dedicated to promoting the border area
between cinema and visual art, offering
increased visibility to cutting edge visual
artists, whose work is mainly accessible in
museums and in the art gallery circuit and
rarely on cinema screen. We do this because
we believe this border area is an extremely
rich, creatively nourishing territory, from
where unique artistic voices have constantly
emerged over the years, such as Peter
Greenaway, David Lynch, Derek Jarman,
Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage and others.
BIEFF presents on one side
an INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL
SHORT FILM COMPETITION, consisting of
some of the most intriguing and innovative
visual experiments from the last few years,
titles awarded and screened in prestigious
festivals, museums and galleries all over
the world, such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice,
Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Toronto, Centre
Pompidou etc.
BIEFF is also honored to collaborate with some of the major international film festivals and
institutions in the area of avant-garde cinema and visual art,recognized worldwide for their
consistent creative support of innovative, radical filmmaking and visual art: QUINZAINE
DES RÉALISATEURS - Cannes Film Festival, BERLINALE Forum Expanded - Berlin
International Film Festival, International Film Festival ROTTERDAM, International Short Film
Festival OBERHAUSEN, IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam - Paradocs,
Centre POMPIDOU Paris, Le FRESNOY – Studio National des Arts Contemporains, CINEDANS
- Dance on Screen Festival Amsterdam, TAMPERE Film Festival, SIXPACKFILM Austria and EYE
Film Institute Netherlands, each of them bringing to Bucharest a selection of highly
innovative multi-awarded films from their last year’s selections.
As well, BIEFF started in 2010 a wonderful
collaboration with one of the main
experimental filmmakers of our time, PETER
GREENAWAY. He opened our festival in 2010
with an impressive Masterclass, addressed
especially to our main audience,
Romanian film and visual art students
and professionals, and in 2011, with
his groundbreaking LIVE CINEMA VJ
PERFORMANCE LUPERCYCLOPEDIA, a
highly innovative audio-visual experiment,
intended to challenge the borders of filmic
language and offer the audience a totally
new cinematic experience, performance
which was immensely successful all over
the world, traveling in only 4 years to 14
countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France,
Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands,
Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland
and the UK.
Starting with 2012, PETER GREENAWAY became the HONORARY PRESIDENT of
the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival BIEFF, generously joining us in our
educational initiative. PETER GREENAWAY is one of the key voices of contemporary avantgarde cinema, one of the most ambitious and controversial experimental filmmakers of
our time. Trained as a painter and heavily influenced by theories of structural linguistics,
ethnography, and philosophy, PETER GREENAWAY’s films often traverse unexplored
territories, rejecting conventional narrative structures in favor of awe-striking imagery,
constantly testing the limits of the cinematic medium. Regularly nominated in prestigious
film festivals such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, he has an impressive body of work,
consisting of 13 feature films and 50 short films and documentaries, plus exhibitions, visual
installations, VJ performances, paintings, books, opera librettos.
Also, following its previous years’ success, BIEFF will dedicate again its 2014 Opening
and Closing Ceremonies to the most recent works of some major names of the
contemporary cinema. In 2010, BIEFF presented, for the first time in Romania, the latest
film of the master of experimental cinema Jan Švankmajer, right after its premiere in
Venice. In 2011, BIEFF screened the Romanian premiere of the most recent work of
Alexander Sokurov, his impressive FAUST, winner of the Golden Lion in Venice 2011. In
2012, BIEFF presented the Romanian premiere of Peter Greenaway’s impressive latest
feature, GOLTZIUS AND THE PELICAN COMPANY, while in 2013 the film to open the
festival was Terry Gilliam’s most recent feature, THE ZERO THEOREM. In 2014, BIEFF
opened with the Golden Lion winner from 2014, Roy Andersson’s A PIGEON SAT ON A
BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE and closed with Ulrich Seidl’s fascinating hybrid
documentary, IN THE BASEMENT.
\\ BUCHAREST INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL
We are honored to welcome in
our International Competition
Jury prestigious films professionals such
as: PAOLO BERTOLIN — Member of the
Selection Committee, Venice International
Film Festival; ULRICH ZIEMONS — Program
Coordinator, Berlin International Film
Festival – Forum Expanded; LUDOVIC
CHAVAROT — Member of the Selection
Committee, Clermont-Ferrand International
Short Film Festival – LABO Competition;
ROEE ROSEN — Visual artist and filmmaker,
winner of the BIEFF 2011 & 2014 Main
Awards.
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FESTIVAL BOARD
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PETER GREENAWAY
COPEL MOSCU
HONORIFIC PRESIDENT
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR
One of the key voices of contemporary
Copel Moscu (b.1953) graduated from
2010, consistent with his free innovative
avant-garde cinema, PETER GREENAWAY
the National Institute of Drama and Film
vision and educational commitment, he took
is one of the most ambitious and
Bucharest in 1978, after which he worked
the challenge to offer Romanian audiences,
controversial experimental filmmakers of
at the Sahia Documentary Film Studio.
particularly to cinema and visual students,
our time. Trained as a painter and heavily
One of the key authors of the Romanian
the first international experimental film
influenced by theories of structural
Documentary New Wave from the ’80
festival in Romania.
linguistics, ethnography, and philosophy,
(together with Ovidiu Bose Pastina, Tereza
PETER GREENAWAY’s films often
Barta, Laurentiu Damian, Sabina Pop), he
traverse unexplored territories, rejecting
was a pioneer in challenging the borders of
conventional narrative structures in favor of
cinema language, in controversial subversive
an awe-striking imagery, constantly testing
films which concealed, under daring
the limits and canons of the cinematic
conceptual and formal experimenting, a
medium. Regularly nominated in prestigious
fierce criticism of the communist regime,
film festivals such as Cannes, Venice and
films banned by the establishment’s
Berlin, he has an impressive body of work,
censorship. Copel Moscu created over 50
consisting of 13 feature films and 50 short-
short and feature films, as director and
films and documentaries, plus exhibitions,
scriptwriter, for which he was awarded over
visual installations, VJ performances,
25 international and national prizes (THE
paintings, books, opera librettos. His first
EVENING SCHOOL, ON THE OZANA SHORE,
narrative feature film, THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S
MY BELOVED SCHOOL, THE BRONZE AGE,
CONTRACT, completed in 1982, received
A DAY WILL COME and I CHOSE FREEDOM).
great critical acclaim and established him
He presently teaches film directing at
internationally as an original filmmaker, a
the National University of Theater and
reputation consolidated by his following
Film Bucharest (UNATC) and video-art
films, such as THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE
at National University of Arts Bucharest
AND HER LOVER, THE PILLOW BOOK and THE
(UNARTE) and is referred to as an artistic
TULSE LUPER SUITCASES.
consultant for television and cinema. In
OZANA NICOLAU
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Adina Pintilie is a Romanian filmmaker, recent
which premiered in Locarno, won a Runner Up
Ozana Nicolau is an alumnus of Berlinale
graduate of the National University of Theater
Award at the Miami IFF and a Special Mention
Talent Campus and of Locarno Summer
and Film Bucharest, Directing Department.
in Trieste in 2009. Her latest short DIARY#2
Academy, and a recent graduate of the
At the border between fiction, documentary
won the ZONTA Award for Best Woman
National University of Theatre and Film in
and visual art, her films are very particular
Filmmaker at Oberhausen International Short
Bucharest, Directing Department. Intre
in the new Romanian cinema landscape,
Film Festival 2013.
Prieteni (Surrounded by Friends), her
standing out through a highly personal
graduation film, was presented in over 15 film
visual style, daring experimenting in cinema
festivals all over the world, from Tampere
language and uncompromising exploration
ISFF to ISFF in Drama - Greece and Karlovy
of human psychology. In 2007, her medium
Vary. Ozana has worked as assistant director
length DON’T GET ME WRONG - produced
with acclaimed directors of the Romanian
by Aristoteles Workshop, with the support
New Wave, such as Călin Peter Netzer (Child’s
of ARTE France and the Romanian National
Pose – winner of Golden Bear at Berlinale
Television, was world premiered in Locarno
2013) and Radu Jude (Aferim – awarded Silver
- Filmmakers of the Present Competition,
Bear in 2015). Presently, Ozana is developing
included in IDFA 2007-Best of Fests selection,
a documentary in the framework of East-
awarded Golden Dove Best Documentary
West Talent Lab at Go-East Film Festival and
Award at DOK LEIPZIG 2007 and selected/
I-Doc Workshop – Visions du Réel Nyon. Her
awarded in 50 international film festivals such
latest film “The Island (aka Boat Trip)” had
as: Thessaloniki, Montpellier, Trieste, Namur,
the international premiere at Cottbus Film
Munchen, Moscow, Sarajevo, Indielisboa,
Festival 2015.
Warszaw, Krakow etc. Her last medium length,
OXYGEN, was screened in Tiger Awards Short
ADINA PINTILIE
Film Competition of Rotterdam Film Festival
2010, Buenos Aires BAFICI, Montpellier,
Thessaloniki, Warszaw, Bilbao etc. In 2008 she
co-directed Sandpit#186 with George Chiper,
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FESTIVAL TEAM
Festival Coordinator & Assistant Curator
Subtitling & Translations Coordinator
Interns
Dan Angelescu
Mădălina Matei
Alberto Niculae
Chief Curator
Location Managers
Alexandru Păun
Adina Pintilie
Simona Alecu
Alina Vlad
Mihaela Oprea
Anda Stăncescu
Alexandra Zamfirescu
Andrei Pavel
Curatorial Department
Adina Marin
Volunteers Coordinators
Anna Berza
Andrei Tănăsescu
Andrei Jakab
Bianca Semen
Claudia Cojocariu
Adriana Susmă
Bogdan Benea
Bogdan Nohai
Andreea Udrea
Curator for Danger Is My Business & Rebel
Catalogue Coordinator
Cristina Albert
Adina Marin
Georgiana Ene
Iacob Paștină
With a Cause
Ozana Nicolau
Catalogue DTP
Ionuț Gighileanu
Vadim Ciocazan
Mihai Marin
Miruna Mihuțoiu
Strategic Partnerships & Sponsoring
Manager
Graphic Designer
Roxana Marin
Ozana Nicolau
Bogdan Cătălin Cazacioc
Roxana Urzică
PR & Press
Web Developer
Roxana Dănăilă
Tiberiu Andrișan
Print Traffic & Technical Coordinator
Nisi Masa Workshop Coordinators
Elena Găgeanu
Sorina Diaconu
Ruxandra Scripcariu
Vlad Ghinea
Guest Coordinator
Doris Dănilă
Screenings For Teenagers Coordinator
Teona Galgoțiu
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Video Coordinator
Alice Gheorghiu
Photo Coordinator
Doria Drăgușin
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Teodora Morar
THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
OF THEATER AND FILM
“I.L. CARAGIALE” BUCHAREST
Great names of Romanian cinema are UNATC alumni; among them: Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Cătălin Mitulescu, Radu Muntean,
Tudor Giurgiu.
THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
OF ARTS BUCHAREST
Founded in 1864, the NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF ARTS BUCHAREST (UNARTE) proposes, through the creative work of its students, a
cultural model that links universal art forms to the contemporary cultural space. The specificity of the curriculum offered by UNARTE, and
by the Photography and Video Department in particular, relies in the fostering of a flexible thinking, and in promoting themes related to
contemporary issues, and a variety of approaches that avoid conservatism and dogma.
UNARTE promotes the works and ideas of its students in symposia, exhibitions, and press conferences, and offers them opportunities
of exchanges and collaborations with art universities all over Europe. Among its most celebrated professors and alumni, UNARTE counts
Constantin Brâncuşi, Theodor Aman, Gheorghe Tattarescu, Ştefan Luchian, Alexandru Ciucurencu, Corneliu Baba.
The NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF THEATER AND FILM “I.L. CARAGIALE” BUCHAREST (UNATC) counts among the most prestigious European film
schools, together with the Film And TV School Of Academy Of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), and the National Film School in Lodz. The
history of UNATC begins as early as 1864, the year when the first Theatre School was founded in Bucharest. In 1954, the old school merged
with the Institute of Film Art, to become UNATC, The National School of Theatre and Cinema.
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PARTNER FESTIVALS
QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS CANNES
BERLINALE FORUM EXPANDED
INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM
CINEDANS DANCE ON SCREEN AMSTERDAM
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INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL OBERHAUSEN
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PARTNER FESTIVAL
Parallel section of Cannes Film Festival, created by the French Directors Guild in the wake of the events of May ’68, QUINZAINE DES
RÉALISATEURS (the DIRECTORS’ FORTHNIGHT) seeks to aid filmmakers and contribute to their discovery by the critics and audiences alike.
From its initial program in 1969, it cast its lot with the avant-garde (the glorious seventies), as well as it created a breeding ground where the
Cannes Festival would regularly find its prestigious auteurs.
Since its inception, QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS has showcased the first films of Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima,
George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Ken Loach, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Haneke, Chantal Akerman, Spike Lee, Luc et Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Sofia
Coppola, Robert Bresson, Manoel de Oliveira, Stephen Frears, Jerzy Skolimowski, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola... among others.
Among the various sections at the Cannes Film Festival, QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS is distinguished by its independent-mindedness, its
non-competitive nature and its concern to cater to non-professional Cannes audiences, which can buy a subscription for the entire Fortnight
program or purchase tickets for individual screenings. Striving to be eclectic and receptive to all forms of cinematic expression, QUINZAINE
DES RÉALISATEURS pays particular attention to the annual production of fiction features, short films and documentaries, to the emergence of
independent fringe filmmaking, and even to contemporary popular genres, provided these films are the expression of an individual talent and
an original directorial style.
CHRISTOPHE LEPARC
Managing Director of QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS, Festival de CANNES.
Has been working in the film industry since
1990, specialized in the organization of
film festivals; has notably worked for the
International Women Directors’ Film Festival
of Créteil during 10 years as “prospector”
of films. He has begun to work for
Mediterranean Film Festival of Montpellier in
1994 as prospector, member of the selection
committee, elaborating retrospectives.
Between 2000 and 2008, he has worked
as Program Manager for the International
Critics’ Week, sidebar of Cannes Film Festival
devoted to new talents. Since 2007, he
is Managing Director of QUINZAINE DES
RÉALISATEURS (DIRECTORS’ FORTHNIGHT),
the other sidebar of Cannes Film Festival.
He’s currently working with Edouard
Waintrop, the new Artistic Director of the
Fortnight.
PRESENTATION
QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS
CANNES
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PRESENTATION
BERLINALE FORUM
EXPANDED
PARTNER FESTIVAL
Avant garde, experimental works, essays, long-term observations, political reportage and yet-to-be-discovered cinematic landscapes: the
INTERNATIONAL FORUM OF NEW CINEMA, FORUM in short, is the most daring section of the BERLINALE.
There are few formal limitations when it comes to the selection of films, resulting in even greater freedom. Documentaries and feature films
are given equal consideration. The films in the Forum straddle the line between art and cinema.
In 2006 BERLINALE FORUM EXPANDED was launched. Presenting film, video, installation and performative works on varying themes and in
multiple venues across Berlin, works in FORUM EXPANDED provide a critical perspective and an expanded sense of cinematography.
The director of this section is Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, who also works as a curator, alongside Anselm Franke, Nanna Heidenreich, Bettina
Steinbrügge and Uli Ziemons.
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ARSENAL Institute for Film and Video Art
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Communicating international film culture in a lively manner is both the aim and mission of ARSENAL Institute for Film and Video Art. Working
at the point where practice and theory come together, the institute comprises a space for thinking outside the box in (film) cultural terms, a
cinema whose attention is focused on independent and experimental film and a communication platform for promoting dynamic exchange
between film, academia and art linked to a whole network of different organizations. Its work encompasses the running of the two-screen
Arsenal cinema, putting on the BERLINALE FORUM and FORUM EXPANDED, distributing films as Arsenal Distribution and collecting and
communicating works of independent and experimental cinema as well as avant-garde film history. Presenting video art and experimental
films at the Filmhaus, at festivals, and in art and gallery spaces all plays a part in the ongoing investigation of what the conditions that
constitute cinema actually are. The board of directors is made up of the film scholars and curators Milena Gregor, Birgit Kohler and Stefanie
Schulte Strathaus.
PARTNER FESTIVAL
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) offers a high quality line-up of carefully selected fiction and documentary feature
films, short films and media art. IFFR is one of the largest audience and industry-driven film festivals in the world. Famously, only
seventeen people attended the opening night of the first Film International Rotterdam on 28 June 1972. Presently, during twelve
festival days, hundreds of filmmakers and other artists present their work to a large audience (2014: 287.000 admissions) and over
2.000 film professionals. The festival’s
Official Selection includes some 220
feature films and 320 short films out
of 60 countries. The 44th edition of
International Film Festival Rotterdam
takes place from Wednesday 21 January
till Sunday 1 February 2015.
The Shorts section of International Film
Festival Rotterdam has no fixed agenda,
boundaries or statement, but aims
to show films that are experimental,
innovative and contemporary, with
a maximum length of 60 minutes.
It contains, besides the regular
competition and spectrum programs,
special thematic and solo programs,
and also holds a series of MindThe
Gap-nights with live audio-visual events.
The selection committee of the IFFR
Shorts doesn’t thoroughly reflect in
advance on what experimental or
innovative means. We’re interested
in work that challenges generic
designations (including the traditional
“avant-garde”, “underground” or “video
art” ones). Work may also draw on
documentary, narrative, animation or
any other tradition – or no tradition
at all. So, what is experimental, what
is contemporary in the eyes of IFFR
Shorts? I’m hoping this program (partly)
gives the answer.
PRESENTATION
INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
ROTTERDAM
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PRESENTATION
CINEDANS DANCE ON SCREEN
AMSTERDAM
PARTNER FESTIVAL
CINEDANS DANCE ON SCREEN Festival is unique – in the Netherlands and in the world. The central focus of the festival is on dance film.
CINEDANS sees the ideal dance film as a true synthesis between the two media of dance and cinematography. At CINEDANS the emphasis lies
on choreographies created specifically for the camera and on special film adaptations of existing dance performances.
In the ever-changing media landscape, creators are increasingly seeking different ways to tell their stories. New media and modern technology
have entered the scene bringing new possibilities and insights. Dance film is no longer “movement on the black screen”, with new forms being
developed such as installations, video clips, interactive projects and more. Contemporary dance films are often autonomous art works with a
language of their own and an expressiveness that cannot be pigeonholed. CINEDANS closely follows these movements. In addition to the film
programme, the festival focuses on various forms of crossover projects and media installations that involve movement.
For this film-program, Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival BIEFF has selected a range of films from the CINEDANS 2014
selection. In these films surprising stories are told through movement, composition and choreography, dances that can only exist by the use of
film.
CURATOR - MARION POETH
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Artistic Programmer, Producer, CINEDANS DANCE ON SCREEN FESTIVAL, Amsterdam.
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MARION POETH is both artistic programmer and producer for CINEDANS. She gained her Masters in Theatre Studies from the University of
Utrecht with a study on screen dance, having previously studied dance at Amsterdam School of the Arts, and audiovisual design and film in the
Netherlands and England. Next to CINEDANS, she works as a freelance editor and media designer.
PARTNER FESTIVAL
At its 60th edition in 2014, the
International Short Film Festival
OBERHAUSEN is one of the major
international crossroads for the short
Internet” in 2013, a program that
looks at the future of cinematographic
production. The 2014 thematic
programme (“Memories can’t wait: Film
form, unique in the range of forms and
genres it presents to the public, and
particularly well known for its spotlight
on experimentation. In the course of
more than five decades, filmmakers and
artists ranging from Roman Polanski to
Cate Shortland, from George Lucas to
Pipilotti Rist, have presented their first
works in OBERHAUSEN.
without Film”) focused on the current shift of moving image and sound from cinemas
to galleries and museums world-wide. The festival also operates a well-stocked Video
Library, a non-commercial short film distribution branch and a unique archive of short
films from more than 50 years of festival history.
The Festival organizes an International
Competition, a Children’s and Youth
Films and a German Competition and the
MuVi Award for the best German music
video as well as the NRW Competition
for productions from North RhineWestphalia. In addition, OBERHAUSEN
is known for its strong line of thematic
programmes such as “Provoking Reality”
in 2012, dedicated to the 50th anniversary
of the OBERHAUSEN Manifesto from
1962, or “Flatness: Cinema after the
“Short film is a great first step for a budding filmmaker. That’s how I made my beginnings
and OBERHAUSEN was an important step on my path to become a Director.” Roman
Polanski
“I smoked my first cigarette here. For years, I saw every single film at the Westdeutsche
Kurzfilmtage, looking forward to those days in OBERHAUSEN every year. These events
were important for me, for my decision to become a filmmaker.” Wim Wenders
“There can be no doubt that the OBERHAUSEN Short Film Festival has written film
history... The short film has kept itself young, and so has OBERHAUSEN. This atmosphere,
this creative power are what still distinguishes short films today.” Gerhard Schröder,
German Chancellor 1998-2005
PRESENTATION
INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM
FESTIVAL OBERHAUSEN
17
\\
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY
18
PAOLO BERTOLIN
ULRICH ZIEMONS
LUDOVIC CHAVAROT
Member of the Selection Committee,
Program Coordinator,
Member of the Selection Committee,
VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
CLERMONT FERRAND INTERNATIONAL SHORT
FORUM EXPANDED
FILM FESTIVAL – COMPÉTITION LABO
PAOLO BERTOLIN is a festival programmer,
ULRICH ZIEMONS is a film curator, film scholar
LUDOVIC CHAVAROT has always been
film critic and producer. He joined the Venice
and writer based in Berlin. He is one of the
passionate about the stories and the narrative
International Film Festival as a member of
co-curators of the Forum Expanded program
systems envolved, whether in cinema, dance,
the selection committee in 2008. Since 2010,
at the Berlin International Film Festival. He
in novels, or comics. Illustrator by training,
he has worked as regional correspondent,
has curated film programs and exhibitions
he has continued to create posters (the
covering several territories in the Asia
for, among others, the National Museum of
latest was for the English group Tindersticks)
Pacific region. He has collaborated with the
Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Arsenal
and drawings for print press, under the
Beijing, Hanoi and Mumbai International Film
– Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin,
pseudonym ‘Ludchat’. Additionally, writing
Festivals, the Doha Film Institute, the Udine
KW – Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin,
and producing several radio works (in
Far East Film Festival, Nyon Visions du Réel,
as well as for the 2010 Berlin Biennial. Since
particular, the show Les Proies / The Preys,
the International Film Festival Rotterdam,
2014 he has been a member of the short film
recorded in close collaboration with Australian
the Cannes Critics’ Week, the International
selection committee of Dokfest Kassel. As
musician Warren Ellis), has allowed him to
Film Festival Bratislava and Locarno Open
a guest lecturer he has taught at Stockholm
follow his passion within a new environment.
Doors. Bertolin has producer credits on Phan
Academy of Dramatic Arts, Braunschweig
Since 2003, Chavarot is a member of the
Đăng Di’s Big Father, Small Father and Other
University of Art, University of Potsdam,
selection committee for the LAB Competition
Stories (2015) and Lav Diaz’s A Lullaby for the
Bard College (Berlin Campus), Ithaca College,
of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short
Sorrowful Mystery (2016), both entries in the
NY, and Cornell University. In 2014 his book
Film Festival and he is also the curator of
Berlin International Film Festival Competition.
Aufzeichnungen eines Storm Squatters
the Anatomie du LABO exhibition. His quite
was published – the first German language
diverse professional experience continually
monograph on the American underground
urges him to work with and to reflect upon
filmmaker George Kuchar and his influential
new narratives devices.
Weather Diary video series.
ROEE ROSEN
Artist and filmmaker,
WINNER OF THE BIEFF 2011 & 2014
ROEE ROSEN (b. 1963) is an Israeli-American
artist, filmmaker and writer. Rosen’s
installation, Live and Die as Eva Braun (19951997), stirred a scandal when exhibited at the
Israel Museum. Rosen dedicated years to his
fictive feminine persona, the Surrealist painter
and pornographer Justine Frank, a project
that entailed fabricating her entire oeuvre
as a book and a short film, Two Women and a
Man (2005). The film won a special mention
at Oberhausen ISFF. Among Rosen’s other
works is Out (2010), in which a BDSM session
becomes political exorcism. Out premiered
in Venice, where it won an Orizzonti Award. It
went on to win the Best Film Award at BIEFF,
which his The Buried Alive Videos also won in
2014. Several major programs were dedicated
to Rosen’s cinematic productions, amongst
them profiles at Tate Modern (2010), Museum
of Modern Art, Vienna (2014), Oberhausen
ISFF (2012). Two mid-career retrospectives
of Rosen opened up in 2016: Roee Rosen – A
MAIN AWARDS
Group Exhibition, at the Tel Aviv Museum, and
Live and Die as Eva Braun and Other Intimate
Stories, at the Edith Russ House for Media Art,
Oldenburg.
19
OPENING GALA
FRANCOFONIA
87’, 2015, France, Germany, The Netherlands
DIRECTOR: ALEKSANDR SOKUROV
CAST: Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Benjamin Utzerath, Vincent Nemeth,
CAMERA: Bruno Delbonnel
Johanna Korthals Altes, Andrey Chelpanov, Jean-Claude Caer
EDITING: Alexei Jankowski, Hansjorg Weissbrich
SCRIPT: Aleksandr Sokurov
MUSIC: Murat Kabardokov
WITH THE SUPPORT OF:
ALEKSANDR SOKUROV
Another century has passed on the Old Continent … Large armies are
With this sophisticated, complex and thoroughly absorbing film,
trampling on the heart of civilisation and cannon fire is once again
Aleksandr Sokurov has had another night at the museum reverie, a
taking its toll. Amidst the massacre and the ruins, everything majestic,
cine-prose poem or animated installation tableau, weaving newsreel
magnificent, and sacred, that took millions of minutes and hours of
footage with eerie floating images above the streets of contemporary
determined labour to build, is wiped out. Jacques Jaujard and Count
Paris – presumably filmed with a drone – and dramatised fantasy
Franziskus Wolff Metternich worked together to protect and preserve
scenes. Thirteen years after Russian Ark, that renowned single-take
the treasure of the Louvre Museum. Aleksandr Sokurov tells their
movie journey through the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg,
story. He explores the relationship between art and power, and asks
Sokurov has now alighted on the Louvre in Paris. Francofonia has all
what art tells us about ourselves, at the very heart of one of the most
sorts of wayward digressions and perambulations around the idea of
devastating conflicts the world has ever known.
French and European culture, and the role of the museum in conserving
art and promoting the idea of what it means to be human.
(Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
It will be impossible to neatly package “Francofonia” into a brief and
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Main Competition - Venice International Film
accurate description, since Aleksandr Sokurov’s dense, enriching
Festival 2015 \ Toronto Film Festival 2015 \ San Sebastian Film Festival
meditation on the Louvre and specifically (but not exclusively) the
2015 \ BFI London Film Festival 2015 \ FEDEORA (Federation of Film Critics
museum’s status during WWII defies categorization. View the trailer
of Europe and the Mediterranean) Prize - Best Euro-Mediterranean Film
and you might think the film is essentially a Sokurovian dramatization
\\
of the uncertain relationship between the Louvre’s wartime
director and the Nazi officer in charge of preserving France’s artistic
patrimony. Watching the film, however, a larger picture emerges, in
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20
which Sokurov [....] engages with Paris itself and the philosophical
concept of a great museum.
(Jay Weissberg, Variety)
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Wherever you start from, you come to power.
DIRECTOR’S BIO-FILMOGRAPHY: Alexandr Sokurov is a Russian
It’s sort of a fix, and there’s nothing that can be done about it,” says
director of avant-garde and independent films that have won him
Sokurov. He’s responding to a question about the relationship between art
international acclaim. A son of an army officer, Sokurov was born in 1951,
and power — one of the main themes of Francofonia.
and spent his childhood traveling with his family around Russia as his
Sokurov’s interest in interrogating the workings of power is wellestablished, with his 1999 Moloch (about Hitler), 2000 Taurus (about
Lenin), 2004 The Sun (on Hirohito) and 2011 Faust (a take on Goethe’s
titular tragedy) forming a tetralogy on power’s corrupting effects. “Power
is ubiquitous; it governs everywhere. If you believe in God’s plan then
power is part of that plan — not the best part as far as I can see,” he says.
Francofonia points to the spoils of conquest in the Louvre and other great
museums to emphasise that war as much as cultural creation underpins
our notions of civilisation. Whoever is in possession of these artefacts
usurps the historical memory and fate of a people. “Only a great work
of art has the capacity to link the past to the future and the present,”
says Sokurov. “Paintings may give us an understanding of who we are as
Europeans.
(extract from an interview by Carmen Gray for
The Calvert Journal)
father was transferred from one location to another. This fast change of
places and schools kept him lonely, he never had close friends and liked
to spend his free time by himself withdrawn into the world of his own.
After school he studied history and completed a BA degree course. By
that time, however, he had made up his mind to become a film maker and
in 1975 he Moved to Moscow to study at VGIK-a state film school, one
of the most prestigious and major of its kind in Russia. In the years that
followed he made several shorts, none of which was liked by his teachers.
His works were described as “weird, formal, and mannered” but never
“talented” or “promising”. In the end Sokurov entered into an open conflict
with his mentors and dropped out of BGIK, nevertheless it was during
his years there that he met Andrey Tarkovsky whom he later befriended.
Tarkovsky was the first to notice Sokurov’s gift and to tell him that he
was going to have a brilliant career provided he found his own style and
stayed true to it. Particularly, after the collapse of the regime, Sokurov’s
films started earning him numerous awards around the world. While most
known for his feature films, Sokurov has directed a number of interesting
documentaries. His sensational “Russian Ark” (2002) is a historic
Romanian Distributor: TRANSILVANIA FILM
Str. Popa Soare 52, etaj 1, ap.2, Sector 2, Bucuresti, Romania
T: 021 326.64.80, 021 326.02.68
E: [email protected]
W: www.transilvaniafilm.ro
OPENING GALA
achievement that will be watched and talked about by many generations.
21
CLOSING GALA
EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO
104’, 2015, The Netherlands, Mexico, Finland, Belgium
DIRECTOR: PETER GREENAWAY
SCRIPT: Peter Greenaway
MUSIC: Sergei Prokofiev
DOP: Reinier van Brummelen
CAST: Elmer Bäck, Luis Alberti, Maya Zapata, Lisa Owen, Stelio Savante,
EDITING: Elmer Leupen
Rasmus Slätis, Jakob Öhrman
PETER GREENAWAY
The venerated filmmaker Eisenstein is comparable in talent, insight and
Set in Mexico during the “10 days that shook” Russia’s greatest silent
wisdom, with the likes of Shakespeare or Beethoven; there are few - if
filmmaker, “Eisenstein in Guanajuato” marks Peter Greenaway’s
any - directors who can be elevated to such heights. On the back of his
raucous attempt to capture his all-time cinema idol at his moment
revolutionary film Battleship Potemkin, he was celebrated around the
of greatest personal discovery and deepest professional frustration
world, and invited to the US. Ultimately rejected by Hollywood and
— which, the film takes great delight in suggesting, coincided with
maliciously maligned by conservative Americans, Eisenstein traveled
the loss of his virginity, at age 33, so far from his (still) homophobic
to Mexico in 1931 to consider a film privately funded by American
homeland. Determined to breathe fresh life into a medium he insists
pro-Communist sympathizers, headed by the American writer Upton
has scarcely evolved in the 90 years since Sergei Eisenstein made
Sinclair. Eisenstein’s sensual Mexican experience appears to have been
“Strike,” Greenaway has wrought an outrageously unconventional
pivotal in his life and film career - a significant hinge between the early
and deliriously profane biopic that could take decades to be duly
successes of Strike, Battleship Potemkin, and October, which made him
appreciated.
a world-renowned figure, and his hesitant later career with Alexander
Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible and The Boyar’s Plot.
(Peter Debruge, Variety)
(written by Peter Greenaway)
Erotically charged and artfully crafted, Eisenstein in Guanajuato is
the first of two titles devoted to portions of Soviet filmmaker Sergei
Eisenstein’s life, and proves Peter Greenaway has lost none of his
Festival \ Best Director Award at the International Film Festival of India
edge. At the age of 72, British auteur filmmaker maintains his ability
(IFFI) \ The Hong Kong Film Festival \ The Istanbul Film Festival \ The
to amaze. Ever the provocative experimentalist, he belongs to a
Moscow Film Festival \ The LA Film Festival.
rare class of director, one who manages to delight and confound,
\\
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Premiered in competition at the 2015 Berlin Film
challenge and dismay even into his later period of film making. There’s
a perverse thrill to be had watching the daringness on display in this
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22
examination of a Russian legend that bluntly examines his sexual
orientation in a way that would never be produced from his native
country.
(Nicholas Bell, IONCINEMA.com)
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: I always felt Eisenstein’s first three films
DIRECTOR’S BIO-FILMOGRAPHY: Peter Greenaway has been
were very different from the last three – why? I think the answer to that
nominated for the most prestigious film awards at the Cannes, Venice
is, when you go abroad, you become a different person,” said Greenaway,
and Berlinale and received an Award at the British Academy Film in 2014
who believes the personal transformation Eisenstein underwent in Mexico
for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. His first feature film The
turned him from the focus on mass action of Battleship Potemkin, Strike!
Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) launched his international career and
and October to a greater concern with the individual, as evidenced in
identified him as one of the most original and important filmmakers of our
Alexander Nevsky and the two-part Ivan the Terrible.
time. He confirmed this reputation with films like The Cook, the Thief, his
“He was away from paranoia, from Stalinist persecution and really strange
political eccentricities, and he was faced with a brand new and different
society. There’s a lot of evidence he freed up, and became much more
empathetic to notions of the human condition.
(interview by Carmen Gray for The Calvert Journal)
FILMMAKER’S WEBSITE:
w: www.facebook.com/PeterGreenawayPage?ref=ts&sk=wall
w: www.luperpediafoundation.com/peter-greenaway
Wife and her Lover (1989) and The Pillow Book (1996). Peter Greenaway’s
impressive filmography comprises more than 65 titles. His most recent
works include Nightwatching (2007), Rembrandt’s J’Accuse (2008) and
Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012).
CLOSING GALA
FILM’S WEBSITE:
w: www.luperpediafoundation.com/eisenstein-in-guanajuato/
23
PRESENTATION
TRANSGRESSIVE BODIES
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION I
Curatorial presentation by: ANDREI TĂNĂSESCU
\\ INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION I
Serving as conduit, the body parses sensory affectations to better interact, understand and exist in the world that surrounds us. Yet
its dependability and robustness hide a fragility that can easily alter the socially-accepted function of said corpus. Be they cultural,
sexual, economic or psychological, the limitations imposed on it push it off-course, manifesting normative transgressions that require
our full attention. Regardless whether these defiances are to be celebrated or vilified, their acceptance should be recognized as part
24
of our human nature. As such, the second
program in Bucharest International
Experimental Film Festival’s competition
section compiles five films that push
the boundaries of the body and its
cinematographic representation. Mixing
genre film, video art, documentary and
activist forms, the selection threads
themes of memory, sexuality, rivalry and
childhood through actual or hypothesized
conditions of the body.
BERTRAND MANDICO returns to BIEFF
with another tale of the psycho-sexual
bizarre, the aptly titled OUR LADY OF
HORMONES. Shot in textured Super
16mm and bursting with the artistic
glee of a passionate genre cinephile,
MANDICO’s film employs rear-projection,
stunning technicolour and a lively, and
decadent mise-en-scene to tell the erotic
story of rivalry between two actresses
who become obsessed by a living-andbreathing, hairy lump of meat. A veritable
surreal experience which genre-hops
through comedy, suspense and horror,
OUR LADY OF HORMONES is a cautionary
tale of human nature’s impotence of
domesticating the very (primal) impulses
we desire.
Renowned Romanian artist CĂLIN DAN
marks his return to the Festival with
STILL LIFE, POIRE GELÉE, a meditative
companion-piece to his 2012 film STILL
LIFE, 20th C. Where the former film
operated within the tradition of fiction
and documentary cinema, STILL LIFE,
POIRE GELÉE goes deeper within the
conceptual realm of video-art. Ideas of
architectural form, memory and maternal
lineage all congeal in the symbolic
life-cycle depicted the gradual buildup and eventual erosion of a mound of
white powder. Beneath it all, lies the
female form, tranquil and contemplative,
pulsating to the rhythm of life within the
granules of time.
Working at the threshold of
documentary, diary and essayistic cinema,
Antoinette Zwirchmayr’s THE PIMP AND
HIS TROPHIES is an oneiric recall of the
director’s childhood memories of her
grandfather - one of Salzburg’s most
infamous pimps. Beautifully shot on
35mm and exuding the claustrophobic
ambience of conflicting memories,
the film employs archival photographs
and atmospheric shots of the brothel’s
plush interiors as associative stopgaps
for the voiceover narrations. At the
center of it all lies a structuring absence
enveloping the corporeal spectres of
the family’s illicit business. Hearing of
the grandfather’s love for hunting, the
titular mementos take on a new life,
materializing from the limbo-state of
memory through the process of cinematic
reflection.
Pedophilia - a taboo that elicits
immediate and unshaken aversion, but
With YOU ARE BORING, Vika
Kirchenbauer delivers a steady but
assured wake-up slap in the face to
our repressed, closeted spirit. Through
soothing and beckoning direct-address,
a choir of people take turns addressing
the camera, looking for (you!) the
patient, passive, pent-up viewer. Their
aim? To sell you, through stiff-and-stuffy
yet campily nonchalant rhetoric, their
performative bodies of difference and
vicarious experience for your personal
fantasy wish-fulfillment. Wonderfully
subversive and confrontational, YOU ARE
BORING forces us to take a long, hard
look at our inner (prudish) limits, while
pondering the outer ramifications of our
cultural hegemony’s “consumption of
difference.” Rather than a jolt, the film
leaves us with a warm, embraceful slap
to our normative society’s politics of
representation.
what if you were the one afflicted by it? Guido Hendrikx’ AMONG US takes us through
the confessions of three highly-educated, closeted pedophiles, as they describe their
history of discovery, repression and (impossible?) reconciliation with this affliction.
HENDRIKX captures the poetic bliss and dizzying confusion of the three subjects’ selfconfessed trigger of visualization by focusing on the black-and-white cinematography’s
greyscale palette. Never exploitative or sensationalistic in dealing with the unsettling
dimension of its subject, AMONG US operates as a non-judgemental platform for the
avowal of repression’s life-long trauma.
25
OUR LADY OF HORMONES
30’, 2014, France
DIRECTOR: BERTRAND MANDICO
CAST: Agnès Berthon, Nathalie Richard, Michel Lebayon,
Elina Löwensohn
SCRIPTWRITER: Bertrand Mandico
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Pascale Granel
ART DIRECTION: Astrid Tonnelier
EDITING: Laure Saint-Marc
SOUND: Laure Saint-Marc, Bertrand Mandico
PRODUCER: Emmanuel Chaumet
BERTRAND MANDICO
FILM PRESENTATION: Réalisateur-terrible BERTRAND MANDICO
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: With Notre Dame des Hormones, I wanted
returns to BIEFF with another tale of the psycho-sexual bizarre,
to explore a view of eroticism that goes against the grain, moving the
aptly titled OUR LADY OF HORMONES. Shot in textured Super 16mm
object of desire onto a cutting of evocative, autonomous organs. This
and bursting with the artistic glee of a passionate genre cinephile,
piece of flesh that resembles nothing may very well be the incarnation of
Mandico’s film employs rear-projection, stunning technicolour
indecency for some people.
and a lively, and decadent mise-en-scene to tell the erotic story of
rivalry between two actresses who become obsessed by a livingand-breathing hairy lump of meat. Fitted with a protruding phallic
antennae, the pet-cum-lover becomes an object of desire and envy,
kicking off a murderous tale fit for a Giallo or Hammer film. A veritable
surreal experience which genre-hops through comedy, suspense
and horror, OUR LADY OF HORMONES is a cautionary tale of human
My first intention was to write a film specifically for Elina Löwensohn
and Nathalie Richard. They form a truly intense and funny duo in the
theater (and in real life). They’re sufficiently self-deprecating and crazy to
dive right into an organic project like Notre Dame des Hormones. It was
exhilarating to work with this incredible tandem… They do not hesitate to
play with their own image to the point of twisting it out of shape.
nature’s impotence of domesticating the very (primal) impulses we
When I came up with the two main characters, I was thinking of several
desire.
memorable films that deal with the twilight of an actress (or artistic
(Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF 2016)
menopause): Whatever Happened to Baby Jane by Robert Aldrich, Paul
Vecchiali’s Femmes Femmes, and obviously Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s
Veronika Voss and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard… During the filming, I
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival
2015 / IndieLisboa 2015 / Young Jury Mention & Grand Jury Mention Festival de Brive 2015 / Special Mention of the Press - Short Corner Pantin
conjured up the combined memory of those films.
(BERTRAND MANDICO)
2015 / Minimalen Kortfilmfest - Trondheim 2015 / Festival du film de
Fesses - Paris 2015
26
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected]
W: www.bertrandmandico.com/
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AMONG US
24’, 2014, The Netherlands
DIRECTOR: GUIDO HENDRIKX
SCRIPTWRITER: Guido Hendrikx
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Emo Weemhoff
EDITING: Lot Rossmark
SOUND: Tijn Hazen
MUSIC: Ella van der Woude
GUIDO HENDRIX
FILM PRESENTATION: Paedophilia - a taboo that elicits immediate
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: The conflict between deeper inner feelings
and unshaken aversion, but what if you were the one afflicted by it?
and rational thinking fascinates me. By focussing on three high-educated,
Guido Hendrikx’s AMONG US takes us through the confessionals of
self-conscious pedophiles I was able to explore this conflict in his most
three highly-educated, closeted pedophiles, as they describe their
dramatic form. The main characters of Among Us rationally reject and
history of discovery, repression and (impossible?) reconciliation
therefore don’t act on their sexual feelings.
with this affliction. Hendrikx captures the poetic bliss and
dizzying confusion of the three subjects’ self-confessed trigger of
visualization by focusing on the black-and-white cinematography’s
greyscale palette. Never exploitative or sensationalistic in dealing
with the unsettling dimension of its subject, AMONG US operates as
an non-judgemental platform for the avowal of repression’s life-long
trauma.
I wanted to give a merciless insight in the minds and thoughts of these for most others - indefinable persons. To achieve this I felt I was forced to
put a lot of effort in sound-design and music-composing, combined with
an unconventional use of imagery. An interesting challenge for me as a
filmmaker.
I hope the audience will be able to set their prejudices aside so the
understanding of having to cope with a sexual orientation which most
consider as morbid will not be disturbed by narrow-minded judgement.
In the end, every human being has to learn to cope with forces he can’t
control. Learning to cope with such forces seems an important universal
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Best International Short Film - Montreal International
Documentary Festival, Canada 2015 / Vevam Award for Best Dutch Film - Go
challenge in life.
(GUIDO HENDRIKX)
PRODUCER: Erik Glijnis, Zinzy Nimako, Jonne Roos
Short – International Short Film Festival Nijmegen 2015 / Uppsala Award in
Memory of Ingmar Bergman - Uppsala International Short Film Festival 2015 /
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2015 / Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival
2015 / True/False Film Fest 2015 / Busan International Short Film Festival 2015 /
IndieLisboa 2015 / Sarajevo Film Festival 2015 / Vilnius International Short Film
Festival 2015 / Festival dei Popoli – International Documentary Film Festival 2015.
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: T: +31(0)641356961 | E: [email protected]
W: someshorts.com/films/onderons
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T: 0031 6 22076717 | E: [email protected]
W: www.someshorts.com
27
STILL LIFE, POIRE GELÉE
12’, 2013, Romania, The Netherlands
DIRECTOR: CĂLIN DAN
SCRIPTWRITER: Călin Dan
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Marius Iacob
EDITING: Larisa Sitar
SOUND: Maţe
PRODUCER: George Niculescu
Photo credit: Natură moartă. Pere înghețate, 2013
CĂLIN DAN
FILM PRESENTATION: Renowned Romanian artist CĂLIN DAN marks
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Still Life. Poires Gelée is a one-shot poetic
his return to the Festival with STILL LIFE, POIRE GELÉE, a meditative
meditation on the points where history, geology, meteorology and
companion-piece to his 2012 film Still Life, 20th C. Where the former
feminity converge. This film is the second panel in a diptych dedicated to
film operated within the tradition of fiction and documentary cinema,
the women in my life and it is to be viewed in connection with Still Life.
Still Life, Poire Gelée goes deeper within the conceptual realm of
20th Century (2012), premiered at BIEFF the same year.
video-art. Ideas of architectural form, memory and maternal lineage
all congeal in the symbolic life-cycle depicted the gradual build-up and
eventual erosion of a mound of white powder. Beneath it all, lies the
female form, tranquil and contemplative, pulsating to the rhythm of
life within the granules of time.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: R.E.M.X., Muzeul Județean, Arad 2014 / Urmele
unei nopți anunțate, Galeria Poterașu, București; Muzeul Județean,
Arad 2015.
28
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: Popa Tatu 62 A, ap. 46, Sector 1, București
The film is a reflection on feminity confronting history. The aim is to create
the visual and audio background that operates as a centre of absorbtion of both energy and meditation - either within a multi-media installation or
as an autonomous piece for cinema screenings.
(CĂLIN DAN)
YOU ARE BORING!
14’, 2015, Germany
DIRECTOR: VIKA KIRCHENBAUER
CAST: La JohnJoseph, Max Göran, Mysti, Nadia Buyse,
Vika Kirchenbauer
SCRIPTWRITER: Vika Kirchenbauer
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Martin Sulzer
EDITING: Vika Kirchenbauer
VIKA KIRCHENBAUER
FILM PRESENTATION: With YOU ARE BORING!, VIKA KIRCHENBAUER
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: YOU ARE BORING! discusses the
delivers a steady but assured wake-up slap in the face to our repressed,
troublesome nature of “looking” and “being looked at” in larger
closeted spirit. Through soothing and beckoning direct-address, a choir
contexts including labour within the new economy, performer/spectator
of people take turns addressing the camera, looking for (you!) the
relations, participatory culture, contemporary art display and queer
patient, passive, pent-up viewer. Their aim? To sell you, through stiff-
representational politics.
and-stuffy yet campily nonchalant rhetoric, their performative bodies
of difference and vicarious experience for your personal fantasy wishfulfillment. Wonderfully subversive and confrontational, YOU ARE
BORING! forces us to take a long, hard look at our inner (prudish) limits,
while pondering the outer ramifications of our cultural hegemony’s
‘consumption of difference.’ Rather than a jolt, the film leaves us
with a warm, embraceful slap to our normative society’s politics of
representation.
What economic value or value of interest do these images create for a
general public’s eye and why are they now fashionable? YOU ARE BORING!
suggests that the value is created by an immersive presentation of a
subculture outside its original context: providing safe positions and access
ports for exoticising gazes, while at the same time offering the experience
and closeness to something that is understood and presented almost as a
secret society.
YOU ARE BORING! formulates from this web of thoughts a 3D video
installation focusing on five performers’ bodies as sites-of-speech free
from any physical context. Through strategies that overload the capacities
of affective multitasking and the self-consuming illusion of total
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film
subjectivity, the spectator is personally addressed and promised exactly
Festival 2015 / Hamburg International Short Film Festival 2015 /
what he or she needs.
Struts Gallery/Faucet Media Arts Centre, Canada 2015 / Uppsala
International Short Film Festival 2015 / IndieCork Film Festival, Ireland
SOUND: Rita Macedo
(VIKA KIRCHENBAUER)
2015 / MixBrasil FIlm Festival 2015 / MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film
Festival 2015 / SPEKTRUM art_technology_community, Berlin 2015
WORLD SALES: VIKA KIRCHENBAUER
T: +491749992915 | E: [email protected] | W : www.vk0ms.com
29
THE PIMP AND HIS TROPHIES
21’, 2014, Austria
DIRECTOR: ANTOINETTE ZWIRCHMAYR
SCRIPTWRITER: Antoinette Zwirchmayr
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Rosa John
EDITING: Antoinette Zwirchmayr, Rosa John
SOUND: Rob Peters
MUSIC: A thousand fuegos & Squalloscope
PRODUCTION: Antoinette Zwirchmayr &
Carmen Weingartshofer
ANTOINETTE ZWIRCHMAYR
FILM PRESENTATION: Working at the threshold of documentary, diary
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: The first time I visited my grandfather’s
and essayistic cinema, ANTOINETTE ZWIRCHMAYR’s THE PIMP AND
brothel I was seven years old. We were sitting on a couch in the entrance
HIS TROPHIES is an oneiric recall of the director’s childhood memories
hall and he was telling me a story. Just as the story was reaching its
of her grandfather - one of Salzburg’s most infamous pimps. Beautifully
climax, he suddenly stopped speaking and left the room with two
shot on 35mm and exuding the claustrophobic ambience of conflicting
prostitutes. I looked over at my grandmother, whose gaze was empty, as if
memories, the film employs archival photographs and atmospheric
she were somewhere else.
shots of the brothel’s plush interiors as associative stopgaps for the
voiceover narrations. At the center of it all lies a structuring absence
enveloping the corporeal spectres of the family’s illicit business.
Hearing of the grandfather’s love for hunting, the titular mementos
take on a new life, materializing from the limbo-state of memory
through the process of cinematic reflection.
Prostitution, pimping and human trafficking are universal phenomena
of society and at the same time a taboo in public discourse. Beyond
the indisputable moral rejection of evil per se, the various attempts to
interpret this behavior have generally focused almost exclusively on the
victims, in this case, the prostitutes. The offenders or pimps are usually
not keen on discussing their profession or introducing themselves publicly,
mainly because of judicial circumstances. Being the granddaughter of one
of Salzburg’s most infamous pimps, I have encountered such a perpetrator
on a truly intimate level, seen through a child’s eyes. Secret audio
recordings by my grandmother, footage of my grandfather, architectural
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Best Documentary Film - Diagonale Graz 2014 /
IndieLisboa 2015 / Festival dei Popoli 2015 / Toronto International Film
Festival 2014 / Vienna Independent Short Film Festival 2014.
blueprints and photographs of the brothel, my father’s thoughts as well as
my own memories: all this forms the groundwork of my undertaking.
My goal is not to shock, but to show the reality behind the façade, with all
of its cracks, to expose the many facets of truth that lie beneath.”
(ANTOINETTE ZWIRCHMAYR)
30
WORLD SALES: T: +43 676 4703524 | E: [email protected]
W: www.antoinettezwirchmayr.com
DIGITAL DYSTOPIAS
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION II
31
PRESENTATION
DIGITAL DYSTOPIAS
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION II
We live in a time where, now, (more?) than ever, the future and all its socio-economic, political and cultural affectations bear
a heavy burden on our lives. It used to be that we could sit back and comfortably envision a future through the prism of
modernity’s promising outlook. Yet while we were sleeping, “the slow cancellation of the future,” was happening before our
eyes. Our Ludovico wide-eyed evolutionary optimism has freeze-framed as the future of the past was crumbling in a fascinating
\\ INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION II
uncertainty. In our present future, change is immediate, technology advances at exponential rates and global systems of
economy and power are riven with instability.
And so, equipped with an unprecedented awareness afforded by our digital age, the following films look at the frailty of our human
existence and its inevitably dystopic trajectory. Significantly, in this wide cinematographic pallette each film brings out distinctive
hues of digital filmmaking (from simple compositing to creating full-scale virtual worlds), blurring the line between reality and fiction.
The dystopic film par-excellence, Edouard Salier’s HABANA serves as landing point for experiencing first-hand a world in ruins.
Documentary footage offers a cursory investigation of a Cuba under siege, where technologically-superior (in)human forces have
imposed martial law over its capital’s
inhabitants. More so than its faithfulness
to genre storytelling (the inevitable
rise of the oppressed), HABANA stands
out through its sleek chiaroscuro
cinematography that seamlessly (and,
digitally) envisions a present infiltrated
by an imagined future. This realism is
weighed even heavier by the plausibility
of the film’s David and Goliath narrative.
An uproarious but tender example of
‘digital-organic’ cinema, Ulu Braun’s
ARCHITEKTURA re-organizes the
32
structural blueprints of human civilization’s urbanization, envisioning a world where
concrete meets both the organic and the abstract. Mutating (in the slightest) the DNA
strand of architecture, Braun creates a literal, post-apocalyptic, post-capitalist digital
dystopia where soap-bubble buildings stand alongside ruined churches turned car
dealerships. A parable for our future generations, it questions whether architecture’s
alchemical wonder of urbanization - and its aesthetic, environmental effects - is an
inheritance worth endowing.
The (seemingly) evolutionary acceleration of our time narrows to the essential in
Thibault le Texier’s pleasantly foreboding THE INVENTION OF THE DESERT. The
landscape has shifted completely to the digital, where virtual demo videos of (home,
office, recreational) real-estate are stand-ins for our disappeared world. These idealized
utopias of urban habitats summarily become ‘user-friendly concentration camps’ in the
narrative spoken by an unseen female robotic voice. It seems humanity’s complacency
The capacity of parody to subvert takes on
literal form in FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE,
as Bjørn Melhus embodies the titular
concepts in order to deconstruct the
dystopic potentiality of our current
neoliberalist political and economic climate.
A high-art vaudevillian one-man show, Bjørn
Melhus’ work caricaturizes Capitalism’s
notorious Ayn Rand as the mother-superior
to Mr. Freedom and Ms. Independence,
who are sent off into the first-developingworld. Parroting rational and theological
platitudes, the two protagonists unwittingly
single out the indoctrinating egomania of
Capitalism, at the same time foreshadowing
its inescapable futility. Their reductive call-
and-response rhetoric is juxtaposed against the song-and-dance of life’s most reliable Truth
and constant: death. If “hell is other people” FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE points out that
Capitalism’s ruinous ideology is the clothing that wraps up the dystopian despotic emperor.
Oftentimes, greener pastures veil arid realities, diverting awareness and placating concern.
In the case of Casablanca’s Arab League Park, Randa Maroufi sweeps us past its green idyll
and lets us loose ‘on the wrong side of its fence.’ Instead of touristic leisure, our floating
POV captures derelict carousels among wild vegetation and rubbish-strewn walking paths.
This is the stomping ground of Morocco’s urban youth, heard through fractured voice-overs
as they perform in front of digital cameras for the approval of social media. Materializing
this presence-asposture through still-lifes of bodies in mid-action, The Park offers a
(privileged) virtual flânerie in a space where youthful abandon and societal fears converge.
How can one imagine the future in an insular, totalitarian country such as North Korea,
where the past attests to a present where (r)evolution and progress are suppressed? For
renowned Romanian artist Mihai Grecu, the answer is from within, as his THE REFLECTION
OF POWER holds a reflective mirror to the absolute and megalomaniac power of the state.
All alone and empty of human presence, the dictatorial monuments exude an unshakeable
folie-de-grandeur that starts to be slowly swallowed up by an incoming Biblical flood. Poetic
and striking in its realism, THE REFLECTION OF POWER subverts the utopian dimension of
landscape art. Sealed-off from the outside world, the resilience of totalitarianism becomes
an Achilles heel, as it symbolically swallows itself, remaining but a faded glory.
in allowing technology to optimize its
existence became the catalyst in the
eventual arrival of technological singularity.
The inevitability of Artificial Intelligence
surpassing mankind leaves us to ponder
ultimate dystopian fear: our existence no
longer computes.
33
DIGITAL DYSTOPIAS
THE INVENTION OF THE DESERT
7’, 2014, France
DIRECTOR: THIBAULT LE TEXIER
CAST: Liz Tolan
SCRIPTWRITER: Thibault Le Texier
EDITING: Thibault Le Texier
SOUND: Thibault Le Texier
MUSIC: Thibault Le Texier
PRODUCER: Thibault Le Texier
THIBAULT LE TEXIER
FILM PRESENTATION:THE INVENTION OF THE DESERT is, on the
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: THE INVENTION OF THE DESERT takes its
surface, an essay abstract for the study of singularity theory; at its
inspiration from the theory of singularity, embodied by someone like Ray
core, however, lies a prophetic dictum, vocalized by a digital entity
Kurzweil and which postulates that the machine is the future of humanity.
hailing from a future where mankind has disappeared. Fly-bys of
According to this theory, we will very soon insert microchips in the brain,
architectural videos populated by digital simulacra of ourselves are
nanoparticles will replace our cells and thus we will be stronger, smarter
appropriated as the narrator describes a world - not far from ours -
and we will be potentially immortal. This Posthuman ideology has long
where human civilization grew over-reliant on technology. Gradually,
remained confined in Silicon Valley, but is invading common sense. HER,
our virtual presence in the videos disappears, as we learn of Artificial
Spike Jones’ film, is an example of such blind acceptance of a benevolent
Intelligence surpassing the human species. Frighteningly passive in
machine that becomes both a spouse, a benevolent parent and a coach.
its apocalyptic conclusion, The Invention of the Desert functions as a
And the blockbuster of the moment, CHAPPIE, has the tag line: ‘The
powerful alarm call, resonating within the droning pulsations of the
last hope of mankind is not human.’ This kind of film gets us used to,
synthesized soundtrack well after its credits abruptly cut off its lifeline.
nonchalantly, put our fate in the hands of machines.
My impression is that we are headed for a fall. All eyes on our
smartphones, we send short videos of kittens and selfies without us
realizing that we’re wrecking the world that we have received. Not only
the natural world, but also a whole culture, a whole breadth of human
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Rotterdam International Film Festival 2015 / Festival des
cinémas différents et expérimentaux, Paris / Clermont-Ferrand International
relationships that we are losing.
(THIBAULT LE TEXIER)
Short Film Festival / Jeonju International Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea /
Imagine Science festival, New York 34
WORLD SALES: THIBAULT LE TEXIER
T: + 33 9 81 68 61 41 | E: [email protected] | W: www.singularity.fr
FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE
15’, 2014, Germany
DIRECTOR: BJØRN MELHUS
CAST: Bjørn Melhus
SCRIPTWRITER: Bjørn Melhus
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Eike Zuleeg
EDITING: Bjørn Melhus
SOUND: Max Schneider
MUSIC: Max Schneider
(STUK)
PRODUCER: Yuki Jungesblut, Bjørn Melhus
WORLD SALES: AUG & OHR MEDIEN
T: +49 (0) 176 - 62965299 | E: [email protected] | W: www.augohr.de
35
BJØRN MELHUS
FILM PRESENTATION: Part performance, part political critique, part
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: Bjørn Melhus combines material from
genre film, yet 100% entertaining, BJØRN MELHUS’ FREEDOM &
American movies such as Armageddon and Deep Impact with the
INDEPENDENCE is a wonderfully witty and thought-provoking allegory
controversial neoliberal ideas of the Russian-American writer and
of neoliberalism’s ideological folly. Guided by the voiceover proselytism
philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982). As the author of Atlas Shrugged, Rand
of Ayn Rand, Freedom and Independence take on physical shape as they
was at the forefront of influential, conservative think-tanks in the US.
are sent to view the urban development of the future. Split between
With her concept of ‘objectivism’, in which individual happiness trumps
reality’s rational thought (Rand’s Objectivism) and theological faith
that of the community and the path to salvation lies in the privatisation
(Hollywood melodrama), the titular protagonists reach an identity
and complete deregulation of the economy, she provided a philosophical
crisis. Although reigned back in by their ‘mother superior,’ their quest
foundation for neoliberal capitalism.
towards neoliberalism’s exigent individual empowerment ends with a
song-and-dance of life’s most reliable Truth and constant: death. Wry,
witty and wonderfully jubilant, Bjørn Melhus’ straight-faced film is a
one-man show of cerebral activism.
Melhus portrays her as a tyrannical mistress, indoctrinating the two main
protagonists of the film, Mister Freedom and Miss Independence, and a
group of sick half-dead men in a mortuary with her philosophy on the free
market. As in many of his films, Melhus addresses topics such as identity,
religion, capitalism and globalisation. He exposes and caricatures in a
very specific mix of fiction and non-fiction, in which he plays all the lead
characters himself. He allows the audience to look at reality in a new light,
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Sphinx Award for Best Video/Film - Videomedeja
International Video Festival, Serbia 2015 / Oberhausen International Film
from a distance; it’s uncanny, funny, but above all sharp.
Festival / Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival / Hamburg
International Short Film Festival / Cyprus International Film Festival /
Winterthur International Short Film Festival / Berlin International Short
Film Festival / Exground Film Fest
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected] | W: www.melhus.de
DIGITAL DYSTOPIAS
HABANA
22’, 2014, France
DIRECTOR: EDOUARD SALIER
EDITING: Alexandro Rodriguez
SCRIPTWRITER: Sébastien Ors, Edouard Salier
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mathieu Plainfossé
PRODUCER: Nicolas Schmerkin, Emilie Schmerkin
SOUND DESIGN: Rubén Valdés
EDOUARD SALIER
FILM PRESENTATION: Digital artist and manipulator EDOUARD
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: Cuba, it is chaos in Havana, there are over
SALIER delivers an award-winning vision of a near-future, dystopian
7 years old Havana and is the great revolution in the streets! Chickens
Cuba, where its titular capital is occupied by a foreign force. Through
brigades replace the frenzied salsa dancers and the smoke of Cuban cigars
the lens of a documentary crew guided by local slum-youth Lazaro,
is replaced by smoking towers... But what happened in Havana? A new
we’re immersed in a city under lockdown, a derelict ruin dwarfed
Cuban revolution for its freedom? Lazaro (Leoandy Chacon) accompanied
by towering new structures and an oppressive force that controls
by a cameraman will unveil the conditions of the Cubans left behind, who
the city. Gritty and harrowing, Salier’s cinema-verité footage
have nowhere to go and are stuck on this beautiful island turned into
reveals the city’s seedy pleasures and paralyzing pains with poetic
hell. Is this the price to pay for freedom? Is it a nuclear attack? According
visuals of unflinching realism. Through seamless digital effects and
Lazaro, there would be toxic waste everywhere. But when Lazaro brings
unforgettable vistas, HABANA goes beyond its narrative’s shock-and-
the journalists in a heavily guarded hangar…
awe conventions, emerging victoriously as a portrait of urban decay
and humanity under siege.
(Olivier H - Blog du Cinema)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Best Short Film - Fantasporto, 2015 / Best Short Film Odense International Film Festival 2014 / Clermont-Ferrand International Short
Film Festival 2014 / Festival du Cinéma Européen de Lille 2014 / Vila do Conde
International Short Film Festival 2014 / Palm Springs International Film Festival
2014 / Festival Séquence - Toulouse 2014.
36
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT:
E: [email protected] | W: www.edouardsalier.fr | www.habana-movie.com
WORLD SALES: AUTOUR DE MINUIT - Annabel Sebag
T: +33 1 42 81 17 28 | E: [email protected]
W: www.autourdeminuit.com
ARCHITEKTURA
15’, 2015, Germany
DIRECTOR: ULU BRAUN
CAST: John-Patrick Morarescu, Gina-Lisa Maiwald, Niina
Lehtonen Braun, Valentin Lorenz, Milan Braun
SCRIPTWRITER: Ulu Braun
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ulu Braun
EDITING: Ulu Braun
SOUND: Moritz Hoffmeister
MUSIC: Patric Catani
ULU BRAUN
FILM PRESENTATION: Rather than reinventing the wheel, BIEFF-
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: In the beginning there was a brick, which flew
favourite ULU BRAUN re-envisions the structural potentiality of the
through space. It flew past skyscrapers in a city and keeps reappearing in
brick, in this revisionist fable of mankind’s urbanization of our planet.
this film about construction and destruction. Brick by brick – where will
Employing playful and visually dense digital collages (recalling his
that ultimately lead? A father shows the world to his child – that will be all
2013 BIEFF short FORST), Braun’s associative tableaux collate an
yours one day, he says. Soap bubbles float upward. It is all a cyclical affair.
‘alternate’ vision of our world, where nature invades the urban (and
The tableaux Ulu Braun assembles are playful, associative and powerful.
vice-versa). We’re transported by a comforting narrator through post-
In his realm of imagery, sizes, relations and contexts become malleable.
apocalyptic, post-capitalist habitats, where the material co-exists with
Owing to the deconstruction of proportions and coherencies, Ulu Braun’s
the metaphysical, the literal alongside the figurative (soap-bubble
narrative becomes a fable. Architecture is the game of positioning bodies
buildings stand alongside ruined churches turned car dealerships).
in light. Darkness needs its space. The future is already misaligned.
ARCHITEKTURA echoes our civilization’s childlike ingenuity in creation
and destruction, as we question the inheritance we pass on to our
(BERLINALE)
future generations.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Berlin International Film Festival 2015 / Hong Kong
International Film Festival / Videoart at Midnight Berlin / Athens Digital
PRODUCER: Ulu Braun
Arts Festival / Shortfilmfestival Hamburg / Videoart at Midnight / Sarajevo
Film Festival / Berlinische Galerie.
WORLD SALES: ULU BRAUN
T: + 49 176 22253040 | E: [email protected] | W: www.ulubraun.com
37
DIGITAL DYSTOPIAS
THE PARK
14’, 2015, France
DIRECTOR: RANDA MAROUFI
CAST: Young folk of Yasmina Park (Rayan, Walid Achouikh,
Abdellah Adnan, Reda Afandi, Nora Aitlkadi, Nisrine Barakat,
Achraf Beckoury, Abdellah Belkaid)
SCRIPTWRITER: Randa Maroufi
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Luca Coassin
EDITING: Randa Maroufi
PRODUCER: Alain Fleischer
RANDA MAROUFI
FILM PRESENTATION: Oftentimes, greener pastures veil arid
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Desire to question different points of view
realities, diverting awareness and placating concern. In the case of
and to multiply the possibilities: politically charged moments, danger
Casablanca’s Arab League Park, Randa Maroufi sweeps us past its
frozen in time, instants before acting out... between immediacy and
green idyll and lets us loose ‘on the wrong side of its fence.’ Instead
illusion, audience observes “something about to happen” and is invited to
of touristic leisure, our floating POV captures derelict carousels
accept an experience of duration.
among wild vegetation and rubbish-strewn walking paths. This
is the stomping ground of Morocco’s urban youth, heard through
(RANDA MAROUFI)
fractured voice-overs as they perform in front of digital cameras
for the approval of social media. Materializing this presence-asposture through still-lifes of bodies in mid-action, The Park offers a
Actions frozen in gestures of exchange, expectation and aggression are
(privileged) virtual flânerie in a space where youthful abandon and
played out following a score conducted by the artist who, in the manner
societal fears converge.
of Eric Baudelaire, uses composition to explore reality. But this reality is
also virtual, for these scenes come in part from a repertoire of violent selfrepresentations found on the Internet. The artist reprises their vocabulary.
Violence, she tells us, is a language, and its interpretation is a matter of
context. (...) A strange vitality emanates from the gentle immobility of the
silent travelling shot that drifts through the scenes acted out by the local
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Special Mention - International Film Festival Rotterdam
inhabitants. Like the roughness of the vegetal and urban architecture of
2016 / Prix de l’ADAGP – Exhibition Panorama17, France 2015 / New Directors/
the abandoned park, these existences are not festive, yet they celebrate
New Films, New York 2016 / Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival 2016 /
life’s endurance, a vital energy that is hidden yet tenacious.
IndieLisboa 2016 / Festival International du Film sur l’Art, Montreal 2016 / 25fps
Film Festival, Croatia 2015 / Winterthur International Short Film Festival 2015
(INÈS BOUAILLON)
/ Med Film Festival, Rome 2015 / Cairo International Film Festival, Egypt 2015 /
Poitiers Film Festival, France 2015.
38
WORLD SALES: LE FRESNOY - Natalia Trebik: Head of Distribution
and Festivals T: +03 20 28 38 64 | E: [email protected] |
W: www.lefresnoy.net
THE REFLECTION OF POWER
9’, 2015, France
DIRECTOR: MIHAI GRECU
EDITING: Mihai Grecu, Clemence Diard
SCRIPTWRITER: Mihai Grecu
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mu-Jin
SOUND DESIGN: Simon Apostolou
MIHAI GRECU
FILM PRESENTATION: Romanian artist MIHAI GRECU takes us
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: This film is a rare glimpse into one of the
deep into the heart of North Korea’s reclusive capital Pyonyang, as
most reclusive places of the world, Pyongyang, the capital of North
grandiose ceremonies are underway. Nestled indoors, its citizens
Korea. Slowly, an unknown anomaly devours this strange city. But the
remain unshaken in their celebration while an impending catastrophe
city’s atmosphere of eternal celebration never changes no matter how
takes over the city. As the camera slowly glides across the city’s
obvious the approaching end. The people keep absurdly demonstrating
urban landscape, the repressive state’s megalomanic monuments are
the same preset patriotic behavior. The visual poetry of the film
quickly being swallowed up by a Biblical flood. Poetic and striking in its
rests upon metaphoric relations being created between architectural
realism, THE REFLECTION OF POWER subverts the utopic dimension
objects, including symbols of the North-Korean regime, and the natural
of landscape art. Sealed-off from the outside world, the resilience of
phenomena sent to dissolve them. The film supposes history to be a chain
totalitarianism becomes an Achille’s heel, as it symbolically swallows
of situations that seem to be unshakable until they are gone forever.
itself, remaining but a faded glory.
(Ars Electronica)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Grand Prix - Festival Silhouette, France 2015 /
Special Jury Mention - Timishort Film Festival, Romania 2015 / Special
PRODUCER: Nicolas Anthomé
Jury Mention - FIVA Film Festival, Argentina 2015 / Award of Distinction
- Ars Electronica, Austria 2015 / Clermont-Ferrand International Short
Film Festival 2015 / Message To Man St Petersburg Film Festival 2015 /
DokuFestKosovo 2015 / Festival Nouveau Cinéma, Montreal 2015 Festival
de Cinéma Européen des Arcs 2015
WORLD SALES: BATHYSPERE - Clement Le Penven
T: + 33 1 40 21 37 02 | E: [email protected] |
W: www.bathysphere.fr
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: T: + 33 06 16 60 57 46 | E: [email protected]
W: www.mihaigrecu.org/
39
PRESENTATION
JOURNEYS INTO
SUBCONSCIOUS
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION III
\\ INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION III
The films gathered under the theme program Journey into Subconscious take us beneath the surface of our mind, looking at what
lurks in that intriguing locus of conflicting and extreme thoughts, wishful desires and latent traumas. Together, they present formal
variations on the thought-processes that form us and by extension, use the screen to mirror our (mis)matched projected selves.
In an empty, non-descript room,
two middle-aged women play out a
heart-wrenching scene of child abuse.
Testimony turns to reenactment, and as
the moments go by, the stop-and-repeat
psychological exercise grows in intensity.
In front of the passively observant
camera, the excruciating details of
psychological trauma are performed,
giving way to a flood of emotions.
Nine-year old Signe is resurrected
before our eyes as we take part in her
adult self’s psychological purification.
Brilliant in its cinematic economy, MY
MOMMY by FALCK pulls us deep within
the experiential state of the victim’s
powerlessness. By the end, our communal
catharsis is revealed to have a more
significant scope as a simple pan of the
camera delivers a powerful statement on
trauma’s transference across generations.
Commissioned by IndieLisboa for the
omnibus Here in Lisbon (shared with
40
films from Marie Losier, Dominga Sotomayor and Denis Côté) GABRIEL ABRANTES’
FREUD AND FRIENDS is a raucous cavalcade of parodies. Bearing the eponymous
title, Abrantes’ film is set up as a TV show narrated by famous documentarian Herner
Werzog as he goes on location to a laboratory, observing guinea-pig Abrantes who
is volunteering for his scientist-girlfriend’s mind-reading experiments. Always the
mischievous, self-deprecating filmmaker, Abrantes uses this opportunity to unleash a
barrage of subconscious fears and desires (ranging from the cerebral to the gaseous),
complete with commercial breaks (look out for the truly Freudian Woody Allen
impersonation!). Beneath it all lie incisive stabs at media’s culture of beauty and sex, as
well as the eternal fear of commitment.
Winner of the Cinema & Gioventù prize
for Best International Short at the 2015
Locarno International Film Festival,
MARCUS LINDEEN’s movie DEAR
DIRECTOR is an absorbing mood-piece on
the search for identity within the mirrored
reflection of cinema. In 1980 jazz musician
Kazzrie Jaxen had a life-changing
experience watching Ingmar Bergman’s
From the Life of Marionettes. Immersed
within his cinematic world of duality and
fissured identities, she realized she was a
‘womb-twin survivor,’ the only child born
from a dual pregnancy. Lindeen explores
this with utmost gentility through a form
of cinematic stream-of-sub-consciousness,
observing Jaxen episodically as she
engages in the process of internalizing
this discovery. Accessible but hiding
intricate layers of narrative and formal
complexity, Dear Director is a wonderful
objet d’art of cinematic musicality that
unwinds more with each viewing.
Awarded Special Mention upon its debut
at last year’s Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in
Cannes, THE EXQUISITE CORPUS is PETER
TSCHERKASSKY’s long-awaited follow-up
to his 2009 Coming Attractions. Using
as material and thematic basis erotic
footage culled from various sources,
Tscherkassky employs his trademark
techniques of analog manipulation,
creating a veritable garden of delights:
arriving amongst a nudist colony, a couple
approaches a woman sleeping on the
beach. Her fortuitous state of reverie
takes over and we’re thrown into every
celluloid fan’s erotic dream. Montage
and manipulation guide Tscherkassky’s
formal narrative of the seduction and
coital triumph of the body, as it is
reinforced by frequent collaborator Dirk
Schaefer’s hypnotic sound collages. With
its beautiful craftsmanship, The Exquisite
Corpus disassembles cinema and the body
in a delicious celebration of arousal.
A cerebral wonder of cinematic narration,
DAVID RODES’ film CÉOS | PHOÉBÉ
plays out within the liminal realm where
thoughts and ideas germinate - the mind.
Emanating from its deeply symbolic
core, the film envisions its male and
female protagonists meeting upon a
vast, arid plateau. As their ghostly traces
run circles around each other, their real
manifestation brings them face to face,
under the threat of a colossal electrical
sandstorm that is approaching. Words in
an unknown language are spoken, glances
exchanged and the symbolic offering
of an amulet leads to the possibility
of communication and contact. Within
this simple structure, Ancient Greek
mythology is re-envisioned, placing the
viewer in the middle of the conceptual
plane of the mind. By dramatizing the
cosmic meeting between the titans of
intellect (CEOS) and prophecy (PHOEBE),
RODES imparts to the viewer the noblest
of offerings: emotion.
41
JOURNEYS INTO SUBCONSCIOUS
FREUD AND FRIENDS
23’, 2015, Portugal, Switzerland
DIRECTOR: GABRIEL ABRANTES
CAST: Gabriel Abrantes, Carloto Cotta, Sónia Balacó, Filipa
Anika, David Phelps, Cláudia Jardim, Joana Barrios, Natxo
Checa, Norberto Lobo
SCRIPTWRITER: Gabriel Abrantes, David Phelps
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jorge Quintela
EDITING: Margarida Lucas
SOUND: Rafael Cardoso
MUSIC: Norberto Lobo
PRODUCER: IndieLisboa - Associação Cultural, Gabriel
Abrantes
GABRIEL ABRANTES
FILM PRESENTATION: Commissioned by IndieLisboa for the omnibus
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Since my early boyhood days I wanted to
Here in Lisbon (shared with films from Marie Losier, Dominga
cross the chaotic frontier of the mind to be able to walk around in other
Sotomayor and Denis Côté) GABRIEL ABRANTES’ FREUD AND
people’s dreams. I had a childish fantasy where I would shrink smaller than
FRIENDS is a raucous cavalcade of parodies. Bearing the eponymous
a peanut and I could walk through my mother’s ear and be a peeping Tom
title, Abrantes’ film is set up as a TV show narrated by famous
in her dreams.” In the dream laboratory of the Champalimaud Centre for
documentarian Herner Werzog as he goes on location to a laboratory,
the Unknown, Abrantes’ dreams become reality. A machine is created that
observing guinea-pig Abrantes who is volunteering for his scientist-
makes the shrinking process possible. At its core stands a living creature,
girlfriend’s mind-reading experiments. Always the mischievous, self-
named after the hero of European Cinema: Bernardo. A baroque journey
deprecating filmmaker, Abrantes uses this opportunity to unleash a
to the world of id begins. Gabriel Abrantes has the courage and Georg
barrage of subconscious fears and desires (ranging from the cerebral
Groddeck would have been thrilled. Film history and all of its world-
to the gaseous), complete with commercial breaks (look out for the
renowned male heroes undergo a new ascription.
truly Freudian Woody Allen impersonation!). Beneath it all lie incisive
stabs at media’s culture of beauty and sex, as well as the eternal fear
(GABRIEL ABRANTES)
of commitment.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Berlin International Film Festival 2016 / Museum
of Old and New Art, MONA Biennale of Moving Images, Australia 2015 /
Friends with Benefits: An Anthology of Four New American Filmmakers,
Lincoln Center 2015.
42
E: [email protected] | www.marcuslindeen.com
WORLD SALES: Portugal FIlm
T: +351 213 466 172 | E: [email protected]
W: www.portugalfilm.org
MY MOMMY
15’, 2014, Norway
DIRECTOR: FALCK
CAST: Signe Martha Tosterud, Aud Steinsbekk
SCRIPTWRITER: FALCK
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Audun G. Magnæs
EDITING: Anette Ruud Andersen, Brede Rørstad
FALK
FILM PRESENTATION: In an empty, non-descript room, two
middle-aged women play out a heart-wrenching scene of child
abuse. Testimony turns to reenactment, and as the moments go by,
the stop-and-repeat psychological exercise grows in intensity. In
front of the passively observant camera, the excruciating details
of psychological trauma are performed, giving way to a flood of
emotions. Nine-year old Signe is resurrected before our eyes as
we take part in her adult self’s psychological purification. Brilliant
in its cinematic economy, MY MOMMY pulls us deep within the
experiential state of the victim’s powerlessness. By the end, our
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
I feel ashamed.
I hate myself.
I don’t deserve to be liked.
I have made a film about my mommy.
The film is part of the project SHAME.
(FALK)
communal catharsis is revealed to have a more significant scope as a
simple pan of the camera delivers a powerful statement on trauma’s
transference across generations.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Oberhausen International Short Film Festival
PRODUCER: Elisabeth Kvithyll, Revolt Film
2015 / Norwegian Short Film Festival 2014
WORLD SALES: NORWEGIAN FILM INSTITUTE
T: + 47 22 47 45 74 | E: [email protected] | W: www.norwegianfilms.no
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: T: +47 469 32 489 | E: [email protected]
43
CÉOS | PHOÉBÉ
13’, 2015, France
DIRECTOR: DAVID RODES
CAST: Anaïs Chartreau , William Prunck
SCRIPTWRITER: David Rodes
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sylvain Briend, Vladimir Peeters
ART DIRECTION: Sidney H. Greenwood
EDITING: David Rodes
SOUND: Maxence Ciekawy
PRODUCER: Le Fresnoy
DAVID RODES
FILM PRESENTATION: A cerebral wonder of cinematic narration,
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: What is left of us at the dawn of our
DAVID RODES’ film plays out within the liminal realm where thoughts
forgetting? This could be the story of a future memory or that of a
and ideas germinate - the mind. Emanating from its deeply symbolic
forgotten future. A fragment of a mythical dream in our frozen memories.
core, the film envisions its male and female protagonists meeting upon
What is left of us at the dawn of our forgetting? When presence is no
a vast, arid plateau. As their ghostly traces run circles around each
longer flesh and our words are murmurs? In the spectrum of our desires
other, their real manifestation brings them face to face, under the
emerges the shore of an intimacy become unsayable. In the lassitude of
threat of a colossal electrical sandstorm that is approaching. Words
our talismans we count the beads of murmuring and imperious desire.
are spoken, glances exchanged and the symbolic offering of an amulet
leads to the possibility of contact and communication. Within this
simple structure, Ancient Greek mythology is re-envisioned, placing
the viewer in the middle of the conceptual plane of the mind. By
dramatizing the cosmic meeting between the titans of intellect (Céos)
and prophecy (Phoébé), Rodes imparts to the viewer the noblest of
offerings: emotion.
It may be the story of a fable to be invented or that of a legend that has
crossed our eyelids. The vertigo of a form whose interpretation is the
prelude to survival. The perturbation of an urgency or that of a repetition
hoped for. The trace of a movement defying knowledge, in the embrace of
an impossible infinity.
It may be the story of a time outside time. An address in the distance. An
unknown, buried. The searing flash of a hidden nomadism, in the beyond
of our expectations, in the sweetness of our forgetting.
(DAVID RODES)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Uner 35 Award - Invidéo Film Festival, Italy 2015
44
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: [email protected] | www.david-rodes.com
www.facebook.com/ceosphoebe
WORLD SALES: LE FRESNOY - Natalia Trebik: Head of Distribution
and Festivals T: +03 20 28 38 64 | E: [email protected]
W: www.lefresnoy.net
THE EXQUISITE CORPUS
19’, 2015, Austria
DIRECTOR: PETER TSCHERKASSKY
SCRIPTWRITER: Peter Tscherkassky
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Peter Tscherkassky
EDITING: Peter Tscherkassky
SOUND: Dirk Schaefer
MUSIC: Dirk Schaefer
PETER TSCHERKASSKY
FILM PRESENTATION: Awarded Special Mention upon its debut at last
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: While I derived most of my films near
year’s Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes, THE EXQUISITE CORPUS
exclusively from a single found footage source, THE EXQUISITE CORPUS
is PETER TSCHERKASSKY’s long-awaited follow-up to his 2009 Coming
is based on several different films, referencing the surrealist “exquisite
Attractions. Using as material and thematic basis erotic footage culled
corpse” technique. You’ll find several rushes from commercials, an
from various sources, Tscherkassky employs his trademark techniques
American erotic thriller from the 1980s, a British comedy from the 1960s,
of analog manipulation, creating a veritable garden of delight: arriving
a Danish as well as a French porn film (both most likely from the 1970s),
amongst a nudist colony, a couple approaches a woman sleeping on
an Italian soft-core sex movie from 1979, and a (British?) amateur movie...I
the beach. Her fortuitous state of reverie takes over and we’re thrown
mainly focused on these erotic films; they are related in that each tells a
into every celluloid fan’s erotic dream. Montage and manipulation
completely insane story that is entirely irrelevant but achieves the main
guide Tscherkassky’s formal narrative of the seduction and coital
goal of showing naked human bodies. I play on this attitude by raising the
triumph of the body, as it is reinforced by frequent collaborator Dirk
body of film itself to the forefront, which thereby becomes the central
Schaefer’s hypnotic sound collages. With its beautiful craftsmanship,
theme of THE EXQUISITE CORPUS.These diverse sources serve as a basis
The Exquisite Corpus disassembles cinema and the body in a delicious
for THE EXQUISITE CORPUS, giving rise to heterogeneities I willingly
celebration of arousal.
accepted in the spirit of the surrealist technique of the “cadavre exquis”.
At the same time the title of the film refers to the “exquisite corpse” which
analog cinema nowadays represents: an exquisite corpus but stamped
with an expiration date. The exact date remains unknown, but it is
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Special Mention - Quinzaines des Réalisateurs
2015 / Toronto International Film Festival 2015 / 25fps Film & Video
foreseeable.
(PETER TSCHERKASSKY)
SUPPORTED BY: Land Niederösterreich BKA. Kunst
Festival 2015 / BFI Film Festival 2015 / Festival du Nouveau Cinéma,
Montréal 2015 / New York Film Festival 2015 / Jihlava Documentary
Film Festival 2015 / Vienna International Film Festival 2015 / Mar de
Plata International Film Festival 2015 / Vila do Conde International
Short Film Festival 2015 / Melbourne Incernational Film Festival 2015 /
Chicago International Film Festival 2015
W: http://www.sixpackfilm.com/en/catalogue/show/2241
WORLD SALES: SIXPACKFILM
T: (+43-1) 526 09 90 15 | E: [email protected]
W: www.sixpackfilm.com
45
DEAR DIRECTOR
14’, 2015, Sweden
DIRECTOR: MARCUS LINDEEN
CAST: Kazzrie Jaxen, Thomas Bosket
SCRIPTWRITER: Marcus Lindeen
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Lisabi Fridell
EDITING: Therese Elfström
SOUND: Hans Appelqvist
MUSIC: Hans Appelqvist
PRODUCER: Juan Pablo Libossart
MARCUS LINDEEN
FILM PRESENTATION: Winner of the Cinema & Gioventù prize for Best
International Short at the 2015 Locarno International Film Festival,
MARCUS LINDEEN’s movie is an absorbing mood-piece on the search
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
Dear Director,
for identity within the mirrored reflection of cinema. In 1980 jazz
My name is Kazzrie Jaxen and I am a jazz pianist from New York City. I am
musician Kazzrie Jaxen had a life-changing experience watching Ingmar
writing to you because I need to tell you what happened to me when I saw
Bergman’s From the Life of Marionettes. Immersed within his cinematic
your incredible movie.
world of duality and fissured identities, she realized she was a ‘wombtwin survivor,’ the only child born from a dual pregnancy. Lindeen
explores this with utmost gentility through a form of cinematic streamof-sub-consciousness, observing Jaxen episodically as she engages
in the process of internalizing this discovery. Accessible but hiding
intricate layers of narrative and formal complexity, DEAR DIRECTOR is
a wonderful objet d’art of cinematic musicality that unwinds more with
each viewing.
It was as if your film catapulted me out of the theater and deep into
myself. I was transported back through allthe memories of my life to
the very beginning, before I was even born. I felt like the movie screen
collapsed and the images came pouring out of the screen like a flood of
water, filling the theater and slowly transforming it into a gigantic womb.
What if there was a struggle and I killed my own twin, inside the womb,
and then ate the body? So no one would ever know what had happened
in there. Or maybe I loved my twin and was so sad when she died next to
me that I wrapped myself around her, until she slowly grew into me. And
that way I could save her, forever captured inside my body. As an artist
myself, I know how challenging it is to create something meaningful. And I
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Cinema & Gioventù Prize for Best International
Short Film - Locarno Film Festival 2015
want to tell you that you have changed at least one person’s life with your
beautiful film.
Yours sincerely, Kazzrie Jaxen.
(MARCUS LINDEEN)
46
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: T: +46 - 70 712 37 62 | E: [email protected]
W: www.marcuslindeen.com | W: www.marcuslindeen.com/dear-director
WORLD SALES: Swedish Film Institute
[email protected] | T: +46 8 665 11 41
W: www.filminstitutet.se
DANGER IS MY BUSINESS
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION IV
47
PRESENTATION
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION IV
Curatorial presentation by: ANDREI
BIANCA TĂNĂSESCU
BĂNICĂ
Danger surrounds us at every corner. Be it man-made or part of our natural environment, we are placed in constant peril, relying
on our instincts of adaptability to help us cope with it. This natural tendency of ours to excel beyond the ‘fight or flight’ survival
reactions and observe, rationalize and ultimately, understand, the dangers we face, is what sets us apart from other species.
The human spirit as such is a compelling one - willing to put itself at risk, it carries forth, accepting the consequences, for the
\\ INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION IV
sake of its evolutionary growth. Adaptability breeds understanding and knowledge, tiny steps along the evolutionary ladder.
The films selected for the competition section DANGER IS MY BUSINESS convey the fortitude of the human spirit in light of its
battle against the hazards of life. Through their looking-glass, man’s daily entanglement with the elements, health disorders,
small and large scale brutality, brings her/himself towards a transcendental state of evolutionary conquest.
FABIAN KAISER’s THE BREATH offers an entrancing, original look at the fortitude of society’s unsung hero of safety, the
firefighter. Heavy on atmosphere and free of dialogue, Kaiser’s hybrid documentary observes a group of firemen as they go
about their exercise drills, decked out in recognizable orange suits and hermetically sealed oxygen helmets. Their mechanical
movement, assured in its steps and slowed by the weight of their gear, expresses steadfast confidence, but the eyes of their
superior hide human vulnerability.
When it’s his turn to don the mask,
he proceeds down a labyrinthian
passageway, on a rite of passage into
fear and the unknown. With bated
breath we witness his transcendence
and inevitable return to our material
world, cleansing himself for the next
day to come.
For more than 25 years, Louis Akin
has retraced Death’s footsteps,
separating and re-arranging with
detached objectivism the sequential
48
facts of some of the most violent crimes in the USA. Working as a defense forensic
investigator, his role in the 2009 mass shooting at a US military base took three
years to reconstruct the crime scene that director TOM ROSENBERG maps out for
us in a spacious warehouse. Within this minimal mise-en-scene, Akin literally walks
us through the events of that tragic day, leaving it up to the viewer to mentally
reconstruct the carnage mapped out in words and diagrams. As the information
accumulates, the mind tries to make sense of it all, but the incomprehensibility of
mankind’s constant propensity to violence is too much to bear. Using the simplest
of cinematic tools, NOTHING HUMAN opens our eyes to the abstract irrationality of
violence and the paradox at the heart of what makes us human.
Setting its parameters from the first words spoken, I REMEMBER NOTHING exists
precariously on the edge of chaos and poetry, structured around the five stages of
epilepsy while looking at a day in the life of teenager Joan. Stuck in the tedium of
Like the flicker of silent films or
the delay of memory recall, PAUL
WENNINGER’s UNCANNY VALLEY
unravels its story of wartime trauma
through the camaraderie of two lone
soldiers fighting their way out of the
trenches of World War I. Employing
the aesthetic mechanics found in stop-motion animation, Wenninger’s real-life
protagonists move as marionettes in a theatre of war that flashes at every interval
with the fear and danger. Impelled by survival instincts and a balletic camerawork
that transverses time and space in awe-inspiring long-takes, the two soldiers
emerge out of the ruins of war, shell-shocked and spiritually defeated. Atmospheric
and compelling, Uncanny Valley offers a potent statement on the inevitable
abstraction of history, erasing individual experience in favour of posterity’s
superficial representation.
THE BUREAU OF MELODRAMATIC RESEARCH delivers the last installment of their
Alien Passions trilogy with the video performance titled ABOVE THE WEATHER.
Hidden by the genre veil of the road movie, artists Alina Popa and Irina Gheorghe
perform as two coquettish socialites on their way back home. Framed in their turn
of the century convertible, their preening conversation stands in oblivious contrast
to the surrounding desolate industrial landscape of Romania’s oil-fields and the
radio announcements forecasting an impending environmental apocalypse. Captive
to the pathetic fallacy of 1950s Hollywood melodramas, Above the Weather is an
incisive commentary on our catastrophic dependency on fossil fuels, beckoning
us to ‘keep calm and carry on’ gently into the good night, to the telling tune of
Eurovision’s parochialism.
small-town America and the humdrum
of high-school, she is the poster-girl
of teenage angst, a budding life-force
arrested in development. Her only
escape appears at a baseball game, as
a source of curiosity and excitement
offered by her blossoming puberty.
ZIA ANGER purposefully induces a
sense of disorientation and peril
through casting choices and flourishes
of magical realism, framing Joan’s
sexual exploration against epilepsy’s
impending assault. By the end,
we’re left dazed, confused but fully
submissive to the powerful impact of
love and its menacing consequences.
49
I REMEMBER NOTHING
18’, 2015, USA
DIRECTOR: ZIA ANGER
CAST: Audrey Turner, Eve Alpert, India Menuez, Adinah
Dacynger, Lola Kirke
SCRIPTWRITER: Zia Anger
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Miranda Rhyne
EDITING: Zia Anger, Lucy Munger, Miranda Rhyne
SOUND: Arjun G Sheth
MUSIC: Julianna Barwick
PRODUCER: Miles Joris-Peyrafitte
ZIA ANGER
FILM PRESENTATION: Setting its parameters from the first words
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: With each new stage of sensations, a
spoken, I Remember Nothing exists precariously on the edge of
character’s face changes and the world shifts. Zia Anger’s I Remember
chaos and poetry, structured around the five stages of epilepsy
Nothing is about a girl, a game and epilepsy. Cruising on a pulsing rhythm
while looking at a day in the life of teenager Joan. Stuck in the
reflecting the different chapters and a howling soundtrack, I Remember
tedium of small-town America and the humdrum of high-school, she
Nothing is a mood piece of the highest order. Bringing the audience
is the poster-girl of teenage angst, a budding life-force arrested in
quickly into this sort of estranged subjectivity, we are brought deep into a
development. Her only escape appears at a baseball game, as a source
point of view that seems increasingly removed from reality.
of curiosity and excitement offered by her blossoming puberty.
Zia Anger purposefully induces a sense of disorientation and peril
through casting choices and flourishes of magical realism, framing
Joan’s sexual exploration against epilepsy’s impending assault. By the
end, we’re left dazed, confused but fully submissive to the powerful
impact of love and its menacing consequences.
Many of the best moments come in textural details that breath so much
life into the film. Some images that stand out are light hitting Joan’s
stubbled legs, the framing of a closed fist against a wrinkled baseball
uniform and waking up in the dirt. This, combined with the film’s best
selling point — its sense of humour — make for an incredibly rich
experience. Creating something beyond just an experience of mood
and sensuality, Zia Anger offers a film that is consistently engaging and
fun. Directed by an incredibly promising voice on the horizon of a new
American cinema, I Remember Nothing should be on your radar.
(Justine A. Smith, Vague Visages)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: New Directors/New Films, New York 2015 /
Maryland Film Festival 2015 / Festival del Film Locarno 2015 / Denver
International Film Festival 2015 / AFI 2015 / Imagine Science Film
Festival 2015 / Ann Arbor Film Festival 2015 / Basilica Soundscape,
Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art 2015 / Vienna
Independent Shorts 2015.
50
WORLD SALES: ZIA ANGER
E: [email protected] | W: https://zia-anger.squarespace.com
NOTHING HUMAN
17’, 2015, USA
DIRECTOR: TOM ROSENBERG
CAST: Louis Akin
SCRIPTWRITER: Tom Rosenberg
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Juan Pablo Gonzalez, Jim Hickcox,
Michael Roberson, Patrick Hoy, Ivy Chiu
EDITING: Tom Rosenberg, Kyle Seaquist
SOUND: Rui Silva, Samantha Skinner, Evan Roberts, Amanda
Gotera, Jacob Weiss, Florian Habito
TOM ROSENBERG
FILM PRESENTATION: For more than 25 years, Louis Akin has
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: A minimalist study in extreme violence,
retraced Death’s footsteps, separating and re-arranging with detached
Nothing Human is about forensic investigator Louie Akin’s experience
objectivism the sequential facts of some of the most violent crimes in
reconstructing the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood where Major Nidal
the USA. Working as a defense forensic investigator, his role in the 2009
Hasan, a military psychiatrist, killed 13 soldiers preparing to deploy to
mass shooting at a US military base took three years to reconstruct the
Afghanistan.
crime scene that director Tom Rosenberg maps out for us in a spacious
warehouse. Within this minimal mise-en-scene, Akin literally walks us
through the events of that tragic day, leaving it up to the viewer to
mentally reconstruct the carnage mapped out in words and diagrams.
As the information accumulates, the mind tries to make sense of it
all, but the incomprehensibility of mankind’s constant propensity to
violence is too much to bear. Using the simplest of cinematic tools,
Nothing Human opens our eyes to the abstract irrationality of violence
and the paradox at the heart of what makes us human.
Akin recounts the 3 year investigation that placed him at the intersection
of America’s endemic mass shootings and ongoing military campaigns in
the Middle East. After years analyzing every blood trail and bullet hole,
interviewing hundreds of traumatized witnesses, Akin’s is an exhaustive,
systematic accounting of this violent scene. His work necessitates
distance, precision and rigor, while simultaneously forcing him to confront
the most troubling aspects of human behavior.
The film consists mostly of a single interview with Louie walking
around a sound stage painted with a full scale enlargement of his own
reconstruction of the crime scene - a giant array of numbers and arrows,
showing with clinical precision the positions and movements of the
shooter and his victims. The film refuses imagery of the crime scene itself,
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Locarno International Film Festival, 2015 / True/
rejecting the aesthetics of sensationalized cinematic violence and placing
False Film Festival 2015 / Denver Film Festival 2015.
the audience more firmly in the perspective of a bureaucrat, a perspective
PRODUCER: Lauren Kinsler
that is both fascinating and unnerving for its sober precision.
(TOM ROSENBERG)
WORLD SALES: TOM ROSENBERG
E: [email protected] | T: +1 862 204 121
W: www.nothinghumanfilm.com
51
THE BREATH
11’, 2014, Switzerland
DIRECTOR: FABIAN KAISER
CAST: Ueli Alder, Alireza Bayram, Sawas Wassiliadis, Matthias
Hungerbühler, David Flury, Ralf Frehner
SCRIPTWRITER: Fabian Kaiser
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kevin Rodriguez
EDITING: Fabienne Andreoli
SOUND: Remie Blaser, Can Isik
MUSIC: Can Isik
PRODUCER: Filippo Bonacci
FABIAN KAISER
FILM PRESENTATION: Winner of the Vienna Short Film Award,
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: In an unreal, abstract environment, safely
Fabian Kaiser’s The Breath offers an entrancing, original look at the
wrapped-up members of the voluntary fire department train for the
fortitude of society’s unsung hero of safety, the firefighter. Heavy
moment they are called out. On treadmills and moving ladders in a
on atmosphere and free of dialogue, Kaiser’s hybrid documentary
concrete cellar, men wearing orange suits and oxygen tanks work on
observes a group of firemen as they go about their exercise drills,
their condition in a kind of silent ballet, the silence punctuated only by
decked out in recognizable orange suits and hermetically sealed
their rhythmic breathing. In the factory building where a fire is raging it
oxygen helmets. Their mechanical movement, assured in its steps and
is dark – there are flashes of light, and a fire glows in the distance. The
slowed by the weight of their gear, expresses steadfast confidence,
firefighters move slowly, like Martians across unknown terrain. All they
but the eyes of their superior hides human fallibility. When it’s his
can hear is their own breathing, and their fear becomes palpable. Does the
turn to don the mask, he proceeds down a labyrinthian passageway,
suit offer sufficient protection? How heavy are those oxygen tanks? Above
on a rite of passage into fear and the unknown. With bated breath
the monitors in the control room, all that can be seen are the peering eyes
we witness his transcendence and inevitable return to our material
of an officer following the maneuvers on flickering screens. It is only when
world, cleansing himself for the next day to come.
the big helmets have been removed and the whole team is standing in
the shower that their vulnerability becomes visible: the anonymous suits
become flesh-and-blood people. This oppressive, silent visual poem is an
illustration of the sensory experience of firefighting. With limited vision,
little freedom of movement and danger lurking around every corner, the
rhythm of the breathing apparatus is all that counts.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Vienna Short Film Award - Vienna Independent
Shorts 2015 / IDFA International Documentary Festival Amsterdam
(IDFA 2014)
2014 / Festival dei Popoli, Firenze 2014 / Rio de Janeiro International
Short Film Festival 2014 / International Short Film Festival Winterthur
2014 / DOK Fest 2015 / Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film
Festival 2015 / Astoria Film Festiva, New York 2015.
52
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: T: +41 79 404 92 68 | E: [email protected]
WORLD SALES: ZURICH UNIVERSITY FOR THE ARTS (ZHdK):
Laura Zimmermann | T: +41 43 446 31 12 | E: [email protected]
ABOVE THE WEATHER
11’, 2015, Romania
DIRECTOR: THE BUREAU OF MELODRAMATIC
RESEARCH (Irina Gheorghe and Alina Popa)
CAST: Alina Popa, Irina Gheorghe, Nicola Masciandaro
SCRIPTWRITER: The Bureau of Melodramatic Research
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Virgil Babușcov, Alexandru Andrei
IRINA GHEORGHE & ALINA POPA
FILM PRESENTATION: The Bureau of Melodramatic Research
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Above the Weather (2015), the third work in
delivers the last installment of their Alien Passions trilogy with the
the trilogy Alien Passions, makes reference to Douglas Sirk’s Written on
video performance titled Above the Weather. Hidden by the genre
the Wind (1957), taking the title literally, and hinting at the immaterial
veil of the road movie, artists Alina Popa and Irina Gheorghe perform
aspects of weather, and to the materiality of emotions, to the circuit
as two coquettish socialites on their way back home. Framed in
linking affective and natural climates. One of the main characteristics of
their turn of the century convertible, their preening conversation
the melodramatic genre was the emotional charge of its characters pitted
stands in oblivious contrast to the surrounding desolate industrial
against nature, while the broader context of global warming and climate
landscape of Romania’s oil-fields and the radio announcements
change recasts emotions as alien forces coming from the nonhuman realm
forecasting an impending environmental apocalypse. Captive to
as an uncontrollable demonic possession. Above the Weather, a simple
the pathetic fallacy of 1950s Hollywood melodramas, Above the
breath is the start of a new climate, a whirl of thought is a cyclone and
Weather is an incisive commentary on our catastrophic dependency
drops of tears gather in dubious waste ponds.
on fossil fuels, beckoning us to ‘keep calm and carry on’ gently into
the good night, to the telling tune of Eurovision’s parochialism.
(THE BUREAU OF MELODRAMATIC RESEARCH)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: International premiere / The Dark Side
EDITING: Alexandru Andrei
of Nature, group show - Nationa lMuseum of Contemporary Art,
Bucharest, 2016
WORLD SALES:
W: thebureauofmelodramaticresearch.blogspot.ro/
53
UNCANNY VALLEY
14’, 2015, Austria, France
DIRECTOR: PAUL WENNINGER
CAST: Raúl Maia, Jan Jakubal, Paul Wenninger
SCRIPTWRITER: Paul Wenninger
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Paul Wenninger
EDITING: Michael Derrossett
ANIMATION: Nick Hummer
SOUND: Nick Hummer, Michael Moser
PRODUCER: Films de Force Majeure, Kabinett and Co.,
KGP Kranzelbinder Filmproduction
PAUL WENNINGER
FILM PRESENTATION: Like the flicker of silent films or the delay of
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: Paul Wenninger traces the arc of
memory recall, Paul Wenninger’s Uncanny Valley unravels its story
representational history to representation-critical parable: he straddles
of wartime trauma through the camaraderie of two lone soldiers
the Uncanny Valley with motifs from found footage material from World
fighting their way out of the trenches of World War I. Employing the
War I, which he connects to the actors´ performances, to bring them
aesthetic mechanics found in stop-motion animation, Wenninger’s
into the image again using techniques from animation and then, with a
real-life protagonists move as marionettes in a theatre of war that
diorama, to land in a museum-like ambiance. What the film documents is a
flashes at every interval with the fear and danger. Impelled by
parable about the difficulty of making present what one wants to show: in
survival instincts and a balletic camerawork that transverses time
this film, the soldiers´ fear and wounds also applies to the distance, which
and space in awe-inspiring long-takes, the two soldiers emerge out of
is injured here, in order to gapingly gaze in the semblance of illusion.
the ruins of war, shell-shocked and spiritually defeated. Atmospheric
The stop-motion aesthetics jiggles at the seamless course of images,
and compelling, Uncanny Valley offers a potent statement on the
making the representation stutter: the body language follows the media´s
inevitable abstraction of history, erasing individual experience in
staccato, which intrudes in the dance to perforate the movements, punch
favour of posterity’s superficial representation.
holes through the appearance of humanity. What is then shown is a
distance, which affects us deeply, the impossibility of backing away, an
iconoclastic dance.
(ANDREAS SPIEGL)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Best Austrian Animation & Audience Award
- One Day Animation Festival, Vienna 2015 / International Jury
Mention - Anima Festival de Film d’Animation Cordoba 2015 / Annecy
International Animation Festival 2015 / Uppsala International Short
Film Festival 2015 / Les Sommets du Cinéma dAnimation de Montréal
2015 / Airport Animation Film Festival 2015 / ReAnimania IAFFY
Yerevan 2015.
54
E: [email protected] | W: http://www.kabinettadco.at
WORLD SALES: SIXPACK FILM:
T: (+43-1) 526 09 90 15 | E: [email protected]
W: www.sixpackfilm.com
THE ARTIST IS PRESENT
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION V
55
PRESENTATION
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION V
The insertion of an artist within their work - besides the formal and thematic tropes - is a statement of creative authority, control
and self-reflexivity. It also invites the viewer to engage with the artwork on a deeper level of reading, requiring that one goes
beyond the surface to extract the suggestive elements that make up its artistic core. The films compiled for the competition
\\ INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION V
program THE ARTIST IS PRESENT offer themselves as meta-texts whose authorial presence manifests itself in a myriad of ways.
These are movies about artists and their métier, whose formal and thematic audaciousness will require repeated viewings to
decipher.
56
Wonderfully refreshing and meaningful in its subtextual discourse, TERRITORIAL MARKING is a beautiful work of naïf art by DANIEL
DJAMO. We see the artist appear on screen, waving the Romanian flag through a forest. On voiceover, we hear a recording of
his anxious mother discouraging him from creating his next controversial art piece. Blessed with an artist’s stubbornness, Djamo
refuses to submit to his mother’s fear of the French authorities and continues the back-and-forth until the perfect alternative is
discovered (accidentally and under duress) by the matriarch. Yet listen closely, for behind their domestic argument and the mother’s
consternation, you’ll find the traumatic
paralysis of the immigrant Other,
made worse by the scar of Communist
oppression, rearing its head like Djamo’s
flailing flag.
On July 22, 2014, New York woke up to an
unexpected silent declaration: Brooklyn
Bridge’s Old Glory was gone, replaced by
two white flags blowing in the high winds.
In a post-9/11 New York, this gesture
galvanized city officials and the media
into knee-jerk reactions of fear, anger
and panic. In short, a response that every
a work of art should produce. Compiled from TV, radio and online reports, SYMBOLIC
THREATS traces the lifespan of Leinkauf and Wermke’s art installation, bringing
forward the predictable rhetoric seeking culpability rather than discourse. Once the
proverbial dust settles and the fever-pitch frenzy of the media machine dies down,
we’re afforded poetic tranquility to ponder not only the role of art in our world, but
that of our own citizen-selves.
Carlo Mollino, famed designer and architect, departed from our physical world in 1973,
leaving behind an astounding legacy of form and beauty. In his latest film, YURI ANCARANI
capitalizes on Mollino’s preoccupation with the occult to conduct a live séance in the artist’s
home. Seated at the dining table with the resident caretaker in service, psychic medium
Albania Tomassini becomes a conduit for the architect, whose spectral voice reflects on his
past life’s work. Ancarani’s aesthetic eye is a perfect match for Casa Mollino’s baroque décor,
incubating us within the walls of the lush apartment and its sonic atmosphere of hushed
The analogy of life and cinema has never
been so delightfully and cleverly laid
bare, as in KAREN AKERMAN and MIGUEL
SEABRA LOPES’ OCTOBER IS OVER.
Cherubic protagonist Tontom declares
that ‘film grows old’ and is rightfully met
with the appropriate response from his
unseen parents (played by the filmmakers
themselves). Their gift of a Super8 camera
sparks the toddler’s imagination and the
journey of life begins. Discovery leads to
frustration (there’s never enough funding!)
and under the sleep suggestion of his
progenitors (Godard, always!) nocturnal
inspiration reaps rewards. Constructed
with a formal simplicity that reveals deeper
layers of Lacanian psychoanalysis and
Eisensteinian montage, October is Over
is a wonderful homage to cinema and the
creative spark that gives it life.
In direct address, VIKA KIRCHENBAUER
invites you to PLEASE RELAX NOW. You’re
about to experience liberty and desire, under
the guiding voice of the artist. Calm and
composed, Kirchenbauer breaks down the
cinematic screen’s barrier of distanciation
as she methodically lays bare (pun wellintended) the power-relationships at play
between art and its consumer. As spectators,
we are encouraged to subvert passivity and
reclaim our position within the space we
occupy. How? By exploring, here and now,
the pleasure principle of art to its extreme.
Abandon all preconceptions, democratize
the space and fully submit to - and indulge
in - the communal experience. Political and
playful, Please Relax Now’s deceivingly
simple premise will become one of your
most challenging viewing experiences.
Should you resist? No, just relax.
Once upon a time, before people came
along, all the creatures were free and
able to be with one another”, narrates the
voiceover. “All the animals danced together
and were immeasurably happy. There
was only one who wasn’t invited to the
celebration – the frog. In his rage about the
injustice, he committed suicide.” Something
Romani and frogs have in common is that
they will never be unseen, or stay unnoticed.
In her film, young director Leonor Teles
weaves the life circumstance of Romani in
Portugal today with the recollections of a
yesterday. Anything but a passive observer,
Teles consciously decides to participate
and take up position. As a third pillar, she
establishes an active applied performance
art that becomes integrated in the cinematic
narrative. Thereby transforming “once upon
a time” into “there is”. “Afterwards, nothing
will be as it was and the melody of life will
have changed”, explains a voice off-camera.
spirits. SÉANCE summons the perfect
interlocutor for the intense life-force at
work in Ancarani’s films, pulling us into its
house of memories and catapulting us into
the state of transcendence offered by the
act of creation.
57
OCTOBER IS OVER
24’, 2015, Portugal, Brazil
DIRECTOR: KAREN AKERMAN, MIGUEL SEABRA LOPES
CAST: Antonio Akerman Seabra, Karen Akerman,
Miguel Seabra Lopes
SCRIPTWRITER: Miguel Seabra Lopes, Karen Akerman
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Paulo Menezes
EDITING: Karen Akerman, Miguel Seabra Lopes
SOUND: Ives Rosenfeld, Bernardo Uzeda, Ricardo Cutz
PRODUCER: Karen Akerman, Miguel Seabra Lopes,
Alessandra Castañeda, João Matos
INTERNATIONAL
COMPETITION V
\\
KAREN AKERMAN, MIGUEL SEABRA LOPES
FILM PRESENTATION: The analogy of life and cinema has never been
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: Tomtom – the directors’ son and the film’s
so delightfully and cleverly laid bare, as in KAREN AKERMAN and
protagonist – precociously discovers his interest in cinema and throws
MIGUEL SEABRA LOPES’ OCTOBER IS OVER. Cherubic protagonist
himself into the adventure of making his first film, encouraged by his
Tomtom declares that ‘film grows old’ and is rightfully met with
parents and by the fascination that images and sounds hold over him.
the appropriate response from his unseen parents (played by the
October is over uses metalanguage and its character’s fantastical image in
filmmakers themselves). Their gift of a Super8 camera sparks the
order to refer back to the infancy of cinema itself.
toddler’s imagination and the journey of life begins. Discovery leads
to frustration (there’s never enough funding!) and under the sleep
suggestion of his progenitors (Godard, always!) nocturnal inspiration
(CARLAMAIA- Belo Horizonte International Short Film
Festival)
reaps rewards. Constructed with a formal simplicity that reveals deeper
layers of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Eisensteinian montage, October
is Over is a wonderful homage to cinema and the creative spark that
gives it life.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: New Trends Award - Rio de Janeiro International
Film Festival 2015 / Public Award - National Competition, Award for
Innovation in Language, Best Film – Young Jury - Curta Cinema 2015 /
Best direction award - Goiânia Short Film Festival 2015 / IndieLisboa International Independent Film Festival 2015 / São Paulo International
Short Film Festival 2015 / Belo Horizonte International Short Film
Festival 2015 / IndieCork Festival of independent film & music 2015 /
2Morrow/Zavtra International Film Festival 2015
58
http://portugalfilm.org/film_detail.php?cd_movie=10
WORLD SALES: PORTUGAL FILM: Rui Mendes | T: +351 213 466 172
E: [email protected] | W: www.portugalfilm.org/
SYMBOLIC THREATS
15’, 2015, Germany
DIRECTOR: MISCHA LEINKAUF, LUTZ HENKE,
MATTHIAS WERMKE
SCREENWRITER: Mischa Leinkauf, Lutz Henke,
Matthias Wermke
EDITING: Mischa Leinkauf, Lutz Henke, Matthias Wermke
SOUND: Mischa Leinkauf, Lutz Henke, Matthias Wermke
MISCHA LEINKAUF, LUTZ HENKE, MATTHIAS WERMKE
FILM PRESENTATION: On July 22, 2014, New York woke up to an
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: On the night of 22 July 2014, Matthias
unexpected silent declaration: Brooklyn Bridge’s Old Glory was
Wermke and Mischa Leinkauf hoist two white American flags on the
gone, replaced by two white flags blowing in the high winds. In a
Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. They take the US flags down and
post-9/11 New York, this gesture galvanized city officials and the
fold them in the prescribed orderly fashion. Poetry or threat? An act of
media into knee-jerk reactions of fear, anger and panic. In short, a
surrender or perhaps art? These were the theories that New York puzzled
response that every a work of art should produce. Compiled from
over last summer. How can one incident be interpreted in so many ways?
TV, radio and online reports, SYMBOLIC THREATS traces the lifespan
By means of press reports, Symbolic Threats allows the public at large to
of LEINKAUF and WERMKE’s art installation, bringing forward the
express their extreme disparity of interpretation. Inspired by the heated
predictable rhetoric seeking culpability rather than discourse. Once
debate over the two flags that suddenly appeared on the towers of the
the proverbial dust settles and the fever-pitch frenzy of the media
bridge, the film asks what kind of societal scope art has in the present day.
machine dies down, we’re afforded poetic tranquility to ponder not
What happens when threatened freedom reinstates art with the element
only the role of art in our world, but that of our own citizen-selves.
of danger? Who or what makes it into a threat? Are we safe in the city?
What is next?
(Berlin International Film Festival)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Best German Short & Audience Award Hamburg
2015 / Audience Award Madrid 2015 / European Film Award Nominee
PRODUCER: Mischa Leinkauf, Lutz Henke, Matthias Wermke
Grimstad 2015 / Edward Snowden Award - Signes de Nuit International
Festival 2015 / Clermont Ferrand 2016 / Berlinale 2015 / Documenta
Madrid 2015 / Hamburg 2015 / Grimstad 2015 / Timishort Timişoara
2015 / Winterthur Flilm Festival 2015 / Sevilla European Film Festival
2015 / Leeds International Film Festival 2015
WORLD SALES: Wermke/Leinkauf
E: [email protected] | W: www.wermke-leinkauf.com
59
TERRITORIAL MARKING
20’, 2014-2015, Romania
DIRECTOR: DANIEL NICOLAE DJAMO
CAST: Daniel Nicolae Djamo and his mother
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Daniel Nicolae Djamo
EDITING: Daniel Nicolae Djamo
SOUND: Daniel Nicolae Djamo
PRODUCER: Daniel Nicolae Djamo
DANIEL NICOLAE DJAMO
FILM PRESENTATION: Wonderfully refreshing and meaningful in
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: I’m marking the area surrounding the home
its subtextual discourse, TERRITORIAL MARKING is a beautiful work
of my mother in Nogent-sur-Vernisson (Loiret, France) with the flag of
of naïf art by DANIEL NICOLAE DJAMO. On screen we see the artist
Romania. I marked a Romanian territory in France.
appear in still-frame, waving the Romanian flag through a forest. On
voiceover, we hear a recording of his anxious mother discouraging
him from creating his next controversial art piece. Blessed with an
artist’s stubbornness, Djamo refuses to submit to his mother’s fear
of the French authorities and continues the back-and-forth until the
perfect alternative is discovered (accidentally and under duress) by the
matriarch. Yet listen closely, for behind their domestic argument and
the mother’s consternation, you’ll find the traumatic paralysis of the
My mother left the country when I was 20, being one of those who left
in the first waves of immigration after Romania’s acceptance in the
European Union. She works as a doctor and has her own private business
close to Montargis, France, while having problems in fitting in. Olga was
forced to leave the first commune where she came (Bonny-sur-Loire), being
seen as a leech. Her patients refused to see her because of her nationality,
preferring to go to French doctors.
immigrant Other, made worse by the scar of Communist oppression,
The sound represents my mother’s reaction to a work I had planned to
rearing its head like Djamo’s flailing flag.
do in Paris, on July 14th, 2014. I wanted to take yellow graffiti spray and
transform all of the French flags from Champs Elysee into Romanian ones.
(DANIEL NICOLAE DJAMO)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Combat Award for Video Art, Museo Giovanni
Fattori, Livorno, Italy 2015 / ALL (ArtLanguageLocation) work of
particular merit award winner, Anglia Ruskin University - Cambridge
School of Art and University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015 /
Incinerator Art Award - Art for Social Change Special Mention, City
of Moonee Valley and Incinerator Gallery, Australia 2015 / Kassel
International Documentary Film Festival 2015
60
WORLD SALES:
T: +33 640 292 120 | E: [email protected] | W: www.djamo.weebly.com
PLEASE RELAX NOW
12’, 2014, Germany
DIRECTOR: VIKA KIRCHENBAUER
CAST: Vika Kirchenbauer
SCRIPTWRITER: Vika Kirchenbauer
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Martin Sulzer
EDITING: Vika Kirchenbauer
SOUND: Vika Kirchenbauer
VIKA KIRCHENBAUER
FILM PRESENTATION: In direct address, VIKA KIRCHENBAUER
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: PLEASE RELAX NOW uses the screen as
invites you to PLEASE RELAX NOW. You’re about to experience
a source of light and darkness drawing attention to the issue of art
liberty and desire, under the guiding voice of the artist. Calm and
consumption as individual vs. collective experience and extending the
composed, Kirchenbauer breaks down the cinematic screen’s barrier
video piece into physical space. Motivational language is interwoven
of distanciation as she methodically lays bare (pun well-intended)
with metaphysical gestures of salvation characteristic of economics
the power-relationships at play between art and its consumer. As
as well as of what is considered “Political Art.” The piece examines
spectators, we are encouraged to subvert passivity and reclaim
the overlap of current developments in performance art, art display,
our position within the space we occupy. How? By exploring, here
economics, marketing and the participatory nightmare of life and work
and now, the pleasure principle of art to its extreme. Abandon all
as theatre. The striking similarities between Experience Economy – the
preconceptions, democratize the space and fully submit to - and
rendering of memory as a source of profit - and the eventisation of art are
indulge in - the communal experience. Political and playful, Please
deconstructed and ironically reassembled in an artwork made possible
Relax Now’s deceivingly simple premise will become one of your most
only through the social element of spectatorship as a form of immaterial
challenging viewing experiences. Should you resist? No, just relax.
and affective labour. Staging a darkroom as a promise of intensity and
using transgression in its sexual and economic sense, the art space is
portrayed as a transformation business. By addressing the spectator as a
passive consumer, collaborator, client, spiritual follower, raw material and
immaterial worker questions the capacities of art as a social and political
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Honourable Mention - European Media Art
Festival 2014 / Jury Award - FLEXfest Florida Experimental Film/Video
Festival 2015 / Lolly Award - XPOSED International Queer Film Festival
field within ever-evolving capitalism.
(VIKA KIRCHENBAUER)
PRODUCER: Vika Kirchenbauer
2015 / Hamburg International Short Film Festival 2014 / Timishort
Film Festival 2014 / Queer Lisboa International Queer Film Festival
2015 / Queer City Cinema: Media Arts Festival, Canada 2015 / Tel Aviv
International LGBT Film Festival 2015 / Queer Arts Festival, Vancouver
2015 / Helsinki Short Film Festival 2015
WORLD SALES: VIKA KIRCHENBAUER
T: +491749992915 | E: [email protected]
W : www.vk0ms.com/
61
SÉANCE
30’, 2014, Italy
DIRECTOR: YURI ANCARANI
CAST: Albania Tomassini, Fulvio Ferrari
SCRIPTWRITER: Yuri Ancarani
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Yuri Ancarani
EDITING: Yuri Ancarani
SOUND: Mirco Mencacci
PRODUCER: Marco Alessi
SUPPORTED BY: Film Commission Torino Piemonte,
Fondazione Casa Museo Carlo Mollino
YURI ANCARANI
FILM PRESENTATION: Carlo Mollino, famed designer and architect,
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: It is important to Ancarani that Séance is a
departed from our physical world in 1973, leaving behind an astounding
work on the artist in the general sense, on how artists feel and why they
legacy of form and beauty. In his latest film, YURI ANCARANI
define themselves as such. This is why he opted to show all the credits
capitalizes on Mollino’s preoccupation with the occult to conduct a live
at the end, to avoid providing viewers with any distractions from his
séance in the artist’s home. Seated at the dining table with the resident
intention. Although the work is a documentary on Mollino, the famous
caretaker in service, psychic medium Albania Tomassini becomes a
architect is a secondary presence. However, the short film, lasting 30
conduit for the architect, whose spectral voice reflects on his past life’s
minutes, is more than simply this.
work. Ancarani’s aesthetic eye is a perfect match for Casa Mollino’s
baroque décor, incubating us within the walls of the lush apartment
and its sonic atmosphere of hushed spirits. SÉANCE summons the
perfect interlocutor for the intense life-force at work in Ancarani’s
films, pulling us into its house of memories and catapulting us into the
state of transcendence offered by the act of creation.
Ancarani constructs a story not lacking in irony and turns the apartment
into a far more fascinating place than it actually is. With skilful lighting
and excellent sound design – created by Mirco Mencacci who mixed voices
of the dead and ambient sounds – and occupied by two people in flesh and
blood, plus a “stone guest”, both apartment and story come to life. Some
parts feature insistent shots and slow camera panning, taking on pictorial
qualities that bring out the yellows, greens and reds in what can be
interpreted as almost Pop or even quasi-Renaissance effects, depending
on your preferred visual repertoire.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Winterhur Short Film Festival, Switzerland 2014
(SIMONA BORDONE - DOMUS)
/ Shit and Die, casa Mollino, Artissima, Torino 2014 / Milano Design Film
Festival 2014 / Biennale of Image in Motion, Teatrino Palazzo Grassi,
Venice / Cinéma du Réel 2015 / Monash University Museum of Art, VIC,
Australia 2015 / La Casa di Mollino curated by Fulvio Ferrari, Istituto
Italiano di Cultura, Paris 2015
62
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected] | W: www.yuriancarani.com
http://yuriancarani.com/works/seance/
WORLD SALES: ANCARANI STUDIO: Caterina Viganò
T: +39 333 171 25 91 | E: [email protected]
W: www.yuriancarani.com
BATRACHIAN’S BALLAD
11’, 2016, Portugal
DIRECTOR: LEONOR TELES
SCRIPTWRITER: Leonor Teles
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Leonor Teles
EDITING: Leonor Teles
SOUND: Bernado Theriaga, Joana Niza Braga
(LEONOR TELES)
PRODUCER: Filipa Reis
WORLD SALES: PORTUGAL FILMS
63
LEONOR TELES
FILM PRESENTATION: Once upon a time, before people came along,
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: The genesis of Batrachian’s Ballad occurred
all the creatures were free and able to be with one another”, narrates
when I learnt a surprising fact – the Portuguese tradition of placing
the voiceover. “All the animals danced together and were immeasurably
ceramic frogs in the doorways of restaurants and other commercial
happy. There was only one who wasn’t invited to the celebration – the
premises to ward off gypsies. Through this personal tale of mine, I wanted
frog. In his rage about the injustice, he committed suicide.” Something
to call attention to a growing tendency to use belief and superstition to
Romani and frogs have in common is that they will never be unseen, or
deride other human beings and to keep them at bay.
stay unnoticed. In her film, young director Leonor Teles weaves the life
circumstance of Romani in Portugal today with the recollections of a
yesterday.
Anything but a passive observer, Teles consciously decides to
participate and take up position. As a third pillar, she establishes
an active applied performance art that becomes integrated in the
cinematic narrative. Thereby transforming “once upon a time” into
“there is”. “Afterwards, nothing will be as it was and the melody of life
will have changed”, explains a voice off-camera.
(Berlinale)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Golden Bear for the Best Short Film Berlinale 2016
PRESENTATION
URBAN RITUALS
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION VI
\\ INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION VI
We all take part in rituals, whether we’re aware of it or not - it’s all a matter of perspective. Daily routine could be the individual’s
ceremonial procession through society while on a larger scale it becomes ‘convention.’ Sometimes, we participate in these
ceremonies of culture either without knowing it, pulled into the force of an unseen current that shapes and defines us. At other
times, our involvement is deliberate, drawn to the ritual of a collective consciousness.
64
Urban Rituals groups together four
films which play with the particularities
that make up our various socio-cultural
practices. Be they dominant or subcultural, these customs thrive with a lifeforce that renders each of them unique
and indispensable to their practitioners.
Who knows, you might find yourself
within them.
If Magritte’s Treachery of Images ‘n’est
pas une pipe,’ in SCOTT CUMMINGS’
own words, “BUFFALO JUGGALOS is
not a documentary.” At first, it even
starts off as a stylized portraiture of
America’s Juggalo community, the fan
base devoted to the rapcore group
Insane Clown Posse (and its affiliate
label bands). Hidden behind their
ritualistic makeup, a procession of
Juggalos stare into the camera with
passive nonchalance as they are framed
in commonplace suburban settings.
Yet with each still-life tableaux, the
comfort of suburbia is unsettled as the Juggalo ethos manifests itself, plunging us
into its surreal psyche. By the end, we’re left seduced and abandoned by Cummings’
celebration of sub-cultural Americana, a visceral life-force whose life philosophy is No
Fucks Given.
Under the balmy skies of the American Dream, Romanian filmmaker MARA TRIFU
reaches for the stars in PERFECTION IS FOREVER, an acutely observant allegory for
our endless search for beauty and wholeness. Within Los Angeles’ culture of glamour
and alter-egos, we’re guided by two crusaders of the ideal: a Superman impersonator
and drag-queen MonaLiza Doomsday. Captured in their environment on the periphery
of downtown’s hustle-and-bustle, they take us through their rituals of beautification
as breasts are tucked, make-up is applied and the all-important hair products produce
the Superman curl. Out in the open, society calls ‘action’ and the role-playing
performance begins. Trifu’s trademark approach of lensing documentary through
the magical gives a poignant touch to the film’s closing message: there is, indeed, a
Superman in all of us.
Douwe Dijkstra returns to BIEFF with his latest award-winning movie, SUPPORTING
FILM. A love (and hate) letter to cinema, Dijkstra’s clever and inventive film explores
the fussy relationship between you, the viewer, and cinema. Be it communal or
solitary, the personal experience of watching films is scrutinized by spectators of all
ages, whose recorded testimonies become in Dijkstra’s illustrative, animating hands,
individual worlds of artisanal wonder and childlike exuberance. From the opening
credits to the closing scrawl and everything in-between, individual idiosyncrasies
How does a city of 20 million people
cope with an antiquated sewage system
at risk of daily mass flooding due to
the accumulated refuse? Enter deepsea diver and gonzo Jacques Cousteau
Julio César cú Cámara, who for the past
30 years has immersed himself in the
terra fluida of Mexico City to unclog
the sewer passageway of society’s
detritus. Under Esteban Arrangoiz’
direction, Julio’s story transcends its
social utility by submerging us past
grainy Super16mm images of abstracted
landscapes of garbage into an unseen,
silent realm. For us and Julio, each dive
becomes a ritualistic act that plunges
him in an altered state of consciousness
among the unknown of darkness and
miscellanea. Carrying itself with the
wide-eyed fascination of a Jules Verne
story, THE DIVER is a captivating portrait
of a social worker’s metaphysical
pilgrimage.
clash and bond with film language, in a
celebration of cinema and its power to
suspend our disbelief.
65
URBAN RITUALS
SUPPORTING FILM
DIRECTOR: DOUWE DIJKSTRA
SCRIPTWRITER: Douwe Dijkstra
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Douwe Dijkstra
EDITING: Douwe Dijkstra
SOUND: Rob Peters
MUSIC: Rob Peters
PRODUCER: Bart Jansen
DOUWE DIJKSTRA
FILM PRESENTATION: DOUWE DIJKSTRA returns to BIEFF with his
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Go Short invited several filmmakers to
latest award-winning movie, SUPPORTING FILM. A love (and hate)
submit a plan for a supporting film, and my pitch was chosen. My idea was
letter to cinema, Dijkstra’s clever and inventive film explores the fussy
to ask people with very different backgrounds and opinions about the
relationship between you, the viewer, and cinema. Be it communal or
ways in which they experience films. I used the resulting audio and then
solitary, the personal experience of watching films is scrutinized by
worked on accompanying images. This approach allowed me to work in a
spectators of all ages, whose recorded testimonies become in Dijkstra’s
very inquisitive manner. The framework is clear, but the outcome of the
illustrative, animating hands, individual worlds of artisanal wonder and
interviews is always a surprise. I went to visit film buffs from 6 to 60 years
childlike exuberance. From the opening credits to the closing scrawl
of age, including religious people who don’t want to watch films, and a
and everything in-between, individual idiosyncrasies clash and bond
blind woman who only listens to films. This produced such a wealth of
with film language in a celebration of cinema and its power to suspend
material that the biggest challenge was to reduce the hours of interviews
our disbelief.
into a film of six minutes.
(DOUWE DIJKSTRA)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Special mention - Prizren International
Documentary and Short Film Festival, Dokufest (Kosovo) 2015 / Special
Mention - Message to Man, St. Petersburg International Film Festival Message to Man 2015 / Special Mention - Novi Sad International Video
Festival 2015 / Best Experimental Film Videorama Award - Timisoara
International Short Film Festival 2015 / International Award Best Short
- Tallinn Student and Short Film Festival 2015.
66
W: douwedijkstra.nl/projects/voor-film/
WORLD SALES: LIMA
T: +31 (0)20 389 20 30 | E: [email protected] | W : www.li-ma.nl
PERFECTION IS FOREVER
18’, 2015, UK
DIRECTOR: MARA TRIFU
CAST: Christopher Lloyd Dennis, Monaliza Doomsday
SCRIPTWRITER: Mara Trifu
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mara Trifu
EDITING: Jojo Erholtz
SOUND: Dayo James
MUSIC: Terence Dunn
MARA TRIFU
FILM PRESENTATION: Under the balmy skies of the American Dream,
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: A tree is what it is, complete in its own being.
Romanian filmmaker MARA TRIFU reaches for the stars in PERFECTION
Human beings, on the other hand, always aspire to become something
IS FOREVER, an acutely observant allegory for our endless search for
more, doing their best to hold back time in pursuit of eternal love, youth
beauty and wholeness. Within Los Angeles’ culture of glamour and
and beauty. In Hollywood, two lost souls seek to become heroes under the
alter-egos, we’re guided by two crusaders of the ideal: a Superman
shade of a lonely palm tree.
impersonator and drag-queen Monaliza Doomsday. Captured in their
environment on the periphery of downtown’s hustle-and-bustle, they
(MARA TRIFU)
take us through their rituals of beautification as breasts are tucked,
make-up is applied and the all-important hair products produce the
Superman curl. Out in the open, society calls ‘action’ and the roleplaying performance begins. Trifu’s trademark approach of lensing
documentary through the magical gives a poignant touch to the film’s
closing message: there is, indeed, a Superman in all of us.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Chicago International Film Festival 2015 /
Sheffield International Film Festival 2015 / Greenhorn Short Film
PRODUCER: Mara Trifu
Festival 2015 / Frontline Club London 2016.
WORLD SALES:
E: [email protected] | W: www.maratrifu.com
67
URBAN RITUALS
BUFFALO JUGGALOS
30’, 2014, USA
DIRECTOR: SCOTT CUMMINGS
CAST: Robert Hunt (aka Bobbo), Paul Fucking Mack, Sandy,Kaitlin
Wentland (aka Titz), William “Noki” Galpine (aka Koz),
Ryan Hanson (aka Shaggz)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Nandan Rao
EDITING: Scott Cummings
SOUND: Gene Park
MUSIC: Locrian
PRODUCER: Molly Gandour, Eliza Hittman, Shrihari Sathe
Supported by The Jerome Foundation and sponsored by
Fractured Atlas
SCOTT CUMMINGS
FILM PRESENTATION: If Magritte’s Treachery of Images ‘n’est pas une
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: I’ve given up explaining that Buffalo Juggalos
pipe,’ in SCOTT CUMMINGS’ own words, “BUFFALO JUGGALOS is not
isn’t a documentary.
a documentary.” At first, it even starts off as a stylized portraiture of
America’s Juggalo community, the fan base devoted to the rapcore
group Insane Clown Posse (and its affiliate label bands). Hidden behind
their ritualistic makeup, a procession of Juggalos stare into the camera
with passive nonchalance as they are framed in commonplace suburban
settings. Yet with each still-life tableau, the comfort of suburbia is
unsettled as the Juggalo ethos manifests itself, plunging us into its
surreal psyche. By the end, we’re left seduced and abandoned by
Cummings’ celebration of sub-cultural Americana, a visceral life-force
whose life philosophy is No Fucks Given.
I come from a narrative background but I should make clear that Buffalo
Juggalos is not really a narrative film either. Three years ago I decided
Buffalo Juggalos would be a 30-minute film, shot on video, composed
of thirty shots, each one minute long. The film would be a series of
scenes featuring real Juggalos. There would be no interviews or music; if
there was dialogue, it would have absolutely nothing to do with being a
Juggalo. Even though there are narrative elements throughout, they have
been subjugated by the film’s form. I guess I could call the film “a formal
fictional experimental portrait of real people.”
My hope is that through the film the myth of the Juggalo deepens and
they become more mysterious, more other and more confrontational. That
when you are confronted by the film you are confronting that face in war
paint. That you actually live the Dark Carnival for thirty minutes and come
out not knowing what you’ve just seen.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Grand Jury Prize, Live Action Short - AFI Film
(SCOTT CUMMINGS)
Festival 2014 / Honourable mention - Chicago Underground Film
Festival 2014 / Best Experimental Film - Columbus International Film
+ Video Festival 2015 / Visions du Reel 2014 / CPH:DOX 2014 / RIDM
Montreal 2014 / Rotterdam International Film Festival 2015 / 25fps
Film & Video Festival 2015 / Indie Lisboa 2015 / Viennale - Vienna Film
Festival 2015 / FICUNAM, Mexico 2015 / Adelaide Film Festival 2015
68
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: T: +33 640 292 120 | E: [email protected]
T: +1 661 714 0215 http://buffalojuggalosfilm.tumblr.com/
WORLD SALES:
E: [email protected] | T: +1 661 714 0215
THE DIVER
16’, 2015, Mexico
DIRECTOR: ESTEBAN ARRANGOIZ
CAST: Julio César cú Cámara
SCRIPTWRITER: Esteban Arrangoiz with the collaboration of
Mariana Rodríguez
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Martín Molina
EDITING: Mariana Rodríguez, Esteban Arrangoiz
SOUND DESIGN: Pablo Lach
SOUND MIXERS: Estíbaliz Márquez, Daniel Rojo
MUSIC: Juan Felippe Waller
Jaime B. Ramos, Mariana Rodríguez
ESTEBAN ARRANGOIZ
FILM PRESENTATION: How does a city of 20 million people cope
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: I am scuba diver, I think I started diving for
with an antiquated sewage system at risk of daily mass flooding due
the need I have to discover new worlds. When I found about Julio´s work,
to the accumulated refuse? The answer is deep-sea diver and gonzo
I could not imagine what it was to dive into the black void of the sewerage
Jacques Cousteau Julio César cú Cámara, who for the past 30 years has
waters, knowing the risk involved. I was especially interested in how Julio
immersed himself in the terra fluida of Mexico City to unclog the sewer
lived that experience,in the bottom of sewage. I think that Julio and his
passageway of society’s detritus. Under Esteban Arrangoiz’ direction,
activities reflect a historic moment and can be a mirror of certain aspects
Julio’s story transcends its social utility by submerging us past grainy
of the human condition.
Super16mm images of abstracted landscapes of garbage into an
unseen, silent realm. For us and Julio, each dive becomes a ritualistic
(ESTEBAN ARRANGOIZ)
act that plunges him in an altered state of consciousness among the
unknown of darkness and miscellanea. Carrying itself with the wideeyed fascination of a Jules Verne story, The Diver is a captivating
portrait of a social worker’s metaphysical pilgrimage.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Best Short Film - UNAM International Film
Festival Mexico 2016 / Best Documentary Short Award - Morelia
PRODUCER: Esteban Arrangoiz, Victor Hugo Jiménez,
International Film Festival 2015 / Berlin International Film Festival 2016
/ Cartagena International Film Festival 2016 / UNAM International Film
Festival 2016.
WORLD SALES: Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía
T: +52 55 54485339 | E: [email protected]
W: www.imcine.gob.mx
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected] | W: www.estebanarrangoiz.com
W: www.estebanarrangoiz.com/el-buzo--the-diver.html
69
\\
THEME PROGRAMS
70
SPECIAL SCREENING:
PEACE TO US IN OUR DREAMS
QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS
CANNES
71
107’, 2015, Lithuania, France, Russia
DIRECTOR: SHARUNAS BARTAS
SCRIPT: Sharunas Bartas
MUSIC: Alexander Zekke
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Eitvydas Doshkus
CAST: Sharunas Bartas, Lora Kmieliauskaite, Ina Marija Bartaite, Edvinas
EDITING: Gintare Sokelyte
Goldsteinas, Eugenijus Barunovas, Aushra Eitmontiene
SOUND: Vytautas Kizala, Sigitas Motoras, Benjamin Laurent, Vladimir
Golovnitskiy, Jean-Guy Véran
SHARUNAS BARTAS
The plot, if there is any, and Bartas is not particularly keen to reveal its
Wrapped in magical images of a peaceful, calm nature disturbed only by
details, revolves around an intellectual from the city (played by Bartas
the presence of man, this looks very much like a painful, meditative and
himself) who takes his daughter (Bartas’s own daughter, Ina Marija
sad reflection on life from the point of no return for a character just like
Martaite) and his partner, a violinist (reallife violinist Lora Kmielliauskaite)
the one Bartas chose to play himself.
to his country house for a summer breather. Or is it much more? [...] None
of the film’s characters has a name, just to indicate how emblematic they
(Dan Fainaru, Screen Daily)
are trying desperately, but not very successfully, to make sense of.
“Humans always doubt,” says a father to his daughter. “Just imagine if
Locked in tight closeups, Bartas’s characters are constantly trying to
suddenly everything (were) clear. What would you do?” What indeed? Such
reach out to each other in their own ways, and finding it difficult either to
questions serve as a substitute for drama in Sharunas Bartas’ “Peace to Us
express their feelings
in Our Dreams, an oldschool
and their fears or to provide the advice they are expected to give. They
broodfest in which a man, his daughter and his violinist companion
seek someone to lean on, and find answers to questions they don’t even
openly ponder Big Themes during a country getaway. Bartas casts
know how to ask. [...]
himself in the lead, a father who is distant from his daughter. He shows
her an old homemovie in which she can be glimpsed with her mother on
a merrygoround. The girl is played by Ina Marija Bartaite, Bartas’ actual
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs Cannes 2015 /
daughter, and the mother by Katia Golubeva, Bartaite’s actual mother,
Diploma for Sound Solution of High Artistic Merit - Minsk FF / Haifa
who died in 2011 — all of which suffuses the film with a sense of loss that
International Film Festival / CPH:FORUM
persists as the three living characters retreat to the country.
\\
QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS CANNES
are supposed to be, but they are all in a state of personal crisis which they
The season is summer, but the natural lighting often suggests a wintry,
twilight gray. [...]
WORLD SALES: LUXBOX
Anne Sophie Trintignac
Head of Festivals
00 33 7 63 42 26 12
[email protected]
72
Lenser Eitvydas Doshkus captures some stunning silhouettes, and
there are times in “Peace to Us in Our Dreams” when it’s possible to be
transfixed simply by fog, blowing trees or raindrops on lapping water.
(Ben Kenigsberg, Variety)
DIRECTOR’S BIO-FILMOGRAPHY: Born in 1964 in Lituanie, Sharunas
are about me and originate from my own experiences and feelings. Over
Bartas is director, screenwriter and actor. He has brought the Lithuanian
the years, this material becomes richer, and consequently this time, I was
cinema to the most important European Festivals, including Cannes,
able to use this material in a more direct and explicit manner, without
Berlin and Venice. Through his films he deals with the life of people living
falling into literary digressions. It’s like in a book, where you can use “I”
in difficult and undefined lands. In 1995 at the Cannes Festival Bartas
or “he” in an equally personal manner.
presents Few Of Us and two years later, The House. Seven Invisible Men
(Interview by Jean-Michel Frodon, Paris 2015)
(2005) is nominated for the FIPRESCI Award as well as his Indigène
d’Eurasie (2010) for the Lux Award of the European Parliament. His
last work, Peace to us in Our Dreams (2015), has been presented at the
Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at the Festival of Cannes.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: In art, there is nothing to explain. It is more
about raising questions or showing something. In general, in literature,
in paintings, in music and in cinema, what we can do is show a piece of
peoples’ lives. Our souls are very close, but we are all very isolated and we
cannot see who we are from the outside. By showing these pieces of life
of certain people, we can take a step back, we can just feel that we are
close to them and feel less alone. That’s the main reason: being close to
someone who is speaking straight from the soul, something that differs
from the kind of dialogue we regularly have in our day-to-day lives.
(Interview by Fabien Lemercier for Cineuropa)
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: I think that at the heart of it, all my films
73
PRESENTATION
REBRANDING HUMANITY
THEME PROGRAM:
Curatorial presentation by: ADINA MARIN
\\
True to its main focus on cinematic experimentation, BIEFF is honoured to take further its educational partnership with the
INTERNATIONAL FORUM OF NEW CINEMA, BERLINALE FORUM in short, the most daring section of BERLIN INTERNATIONAL
FILM FESTIVAL. The theme program REBRANDING HUMANITY offers Romanian film lovers the rare opportunity to watch several
thought-provoking and conceptually innovative titles from the BERLINALE FORUM EXPANDED line-up.
Organized by ARSENAL INSTITUTE
FOR FILM AND VIDEO ART, BERLINALE
FORUM includes avant-garde,
experimental works, essays, longterm observations, political reportage
and yet-to-be-discovered cinematic
landscapes: there are few formal
limitations when it comes to the
selection of films, resulting in even
greater freedom. The films in the
FORUM straddle the line between art
and cinema. In 2006, FORUM EXPANDED
was launched. Presenting film, video,
installation and performative works
on varying themes and in multiple
venues across Berlin, the works in
FORUM EXPANDED provide a critical
perspective and an expanded sense of
cinematography.
The theme program REBRANDING
HUMANITY brings together films which
look into the human condition today, at
a time when ever faster developments
74
in our world change the very questions
about the meaning of being human
that have been addressed by artists
and scholars for centuries. A couldbe future environmental dystopia,
a cine-philosophical essay on the
eventual perfection of humankind, and
a deeply personal attempt to cope with
the alienation of exile, question and
interpret the human predicament with
the unlimited creative possibilities of
filmic language.
A blend of reality and fiction unfolds
against the backdrop of a desolate place
in UNTITLED (HUMAN MASK). There is a
real story attached, that of the monkey
trained to work as a waitress for the
amusement of the clientele. And there
is the dystopian setting somewhere
in the Fukushima nuclear disaster
exclusion zone, where visual artist
PIERRE HUYGHE chooses to transpose
her as a lonely figure appearing like the
sole survivor of a nuclear disaster. We
experience a disconcerting feeling as
the camera hovers over the deserted
place to follow the increasingly frantic
movements of the hairy creature in a
blue uniform and wearing a humanlike
mask, like a human-animal hybrid
trapped in a post-apocalyptic dystopia.
The future of humankind in a utopian
vision that promises immortality and
resurrection is approached by ANTON
VIDOKLE in THIS IS COSMOS, a complex
work focusing on the works of Russian
philosopher Nikolai Fedorov. “Fedorov
was one of the Cosmo-Immortalists, a
surge of thinkers that emerged in Russia
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
They linked Western Enlightenment
with Russian Orthodoxy and Eastern
philosophical traditions, as well as
Marxism, to create an idiosyncratically
concrete metaphysics. For the Russian
AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE is a deeply personal insight into human behaviour in
crisis situations. The author, MOHAMMAD SHAWKY HASSAN, is an Egyptian expat
living in New York, who experiences the ongoing political developments in his
country by exposing himself to a ceaseless flux of political Egyptian talk-shows.
Shots of silent empty rooms with windows overlooking a backstreet intermix with
the noise of the angry and bigoted discourse in Arab, of which but a few keywords
are translated, making it even more effective. As the audio stream becomes
overwhelmingly intense, a growing sense of alienation carries the viewer into the
director’s interior world.
cosmists, cosmos did not mean outer
space: rather, they wanted to create
‘cosmos’ on earth. ‘To construct a
new reality, free of hunger, disease,
violence, death, need, inequality - like
communism.’” (Berlinale). The film is
constructed like a visual and auditory
collage abruptly interrupted at
intervals by red screens with an alleged
therapeutical effect. “This video can
improve your health” says one of the
red-screen captions. Undeniably, it will
improve our cinephile experience.
75
REBRANDING HUMANITY
UNTITLED (HUMAN MASK)
19’, 2014, France
DIRECTOR: PIERRE HUYGHE
CINEMATOGRAPHY: André Chemetoff
EDITING: Pierre Huyghe, Nicolas Chaudeurge, Katie Mcquerrey
SOUND EDITOR: Raphael Sohier
SOUND MIXER: Cyril Holtz
LINE PRODUCER : Florence Cohen
PRODUCER: Anna Lena Vaney, Victorien Vaney
\\
PIERRE HUYGHE
FILM PRESENTATION: A blend of reality and fiction unfolds against
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: I discovered that there was a monkey in a
the backdrop of a desolate place in Pierre Huyghe’s UNTITLED
restaurant in Japan serving towels to the clients wearing a mask of a
(HUMAN MASK). There is a real story attached to it, that of the monkey
young woman,” he says. He ended up visiting that restaurant, which is
trained to work as a waitress for the amusement of the clientele. And
near areas irradiated by the Fukushima nuclear power–plant disaster.
there is the dystopian setting somewhere in the Fukushima nuclear
Drones with cameras visit the wreckage now. “I got very interested in
disaster exclusion zone, where the artist chooses to transpose her as
these two things—machine replacing man, animal replacing man,” he
a lonely figure appearing like the sole survivor of a nuclear disaster.
adds. The film imagines what the monkey does when it is not playing the
We experience a disconcerting feeling as the camera hovers over the
role of human. “It’s nature that has lost its naturality, and there’s no way
deserted place to follow the increasingly frantic movements of the
to go back,” he says. “I see that as a kind of Greek tragedy.
hairy creature in a blue uniform and wearing a humanlike mask, like a
human-animal hybrid trapped in a post-apocalyptic dystopia.
(PIERRE HUYGHE interviewed by Andrew Russeth)
(Adina Marin, BIEFF 2016)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Think:Film Award - Berlin International Film
Festival, Forum Expanded / CPH:DOX, New Vision / Torino Film
Festival, Waves/Artrum / Main Award - Kino Der Kunst / Hong Kong
International Film Festival
76
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: M: +1 917 445 4410 / +33 781 049 584
WORLD SALES: Anna Lena Films - Florence Cohen, Line Producer
M : + 33-6 18 58 63 01 | E : [email protected]
THIS IS COSMOS
30’, 2014, USA
DIRECTOR: ANTON VIDOKLE
CAST: Iman, Musa, Kulmohhametov & Svetlana
SCRIPT: Anton Vidokle / Based on writings by Nikolai Federov
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Marcello Bozzini
EDITING: Meggie Schneider, Anton Vidokle
MUSIC: John Cale, Sun Blindness,1965
MUSIC MIX: Carsten Nicolai
PRODUCER: e-flux
ANTON VIDOKLE
FILM PRESENTATION: The future of humankind in a utopian vision
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: THIS IS COSMOS is not about ‘the cosmos’ but
that promises immortality and resurrection is approached by ANTON
about the cosmic dreams and projects of Russian thinkers before and after
VIDOKLE in THIS IS COSMOS, a complex narrative focusing on the
the October Revolution. They believed in progress, technology and social
works of Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov, and revolving around
revolution. And they believed that, eventually, mankind would become
the indestructibility of energy and the enhance of the human condition
immortal and make all of outer space its home. So the video is a piece of
as core concepts of cosmism, the movement that emerged in Russia in
memory—memory about certain radical modernist projects that we still
the early 20th century and survived communism. Drawing on powerful
experience today as fascinating and motivating.
images filmed in Siberia, Crimea and Kazakhstan, and on close-ups of
faces, the film is constructed like a visual and auditory collage abruptly
(BORIS GROYS)
interrupted at intervals by red screens with an alleged therapeutical
effect. “This video can improve your health” says one of the red-screen
captions. It is also bound to improve our cinephile experience.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Sphinx Award for Best Video/Film Videomedeja International Video Festival, Serbia 2015 / Oberhausen
Photos © Anton Vidokle / Courtesy of the artist
International Film Festival / Clermont-Ferrand International Short
Film Festival / Hamburg International Short Film Festival / Cyprus
International Film Festival / Winterthur International Short Film
Festival / Berlin International Short Film Festival / Exground Film Fest
WORLD SALES: e-flux
E: [email protected] | W: http://www.e-flux.com
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected] | W: www.e-flux.com
77
REBRANDING HUMANITY
AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE
24’, 2015, Egypt
DIRECTOR: MOHAMMAD SHAWKY HASSAN
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Michael Kennedy/
Mohammad Shawky Hassan
EDITING & SOUND DESIGN: Michael Kennedy/
Mohammad Shawky Hassan
COLOR CORRECTION: Louly Seif
PRODUCER: Mohammad Shawky Hassan
MOHAMMAD SHAWKY HASSAN
FILM PRESENTATION: AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE is a deeply
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE is a navigation
personal insight into human behaviour in crisis situations. The author,
of an attempt to carve out a personal space amid an inescapable sonic
Mohammad Shawky Hassan, is an Egyptian expat living in New York,
shield created primarily by prime time political talk shows with their
who experiences the ongoing political developments in his country by
indistinguishable, absurd and at times undecipherable rhetoric/ noises.
exposing himself to a ceaseless flux of political Egyptian talk-shows.
Equally repulsive and addictive, these noises travel across geographies
Shots of silent empty rooms with windows overlooking a backstreet
gradually constituting an integral part of a self-created map of exile.
\\
intermix with the noise of the angry and bigoted discourse in Arab,
78
of which but a few keywords are translated, making it even more
(MOHAMMAD SHAWKY HASSAN)
effective. As the audio stream becomes overwhelmingly intense,
a growing sense of alienation carries the viewer into the director’s
interior world.”
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Berlinale Forum Expanded 2015 / AFAC Film
Week, Zawya, Cairo 2015 / Films from Here, MoMA 2015
WORLD SALES:
T: +2011-2641-3044 | E: [email protected]
YOU RUN THROUGH MY VEINS
THEME PROGRAM:
79
PRESENTATION
THEME PROGRAM:
Taking further the inspiring collaboration with the innovative International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Bucharest
International Experimental Film Festival BIEFF presents some of the most thought-provoking 2015 Tiger Awards For Short
Films Nominees within the theme program YOU RUN THROUGH MY VEINS. Going beyond the conventional views on family
and, in particular, on trans-generational dynamics, both at personal and society level, the works included in this program are
\\
an invitation to reflect on the ways
we perceive reality, revealing it from
unexpected subjective perspectives.
80
Questioning beliefs and practices of
ancestral divination in South-African
societies, visual artist Ben Russell
(winner of BIEFF Main Award in 2013
with RIVER RITES), comes back to
Bucharest with Greetings to the
Ancestors, winner of the Tiger Award
for Short Film, an investigation on
the divine power of dreams and the
invisible ways through which the spirits
of our forefathers still live in our blood.
Ben Russell intermixes ingredients of
documentary, ethnography and dream
cinema, to illustrate the fluidity of
the borders of consciousness, which
dissolve and expand. The camera is
either anthropologically engaged
in the trance-inducing ceremony of
the Jericho Congregation, or quietly
tracking healers or poets who give
account of vivid dreams induced by
the hallucinogen African Dream Root,
and eventually races along the African
landscape, a surreal red filter applied
over its lens. It is an exercise in what
Ben Russell defines as psychedelic
ethnography: a way to allow for the
apparently objective facts of existence
to be constantly reframed by radical
subjective experience.
An intimate space where the highly personal note fuses with the general human
condition is created by Nina Yuen in Raymond, allegedly a monologue of the artist’s
father, in fact an indirect account of her own family background. The visually
striking narrative moves freely and playfully from calculations of the most curious
sorts, such as the total number of miles driven from their home to her school or
the equivalent in calories of the quantity of fruit the father has harvested during
seventeen years, to reminiscences of his childhood, and memories of him as a
young father and of her as a baby. At some point, the artist ingeniously weaves
deep subjects into the fabric, like the origins of the universe, mortality and the
passage of time, with captivating effect, creating a tender and enchanting personal
discourse on the spiritual and emotional baggage bestowed on her.
In an attempt to plot his own existence against the coordinates “time”, “place”
and family history, Martijn Veldhoen turns his camera on his mother’s life story
in a unique cinematic experiment. Time and Place, A Talk With My Mom retraces
fifty years in the life of Veldhoen’s mother. She fell in love with his father, they
had four children, then a painful separation followed and the wearisome years as
a single mother of four. Beyond reminiscences of her personal story, we witness
the turbulent cultural and social changes of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. The
recorded material being insufficient, Martijn Veldhoen masterfully employs original
visual reconstructions to create a personal and affectionate narrative.
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RAYMOND
12’, 2014, USA
DIRECTOR: NINA YUEN
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Nina Yuen
EDITING: Nina Yuen
SOUND: Nina Yuen
PRODUCER: Nina Yuen
\\
NINA YUEN
FILM PRESENTATION: An intimate space where the highly personal
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: Drawing from sources including her own
note fuses with the general human condition is created by NINA YUEN
memories and experiences, literature, poetry, science, and art history,
in RAYMOND, allegedly a monologue of the artist’s father, in fact an
Nina Yuen merges the personal and the universal in her lush, evocative
indirect account of her own family background. The visually striking
videos. Incorporating herself into her films as protagonist and narrator,
narrative moves freely and playfully from calculations of the most
she builds dreamlike, loosely constructed scenes out of hypnotic image
curious sorts, such as the total number of miles driven from their home
series that seem to unspool into snippets of music and the rhythm of her
to her school or the equivalent in calories of the quantity of fruit the
voice, as she recites poetry, reads passages from a wide assortment of
father has harvested during seventeen years, to reminiscences of his
texts, and recounts her own and other people’s memories. [...]. Though
childhood, and memories of him as a young father and of her as a baby.
such weighty philosophical themes as death, time, and beauty run
At some point, the artist ingeniously weaves deep subjects into the
throughout her films, Yuen’s subtle humor keeps things light, surprising,
fabric, like the origins of the universe, mortality and the passage of
and wonderfully strange.
time, with captivating effect, creating a tender and enchanting personal
discourse on the spiritual and emotional baggage bestowed on her.
(Artsy.net)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: International Documentary Film Festival
Amsterdam IDFA / International Film Festival Rotterdam / Kassel
Documentary FF / Oberhausen FF / European Media Art Festival /
International Short Film Festival, Winterhur, Switzerland / OK Video
Festival, Jakarta, Indonesia / Stuttgart Filmwinter / Sequences Festival,
Reykjavík, Iceland.
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DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected] | W: www.ninayuen.info
WORLD SALES: LI-MA
Theus Zwkhals | T: +31(0)20 389 20 30 | W: http://www.li-ma.nl
TIME AND PLACE,
A TALK WITH MY MOM
DIRECTOR: MARTIJN VELDHOEN
CAMERA: Martijn Veldhoen
EDITING: Martijn Veldhoen
SOUND: Martijn Veldhoen
MUSIC: Michel Banabila, Mickey Smid
PRODUCER: Pieter van Huystee (for Pieter van Huystee Film),
Rene Huybrechtse (for Dutch Mountain Film)
(MARTIJN VELDHOEN)
WORLD SALES: LI-MA
Theus Zwkhals | T: +31(0)20 389 20 30 | W: http://www.li-ma.nl
83
MARTIJN VELDHOEN
FILM PRESENTATION: In an attempt to plot his own existence
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Reconstructions: Time and Place is, in some way,
against the coordinates “time”, “place” and family history, MARTIJN
a film about the melancholy of reconstruction [...] an emphasis on the memories
VELDHOEN turns his camera on his mother’s life story in a unique
(and failing memories) of the principal character: my mother. By directly
cinematic experiment. TIME AND PLACE, A TALK WITH MY MOM
converting her memories into image, I’m visualizing her frantic attempts to
retraces fifty years in the life of Veldhoen’s mother. She fell in love
remember what happened in the house she lived in for 52 years.
with his father, they had four children, then a painful separation
followed and the wearisome years as a single mother of four. Beyond
reminiscences of her personal story, we witness the turbulent cultural
and social changes of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. The recorded
Time: Through the memories of the mother, the film is a witness of the
turbulent cultural and social changes that went about in the sixties seventies
and eighties in Amsterdam [...]
material being insufficient, Martijn Veldhoen masterfully employs
Place: The 18th century canal house is situated in the famous Jordaan
original visual reconstructions to create a personal and affectionate
neighborhood, which, during this time, made a 180-degree turn, from the
narrative.
poorest to one of the richest and most popular neighbourhoods in the city.
Visual material: I had to make some unorthodox decisions in the visual
reconstruction of my mother’s memories - and of the conversation we had. The
film has therefore become more of a re-enactment of this conversation then an
actual “objective” recording of it. As a result, Time and Place has also become a
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Sao Paulo International Film Festival /
International Filmfestival Rotterdam / DocAviv / Clermont Ferrand
personal exploration of how to visualize something very dear
Short Film Festival / Edinburgh International Filmfestival / Dutch
Filmfestival Utrecht, The Netherlands / Brooklyn Filmfestival, New
York / Macau Arts Festival, China / Transat Video, Caen, France / EMAF
European Media Art Festival Osnabruck, Germany / International
Festival of Contemporary Cinema, Mexico City / SENEF Fimfestival,
Seoul, South Korea
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: [email protected]
GREETINGS FROM
THE ANCESTORS
29’, 2015, USA, South Africa, UK
DIRECTOR: BEN RUSSELL
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ben Russell
EDITING: Ben Russell
SOUND: Ben Russell
PRODUCER: Ben Russell
\\
BEN RUSSELL
FILM PRESENTATION: Questing beliefs and practices of ancestral
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Set between Swaziland and South Africa,
divination in South-African societies, GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS,
in a region still struggling with the divisions produced by an apartheid
winner of the Tiger Award for Short Films, looks towards the invisible world
government, GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS documents the dream lives
and investigates the divine power of dreams. BEN RUSSELL intermixes
of the territory’s inhabitants as the borders of consciousness dissolve
ingredients of documentary, ethnography and dream cinema, to illustrate
and expand. Equal parts documentary, ethnography and dream cinema,
the fluidity of the boders of consciousness, which dissolve and expand.
herein is a world whose borders are constantly dematerializing. [...] Taken
The camera is either anthropologically engaged in the trance-inducing
as a whole, GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS draws from subjects already
ceremony of the Jericho Congregation, or quietly tracking healers or poets
deeply invested in the divine power of dreams to produce a work that is at
who give account of vivid dreams induced by the hallucinogen African
once embodied, political, and deeply hypnagogic. GREETINGS takes on the
Dream Root, and eventually races along the African landscape, a surreal red
challenge that the Surrealists outlined in the 1920s – for cinema to be fully
filter applied over its lens. It is an expercise in what Ben Russel defines as
realized as the waking state of dreams, one that we all can inhabit.
psychedelic ethnography: a way to allow for the apparently objective facts
of existence to be constantly reframed by radical subjective experience.
(BEN RUSSELL)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Tiger Award for Short Films 2015 - International
Film Festival Rotterdam / Torino International Film Festival / Wexner
Center for the Arts / Documenta Madrid / solo exhibitions at the
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Wexner Center for the Arts, the
Viennale, and the Museum of Modern Art.
84
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected] | W: www.dimeshow.com
WORLD SALES: LIGHT CONE / VIDEO DATA BANK
LIGHT CONE W: www.lightcone.org , VIDEO DATA BANK W: www.vdb.org
OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
THEME PROGRAM:
CINEDANS FILM FESTIVAL
85
PRESENTATION
OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
THEME PROGRAM:
The special program dedicated to dance-films returns to the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival BIEFF due to our
inspiring partnership with Europe’s main dance-film festivals, the unique CINEDANS - Dance on Screen Festival Amsterdam. In the
ever-changing media landscape, creators are increasingly seeking different ways to tell their stories. Contemporary dance films are
often autonomous art works with a language of their own and an expressiveness that cannot be pigeonholed. Cinema and dance are
\\
brought to synthesis reactions resulting in
pure artistic gems.
86
Bucharest International Experimental
Film Festival BIEFF 2016 is proud to
present the selection entitled Of Love
And Other Demons with four exquisite
films that speak about or rather dance us
through the deepest and most powerful
human emotions transcending space,
time, and gravity through the magic of
film.
Dancing is a physical inquiry, a way of
experiencing and participating in the
world. Movement creates meaning, but it
also asks questions. About the origins of
humanity. About distressed individuals in
search of family ties. About the fluidity
of such notions as sanity and madness.
About bodies urging to get together.
And about the serenity of a white world
before the Big Bang, when time didn’t
exist and everything was love.
Digital art, dance and physics blend to
create a rumination on the philosophical
mysteries swirling around in our universe
in SYMMETRY, a film that touches on love,
philosophy and the nature of life. (Heba
Hasan, Tech Times)
Claron McFadden, which eventually
transports him to an interior world, as an
expression of how our drive for rational
knowledge of the universe is rooted in
a deeper, more emotional desire inside
ourselves. (Hyperallergic)
Filmed on location in Switzerland at CERN
(European Organization for Nuclear
Research) - home of The Large Hadron
Collider, the world’s largest and most
powerful particle collider, the largest
experimental facility ever built, and the
largest single machine in the world, –
the film follows a researcher working
passionately on the theory of everything
and the smallest particle.
When the interior world is disturbed,
it reveals itself to the others under
assorted forms of madness, the cultural
representations of which vary with time,
and so do the possibilities and nature of
healing society believes to have at hand
at certain points. A SHORT HISTORY OF
MADNESS choreographs in six stirring
tableaux rituals of psychiatry practiced
in Quebec over the past century and a
half. An array of symbolic, experiential,
and political dimensions of healing
practices are on display as the dancers
embody unfortunate souls haunted by
the demons of insanity moving frantically
inside settings which alter as mentalities
change. From the bleak victorian
RUBEN VAN LEER skilfully utilises a
unique interplay of choreography and
sound to express the two sides of our
understanding, one rational, the other
emotional. The scientist’s routine is
interrupted by the voice of soprano
Even in the absence of diagnosed insanity,
exclusion is likely to occur. GIANNI GROT’s
proclaimed aim to put hip hop on the map
as a physical form of theatre materializes
brilliantly in FARM OF MEMORIES, a fluid
tale moving back and forth between
the conscious and the unconscious, and
populated by visions likely to have been
unleashed by the contents of a syringe
injected in the vein. A destitute young
man hip-hops his way around a derelict
warehouse as he tries to put together
memories of his childhood or of more
recent years. The emotionally charged
choreography creates a touching portrait
of a man longing for love and security and
struggling to get near the people in his life who are supposed to offer them. But they
are nothing more than chimerical apparitions and, as in nightmares, they would remain
out of reach and leave him face his demons alone.
Of all -isms that govern our lives, the one suffixing the concept of love opens the way
for virtually unbounded philosophical investigation. Inspired by Erich Fromm’s book
The Art of Loving, choreographer MOR SHANI embarked upon a long-term study of
intimacy, seeking answers to questions related to caring for and depending on another
human being weighed on a scale that ranges from sin to sacredness. The collaboration
with video artist PAUL SIXTA resulted in the project LOVE-ISM - THINGS THAT MATTER,
a blend of documentary material and honest tales of inter-human togetherness. In the
ambiance of sterile white rooms, the camera records with a thorough yet empathic eye,
lovers, family members, and dancers as they come close to each other, the increasing
degree of their intimacy capturing the human experience of meeting a significant
‘other’.
like asylum to the sordid backstreet
warehouse and the teenager’s bedroom
that attempts (and fails) to re-create a
homey environment, ISABELLE HAYEUR
takes us on an exploration of society’s
ways to deal with the frightening and ever
fascinating state of madness.
87
OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS A SHORT HISTORY OF MADNESS
27’, 2015, Canada
DIRECTOR: ISABELLE HAYEUR
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jessica Lee Gagné
EDITING: Isabelle Hayeur
SOUND EDITOR: Alexis Pilon-Gladu, Bruno Bélanger
MUSIC: Timber Timbre, Scout Niblett, The Ex, Peter Broderick
ART DIRECTION: Laura Nhem
CHOREOGRAPHER: Virginie Brunelle
DANCERS: Carol Prieur, Isabelle Arcand, Luc BouchardBoissonneault, Sophie Breton, Claudine Hébert, Carl Hennebert
Faulkner, Hélène Langevin, Simon-Xavier Lefebvre, Lael Stellick
PRODUCER: Isabelle Hayeur
ISABELLE HAYEUR
FILM PRESENTATION: Cultural representations of madness vary
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: A beautifully choreographed journey through
with time, and so do the possibilities and nature of healing society
visceral and poetic perspectives of a reality that transcends time. This
believes to have at hand at certain points. A SHORT HISTORY OF
evocative, dance-centric film follows the history of treating mental illness
MADNESS choreographs in six stirring tableaux rituals of psychiatry
when contemporary dance and architecture merge inside the mind and
practiced in Quebec over the past century and a half. An array of
movement of psychosis.
symbolic, experiential, and political dimensions of healing practices
are on display as the dancers embody unfortunate souls haunted by
(Chicago International Moveis&Music Festival)
the demons of insanity moving frantically inside settings which alter as
\\
mentalities change. From the bleak victorian like asylum to the sordid
backstreet warehouse and the teenager’s bedroom that attempts (and
fails) to re-create a homey environment, ISABELLE HAYEUR takes us on
an exploration of society’s ways to deal with the frightening and ever
fascinating state of madness.
(Adina Marin, BIEFF2016)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois 2016 / RVCQ et francophone de Vancouver 2015 / Oklahoma Dance Film Festival 2015
/ Festival International du Film d’Art Montréal 2015 / Festival International de films de femmes de Créteil France 2015 / CineDans Amsterdam
2015 / Festival TransAmériques Montréal / CIMMFest Chicago / Female Eye Festival Toronto / DMJ International VideoDance Festival Japan / San
Francisco Dance Film Festival / Ciné Danse Québec / Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema / Au contraire Film Festival Montréal / Rendezvous with
Madness Film Festival Toronto
88
W: www.isabelle-hayeur.org
WORLD SALES: LES FILMS DU 3 MARS
E: [email protected] | W: www.f3m.ca
FARM OF MEMORIES
DIRECTOR: GIANNI GROT
CAST: Romario Gomes, Serano Pinas, Mercedes Go,
Rubén Sánchez
CHOREOGRAPHER: Gianni Grot
GIANNI GROT
FILM PRESENTATION: GIANNI GROT’s proclaimed aim to put hip hop
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: Gianni Grot is a young choreographer and film
on the map as a physical form of theatre materializes brilliantly in
director who created a film in which dance attributed convingly to the
FARM OF MEMORIES, a fluid tale moving back and forth between the
build-up of the storyline. Who wrote an interesting scenario in which not
conscious and the unconscious, and populated by visions likely to have
linearity is the guiding force but a scenario which gets it’s a multi-layered
been unleashed by the contents of a syringe injected in the vein. A
content through the memories of protagonist about his family and each
destitute young man hip-hops his way around a derelict warehouse as
individual position towards him. He subtly mixes past with present and
he tries to put together memories of his childhood or of more recent
uses, very convingly, spoken word in the film, attributing to the poetic,
years. The emotionally charged choreography creates a touching
albeit grim development and sad ending of the film
portrait of a man longing for love and security and struggling to get
near the people in his life who are supposed to offer them. But they are
(Cinedans Jury Statement)
nothing more than chimerical apparitions and, as in nighmares, they
would remain out of reach and leave him face his demons alone.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Winner of the Cinedans Dioraphte
Encouragement Award - Cinedans 2015 / Moving Futures Festival (NL)
PRODUCTION: Chanel Wouter, Enzio van Engel, Richard Koot
2015 / Screening at SinemaDans Ankara (Turkey) 2015
WORLD SALES: E: [email protected]
89
OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS LOVE-ISM
DIRECTOR: PAUL SIXTA
CONCEPT AND CHOREOGRAPHY: Mor Shani
FILM: Paul Sixta
PERFORMERS: Pawel Konior, Connor Schumacher, Majon van
der Schot, Chris Tandy, David Krugel, Simon Versnel, Inge van
Huijkelom
ARTISTIC MANAGEMENT: Shiran Shveka
MUSIC: Jaap van Keulen
PRODUCTION: Dansateliers, SKVR Rotterdam,
ICKAmsterdam, Act Your Age and Frascati Productions
PAUL SIXTA
FILM PRESENTATION: Of all -isms that govern our lives, the one
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: In Love-ism ‘The problem of our being
suffixing the concept of love opens the way for virtually unbounded
together’ and the need to resolve it are the conceptual fundaments
philosophical investigation. Inspired by Erich Fromm’s book The Art of
guiding the physical and compositional research. In the absence of
Loving, choreographer MOR SHANI embarked upon a long-term study
pre-choreographed material a silent and empty territory is established
of intimacy, seeking answers to questions related to caring for and
between two people or more – a void in which authentic choice making
depending on another human being weighed on a scale that ranges
takes place and in which transparent transformation of relationships
from sin to sacredness. The collaboration with video artist PAUL SIXTA
occur just because of the metaphysical force that makes us move together.
resulted in the project LOVE-ISM - THINGS THAT MATTER, a blend of
(MOR SHANI · PAUL SIXTA)
In the ambiance of sterile white rooms, the camera records with a
thorough yet empathic eye, lovers, family members, and dancers as
they come close to each other, the increasing degree of their intimacy
capturing the human experience of meeting a significant ‘other’.
\\
documentary material and honest tales of inter-human togetherness.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Cinedans Festival Amsterdam / Cinédanse Québec
90
WORLD SALES: Paul Sixta
T: 0031 6 46638354 | E: paulsixta.yahoo.com | W: www.love-ism.nl
SYMMETRY
DIRECTOR: RUBEN VAN LEER
CAST: Lukas Timulak, Claron McFadden
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Paul Ozgur
EDITING: Amber Hooijmans
MUSIC / SOUND: Henry Vega
COMPOSER: Joep Franssens
RUBEN VAN LEER
FILM PRESENTATION: Digital art, dance and physics blend to create a
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: I’m interested in a world where human
rumination on the philosophical mysteries swirling around in our universe in a
emotions are a result of dancing geometric structures at the foundation of
film that touches on love, philosophy and the nature of life. (Heba Hasan, Tech
our being. A place where hard science is a result of a long term perceptual
Times)
trajectory. Like Spinoza was looking for symmetry between science and
Filmed on location in Switzerland at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear
Research) - home of The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most
powerful particle collider, the largest experimental facility ever built, and
the largest single machine in the world, –SYMMETRY follows a researcher
working passionately on the theory of everything and the smallest particle.
perception. We are tragic beings for whom this harmony gets lost all too
often. For me technology also refers to our human body and history, not
constraint by contemporary artificial intelligences. I want to know what
the Gesamtkunstwerk of the 21st century looks like. I’m sure it’s musical
by nature, it integrates multiple disciplines that people can reflect upon.
And that it addresses the ambiguity of our “modern” information age. My
RUBEN VAN LEER skilfully utilises a unique interplay of choreography and
latest film Symmetry is about the alignment of this fine balance between
sound
emotion and abstraction; the entire cosmos and the smallest particle;
to express the two sides of our understanding, one rational, the other
emotional. The scientist’s routine is interrupted by the voice of soprano
Claron McFadden, which eventually transports him to an interior world, as an
science and art; you and me… I’m most interested in the “quantum story”
the audience make themselves by experiencing the film.
(RUBEN VAN LEER)
expression of how our drive for rational knowledge of the universe is rooted
in a deeper, more emotional desire inside ourselves.
(Hyperallergic)
PRODUCER: CTM Pictures & truth.io
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Best Director Award and Best Visual Effects
Award - San Francisco Dance Film Festival 2015 / All Lights Award India IFF 2015 / 1st Prize RAW Science - Los Angeles FF / Choreo Scope
Award - International Dance FF Barcelona / Aesthetica Art Prize /
Special Prize “Documentary” - Festival Fiver 2016
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected] | W: www.rubenvanleer.net
W: www.symmetrymovie.com
WORLD SALES: SND Films / Sydney Neter
E: [email protected] | W: http://www.sndfilms.com
91
PRESENTATION
PARADISE IN RUINS:
VISUAL ART ACTIVISM
THEME PROGRAM:
\\
Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival BIEFF continues its inspiring long-term collaboration with the legendary INTERNATIONAL
SHORT FILM FESTIVAL OBERHAUSEN, offering again to the Romanian cinema buffs the chance to get acquainted with some of the most
powerful samples of contemporary visual art activism, titles screened and awarded at the previous editions of OBERHAUSEN.
92
We live in a time of failed ideologies.
Communism, National-Socialism,
Capitalism, took turns in claiming to
offer a clear way towards the perfect
society, and they were all eventually
found wanting. Under the theme
PARADISE IN RUINS: VISUAL ART
ACTIVISM, the films in this program cast
a cinematic eye on a world so engrossed
with finding its way towards a lost
paradise that it fails to notice its own
slide into neo-feudalist conditions of
political and economic inequalities and
inequities.
In FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE, BIEFF’s
longtime favorite BJØRN MELHUS
questions the global ideological
paradigm change to new forms of
religious capitalism, by confronting
ideas of the self-announced objectivist
philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand, with
evangelical contents of US-American
mainstream movies. This contemporary
fairy tale in which Melhus performs all characters himself was partly shot in a Berlin
morgue and new urban environments in Istanbul. In a tour de force that oscillates
between musical, comedy, horror film and fairy tale, this high definition trip trawls
out our global psyche for stored conceptions of promises of salvation, childhood
trauma and work ethic, under the imperative of self-optimization.
ALEX GERBAULET’s SHIFT moves down the shaft of memories, her own family’s
and those of the industrial city of Salzgitter, a once blooming project of NationalSocialist Germany, home of the “Reichswerke Hermann Göring” and of the adjacent
labour camps. SHIFT employs a rhythm crafting a feeling of implacability. Family and
history events are concocted from archival propaganda pieces, newsreels, and family
photos, and the remains of the mining-cum-steel works shot on location. Moving
between layers, the recurrent figure of the widowed father joggs along deserted
streets and eventually returns to an empty home, his wife having passed away
some time ago after years of suffering from multiple sclerosis. The industrial city is
gradually invalided by a multiple sclerosis of its own. Reduced to the representation
of the ruins of a failed ideology, it faces a future grimmer still, since it is designed to
become the ultimate disposal place for radioactive waste.
GANGSTER BACKSTAGE is TEBOHO EDKINS’ follow-up to Gangster Project, a film he
completed a few years before, and for the making of which he ventured in one of
Cape Town’s most violent black townships where few white people dare to enter,
to observe the life of real gansters at first hand. This time, instead of seeking the
gangsters in their natural habitat, he summons them to the neutral setting of an
(lost) PARADISE. Instead, the viewer is swept into an artificial greenhouse mimicking
the Garden of Eden, where the Adam character is played by a middle-aged, middle
class man leafing through a collection of index cards and occasionally reciting into a
microphone quotes from The Bible, Rousseau, Der Spiegel, Hesiod, and a bunch of
academics. The resulting discourse is a multi-faceted complex of ideas, retracing the
history of the garden as the primordial protected place, from the literal meaning of
the Persian word pairidaēza (enclosure) to the present societal tendency towards
reclusion while longing for the lost paradise.
empty classroom by lauching a casting
call. Interviews, during which the
characters talk candidly about the pros
and cons of gangster life alternate with
scenes in which they stage their fears
and dreams, in a barren Dogville-like
decor, with white tapes marking the
claustrophobic outline of a prison cell.
Between the torment of confinement
and the omnipresent threat of an
untimely death, these amoral human
beings evolve in the South-African
society, which has failed so far to come
to terms with itself.
“Everything was good. Beyond the reach
of all evils.” - a voice utters repeatedly
and persuasively in the beginning of
MAX PHILIPP SCHMID’s film, hinting to a
93
PARADISE IN RUINS
FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE
15’, 2014, Germany
DIRECTOR: BJØRN MELHUS
CAST: Bjørn Melhus
SCRIPT: Bjørn Melhus
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Eike Zuleeg
EDITING: Bjørn Melhus
SOUND: Max Schneider
MUSIC: Max Schneider
PRODUCER: Yuki Jungesblut, Bjørn Melhus
\\ BEST FILMS IN MAJOR FESTIVALS
BJØRN MELHUS
FILM PRESENTATION: FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE by BJØRN
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: When the curator Beral Madra described the
MELHUS questions the global ideological paradigm change to
situation of Turkey at the start of 2015 she stated that the rapid growth of
new forms of religious capitalism by confronting ideas of the self
neoliberal capitalism and religious fanaticism could lead to “neofascism
announced objectivist philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand with
of the 21st century” if they are merged. Istanbul as an outdoor set serves
evangelical contents of US-American mainstream movies. This
as a prime example in FREEDOM & INDEPENDENCE. The spectres of
contemporary fairy tale in which Melhus performs all characters
privatisation are global as the current secret negotiations on free trade
himself was partly shot in a Berlin morgue and new urban environments
agreements like TTIP and particularly TISA suggest. They are advancing –
in Istanbul. In a tour de force that oscillates between musical, comedy,
amongst others – the privatisation of primary services hitherto provided
horror film and fairy tale this high definition trip trawls out our global
by the state (like drinking water) to the point where it cannot be reversed.
psyche for stored conceptions of promises of salvation, childhood
Under the guise of freedom and independence the provision of services to a
trauma and work ethic under the imperative of self-optimization.
dependent population will lie in the hands of only a few free individuals. The
(www.kinoderkunst.de)
solution lies in the ideal of egocentric and self-optimised consumers who
recognise their own death merely as the end of the existence of the world.
(BJØRN MELHUS)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Sphinx Award for Best Video/Film - Videomedeja
International Video Festival, Serbia 2015 / Oberhausen International Film
Festival / Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival / Hamburg
International Short Film Festival / Cyprus International Film Festival /
Winterthur International Short Film Festival / Berlin International Short
Film Festival / Exground Film Fest
94
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected] | W: www.melhus.de
WORLD SALES: AUG & OHR MEDIEN
T: +49 (0) 176 - 62965299 | E: [email protected] | W: www.augohr.de
SHIFT
28’, 2015, Germany
DIRECTOR: ALEX GERBAULET
SCRIPT: Alex Gerbaulet
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Alex Gerbaulet, Smina Bluth
EDITING: Philip Scheffner
SOUND: Tom Schön
CO-PRODUCER: Uli Plank
ALEX GERBAULET
FILM PRESENTATION: Shift (Schicht). Shaft (Schacht). The voice-
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: A darkly comic investigation into family, labor
over alliterates the terms repetitiously, shifting layer after layer
and state, this half-hour cine-poem frames autobiography against secret
as ALEX GERBAULET moves down the shaft of memories, her own
histories in uncovering the last half-century of Salzgitter, an ostensibly
family’s and those of the industrial city of Salzgitter, a once blooming
ordinary German town that, between 1937 and 1945, was home to
project of National-Socialist Germany, home of the “Reichswerke
Reichswerke Hermann Göring — a tellingly named industrial complex and
Hermann Göring” and of the adjacent labour camps. SHIFT employs
economic stronghold for the Nazis. Both works are typical of what is by
a rhythm crafting a feeling of implacability. Family and history
now a familiar kind of essay film: found and original images stitched into
events are concocted from archival propaganda pieces, news reels,
a narrative logic and narrated by an actor whose detached, third-person
and family photos, and the remains of the mining-cum-steel works
voiceover creates a triangular mode of address between filmmaker,
shot on location. Moving between layers, the recurrent figure of
viewer and the various topics at hand. Each film is by turns authoritative
the widowed father joggs along deserted streets and eventually
and speculative, subjective and objective, deadpan and ironic, focused and
returns to an empty home, his wife having passed away some time
meandering, verbose and tongue-tied, lucid and ambiguous, disciplined
ago after years of suffering from multiple sclerosis. The industrial city
and self-indulgent.
is gradually invalided by a multiple sclerosis of its own. Reduced to
the representation of the ruins of a failed ideology, it faces a future
(MICHAEL PATTISON, filmmakermagazine.com)
grimmer still, since it is designed to become the ultimate disposal place
for radioactive waste.
PRODUCER: Merle Kröger
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Prize German Competition - International Short
Film Festival Oberhausen 2015 / First Film Award - FID Marseille 2015 /
German Film Critics Award 2015
WORLD SALES: Pong Film GmbH
T: +49-(0)30-61076098 | E: [email protected] | W: www.pong-berlin.de
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: M: +49-(0)151-15620353 | E: [email protected]
W: www.alexgerbaulet.de
95
PARADISE IN RUINS
PARADISE
DIRECTOR: MAX PHILIPP SCHMID
CAST: Thomas Douglas
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Thomas Isler
EDITING: Max Philipp Schmid
SOUND: Max Philipp Schmid
SOUND DESIGN: Knut Jensen
PRODUCER: Stella Händler
MAX PHILIPP SCHMID
FILM PRESENTATION: Everything was good. Beyond the reach of all
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Presented against the backdrop of an
evils.” - a voice utters repeatedly and persuasively in the beginning of
artificial greenhouse, „Paradise“ interweaves texts, documentary images
MAX PHILIPP SCHMID’s film, hinting to a (lost) Paradise. Instead, the
and sounds into a cluster of questions. How do we imagine paradise?
viewer is swept into an artificial greenhouse mimicking the Garden of
How does what we imagine manifest itself in front gardens and urban
Eden, where the Adam character is played by a middle-aged, middle
landscaping? Is paradise, the ideal world, to be found in the untamed
class man leafing through a collection of index cards and occasionally
wilderness? Why are all the small paradises made by humans fenced in?
reciting into a microphone quotes from The Bible, Rousseau, Der
Is a fence perhaps a prerequisite for paradise? The video explores the
Spiegel, Hesiod, and a bunch of academics. The resulting discourse is a
current societal tendency toward withdrawal and separation within the
multi-faceted complex of ideas, retracing the history of the garden as
framework of a yearning for an ideal way of life closely linked to Nature.
the primordial protected place, from the literal meaning of the Persian
word pairidaēza (enclosure) to the present societal tendency towards
(MAX PHILIPP SCHMID)
reclusion while longing for the lost paradise.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Bester Kunstfilm (Best Arthouse Film) - Basler
Filmpreis, Basel 2015 / First Prize - Videoex Zürich, 2015 / Oberhausen,
61. Internationale Kurzfilmtage / 15th New Horizons International Film
Festival Wroclaw / 13th Bogota Short Film Festival / 25th International
Exhibition of Video and Cinema Beyond, Milano / 19. Internationale
Kurzfilmtage Winterthur
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DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: E: [email protected] | W: www.maxphilippschmid.ch
WORLD SALES: freihändler Filmproduktion GmbH
E: [email protected] |W: www.freihaendler.cH
GANGSTER BACKSTAGE
37’, 2013, France, South Africa
DIRECTOR: TEBOHO EDKINS
CAST: Ghaironesa Wessels, Grant du Plessis, Edward Rustin,
Lincon Cupido, Brendon Jamsen
SCRIPT: Teboho Edkins, François-Xavier Drouet
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Samuel Lahu
EDITING: Florence Jacquet
SOUND EDITOR: Manuel Vidal
TEBOHO EDKINS
FILM PRESENTATION: GANGSTER BACKSTAGE is TEBOHO EDKINS’
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Cape Town has one of the highest murder
follow-up to Gangster Project, a film he completed a few years before,
rates in the world and a long history of gangs. In GANGSTER BACKSTAGE
and for the making of which he ventured in one of Cape Town’s most
I adopted the same strategy as I did for GANGASTER PROJECT. I placed
violent black townships where few white people dare to enter, to
an announcement in the Daily Voice newspaper: ‘Looking for actors for a
observe the life of real gansters at first hand. This time, instead of
gangster Film, experience of gangsterism appreciated.’ Of the people who
seeking the gangsters in their natural habitat, he summons them to
answered the call and came to the casting, I chose five characters with
the neutral setting of an empty classroom by lauching a casting call.
whom we worked in an empty theatre space.
Interviews, during which the characters talk candidly about the pros
and cons of gangster life alternate with scenes in which they stage
(TEBOHO EDKINS)
their fears and dreams, in a barren Dogville-like decor, with white
tapes marking the claustrophobic outline of a prison cell. Between the
torment of confinement and the omnipresent threat of an untimely
death, these amoral human beings evolve in the South-African society,
which has failed so far to come to terms with itself.
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Principal Prize Of The International Jury - Oberhausen Film Festival 2014 / Short Film Award - Saint Louis Du Senegal 2014 / DocLisboa /
Rome Film Festival / Oberhausen / Durban / Saint-Louis du Sénégal / African Film Festival Milano / South African International Documentary Festival (Cape Town) /
PRODUCER: Nicolas Anthomé
Berlin Transmediale, Afrykamera (Poland) / FICFA (Canada) / Festival cinémas d’Afrique (Lausanne) / Signes de nuit (Berlin&Paris) / Rencontres Internationales Paris/
Berlin/Madrid / Tamatave (Madagascar) / Iffi (Innsbruck) / Winterthur (Switzerland) / Urban Film Festival (Paris) / Contis, Silhouette (Paris) / Oullins - A nous de voir /
Amiens, Cinémas d’Afrique (Apt)
WORLD SALES: BATHYSPERE - Clement Le Penven
T: + 33 1 40 21 37 02 | E: [email protected] | W: www.bathysphere.fr
97
GOLDEN SHORTS:
BEST FILMS IN MAJOR
FESTIVALS
\\
SPECIAL PROGRAM
98
RATE ME
17’, 2015, UK
DIRECTOR: FYZAL BOULIFA
SCRIPT: FYZAL BOULIFA
PRINCIPAL CAST: Zehra Zorba, Leo Hatton
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Taina Galis
EDITING: Taina Galis, Fyzal Boulifa
ORIGINAL MUSIC: Felicita
FYZAL BOULIFA
FILM PRESENTATION: An unconventional replication of the way we
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: Part social commentary, part biography,
communicate in virtual medium, each shot in a different style portrays
part indictment of the digital age and the fickleness it engenders, RATE
a teen escort, Coco, through the prism of others’ trashy and peculiar
ME tells the story of a teenage call-girl, Coco, through the interactions,
comments. The directors succeeds to create a contradiction of terms
tellingly, not so much between Coco and her clients, but between
between the critical segments of her clients or random people she
the clients themselves. Set out as a series of reviews left for Coco on
met, lacking sympathy and offering a wide range of identities and
an internet forum, presumably on the website for whom she works,
endings which imply harshly some of their obscure desires. Its music
sometimes merely commenting on Coco and her services, sometimes gain-
backdrops follow an ironic and a potential political discourse in which
saying what other reviews say. Always mean-spirited, sometimes funny,
the filmmaker wants to oblige us to pay fully attention to structural
sometimes flat-out mendacious, sometimes sick and twisted, always
identity in a modern and virtual world where self-branding is available
without a single thought for anybody’s feelings or for a common decency
to each and every one of us and it’s also seen as a lifestyle.
long since removed in a world where real cause and effect are separated
(Claudia Cojocariu, BIEFF 2016)
by a computer screen. RATE ME is filled with all manner of little technical
tricks and playful visuals, and the computer-based central conceit, though
at times at odds with what we see one the screen, allows BOULIFA to
really have fun with the soundtrack. As the reviews get more outlandish
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Best British Short - Leeds International Film Festival - UK,
and the moderator is compelled to step in, we learn a little more about
2015 / Live Action Short Special Mention for Innovative Storytelling - AFI Film Fest
Coco each time. This is a harsh, funny, interesting and, at times, harrowing
- Los Angeles 2015 / Honorable mention for Best International Short - Festival du
look at how our interactions in the digital world are based in, and affect,
nouveau cinéma, 2015 / Honorable mention for Best International Short - Toronto
very real situations.
International Film Festival, 2015 / Prix Illy - Quinzaine des réalisateurs - Cannes Films
Festival, 2015 / Guanajuato International Film Festival - Guanajuato, Mexico, 2015 /
PRODUCER: Taina Galis, Fyzal Boulifa
(Bruce Bailey, FLICKFEAST)
20th Sarajevo Film Festival, 2015 / Sao Paulo International Short Film Festival, 2015
/ BFI London Film Festival - London, 2015 / Encounters Shot Film Festival - Bristol,
2015 / 44th Festival du Nouveau Cinema - Montreal / 51st Chicago International
Film Festival / London Short Film Fest - UK, 2016 / Sundance - USA, 2016
WORLD SALES: La Distributrice de Films (CA)
E: [email protected] | W: http://www.ladistributrice.ca
99
GOLDEN SHORTS
TO BE AND TO COME BACK
14’, 2014, Spain
DIRECTOR: XACIO BAÑO
SCREENPLAY: Xacio Baño
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Xacio Baño
CAMERA CAR: Lucía C. Pan
SOUND: Xoán Escudero
ASSISTANT PRODUCTION: María Zaragoza
PRODUCER: Xacio Baño
XACIO BAÑO
FILM PRESENTATION: TO BE AND TO COME BACK is a short video
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: ’m unable to remember a film’s synopsis,
portrait in which the author gives us a sneak peak of his grandparents,
the names of film directors and writers, or the book titles. It is an odd
aligning scenes of work, critical discussions about his future and
legacy that reaches out not to remember the anecdotes and experiences
fragments of a supposed rehearsal for his ”fiction” film. The editing
that happened to me over all these years. It can be frustrating. Maybe
clearly states his wish to show us through metafiction and metaphor his
that is the reason why I chose cinema: to create my memories. The first
relationship with his grandparents by explaining what his profession of
impulse, the first urge, was to film a video-portrait of my grandparents
a filmmaker is about. His grandmother doesn’t seem so well-convinced
in order to have them close when they are no longer here. At the exact
that he will succeed; therefore, the film turns to a be a funny and
moment I started filming them, I discovered that there was something
harshly selfportrait of the director, in which we hear the sulky voice of
more important to tell. It was not so much about them as it was about me,
his grandmother, we see personal fragments and images of their house
about discovering what cinema gives me and what do I need to return.
and we sense a need to look back and forth for our own good.
Little by little the camera was turning around. The eyes that looked were
not mine, but theirs, towards me, towards my generation.
(XACIO BAÑO)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Canal + Award and Jury Special Mention Clermont-Ferrand Int. Film Festival, LAB Competition / Jury Special
Mention, Audience Award - L’Alternativa - Festival de Cinema
Independent de Barcelona / Jury Special Mention and ASECAN Award
- Muestra Cinematográfica del Atlántico - ALCANCES / Galiza Award,
AGAG Award Best Script – Curtocircuito, Spain / Best Short Film Real
image - Festival de Cans, Spain / Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland
/ European Media Art Festival Osnabrueck / MiradasDoc - Festival
Internacional de Cine Documental de Guía de Isora.
100
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: T: +34 606555524 | E: [email protected]
W: http://www.xacio.es | W: www.serevoltar.com
WORLD SALES: Marvin & Wayne
E: [email protected] | W: http://www.marvinwayne.com
WAVES 98’
15’, 2015, Lebanon, Qatar
DIRECTOR: ELY DAGHER
SCREENPLAY: Ely Dagher
ANIMATION DIRECTOR: Ely Dagher
EDITING: Ely Dagher
SOUND DESIGN AND SCORE: Zelig Sound
CO-PRODUCER: Nina Najjar
CO-PRODUCER: Christina Farah
ELY DAGHER
FILM PRESENTATION: In his highly acclaimed WAVES ‘98, winner
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Waves ’98 is as much a narrative film as it
of the Palme d’or at Cannes in 2015, ELY DAGHER deconstructs his
is a personal visual essay dedicated to Dagher’s hometown, Beirut. The
love-hate relationship with his home city, in a beautiful self-reflective
film is an artistic exploration of the director’s current relation with his
piece of filmmaking. Shots of live action are employed together with
Lebanon, his home country, projected through the story of a teenager and
several types of animation techniques to tell the story of Omar, whose
set in 1998. Since moving abroad to study and work, Ely Dagher has been
experience of living in segregated post civil war Beirut adds to the
spending more and more time outside of Lebanon, and his attachment
inherent turmoils that harrow any teenager. Quotidian expeditions
to Beirut started to become more and more complicated. The overall
up the rooftop of his school reveal yet the same grim view of a city
narrative of the film is heavily
drenched in despair and uncertainty, parts of which he is not even
allowed to tread. Until the day a giant golden elephant turns up drifting
in the sky. Sucked into the giant’s belly, Omar discovers - and the viewer
with him, a world he never knew even existed. It may be a hopeful
version of the city that takes shape in Omar’s imagination. At times, it
based on Ely’s efforts to understand his changing relationship with the
city and it’s life, juxtaposed with the narrative of a teenager’s exciting
discovery of this segregated city.
(ELY DAGHER)
shatters to pieces, but the fragments come together again. Eventually,
the dream comes to an end, and, above a city of a less grim appearance,
a golden elephant floats gently away.
(Adina Marin, BIEFF)
PRODUCER: Ely Dagher
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Short Film Palme D’or - Cannes Film Festival
2015 / Short Film Bayard D’or - Festival intl. du film francophone de
Namur 2015 / Short animated Film Silver Plaque - Chicago International
Film Festival / Toronto Intl. Film Festival 2015 (nominated) / Dubai
Intl. Film Festival 2015 (nominated) / Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival
(nominated)
WORLD SALES:
E: [email protected] | W: elydagher.com | W: www.waves98.com
101
GOLDEN SHORTS
KUNG FURY
31’, 2015, Sweden / USA
DIRECTOR: DAVID SANDBERG
CAST: David Sandberg, Jorma Taccone, Leopold Nilsson, Steven Chew,
Andreas Cahling, Erik Hörnqvist, Eleni Young, Helene Ahlson,
Per-Henrik Arvidius, Eos Karlsson, David Hasselhoff
SCRIPTWRITER: David Sandberg CINEMATOGRAPHY: Martin
Gärdemalm, Jonas Ernhill, Mattias Andersson
AERIAL CINEMATOGRAPHY: Henning Sandström, Anton
Hjalmarsson EDITING: Nils Moström VISUAL EFFECTS: Laser
Unicorns, David Sandberg, Klas Trulsson, Simon Tingell, Jimmy Sahlin,
Harry Ellard MUSIC: Mitch Murder, Lost Years
PRODUCER: Linus Andersson, Eleni Young Antonia
DAVID SANDBERG
FILM PRESENTATION: KUNG FURY is an ambitious short film of high
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: The thing that inspired me the most was actually
production value, which manages to pack every trope of the 1980s cop
the music. I listened to a guy named Mitch Murder. I listened to his music all the
movie genre. We encounter a visual compilation of all time monsters
time when I wrote the script and he was the biggest inspiration for me, and I’m
and patterns of action movies, the notion of going back to the past and
so glad he made the soundtrack. I had just bought a green screen, and I was
a battle between good and evil, where the first one is helped by the
experimenting and did this test where I had Mitch Murder’s music and was
presence of human-animal hybrids and the latter is the ultimate villain,
doing Miami Vice stuff. And I thought, ‘This was really cool — if I put effort into
Adolf Hitler. Apart from being a homage to all the impressive things of
this, it could really be something.’ I had initially intended to do the whole short film
the 80s, its stylistic approach and thrilling visual effects mark its camp
by myself, all the visual effects. But after working on it for a long time, I realized it
aesthetic with a sensibility based on deliberate and self-acknowledged
was too ambitious. I was completely broke, and my idea was to do a trailer and at
theatricality; its graphics and cover story deepens in our brain and
the same time launch a Kickstarter in order to raise money to help me out.
reveals a metatextual and an iconic construction of a cult and hip short
film.
(DAVID SANDBERG)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: European Film Awards - Vila do Conde Short
Film Nominee for the 2015 (nominated) / Cannes Queer Palm Award
(nominated) / Quinzaine des Réalisateurs Cannes 2015.
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DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: W: http://www.kungfury.com/
WORLD SALES: Laser Unicorns Productions
Lampray | E: [email protected]
BELLADONNA
18’, 2015, Croatia
DIRECTOR: DUBRAVKA TURIĆ
CAST: Aleksandra Naumov, Nada Đurevska, Lana Barić,
Anita Matković, Dražen Kühn
SCRIPT: DUBRAVKA TURIĆ
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Branko Linta, HFS
EDITING: DUBRAVKA TURIĆ
SOUND DESIGNER: Dubravka Premar
ART DESIGNER: Željka Burić
DUBRAVKA TURIĆ
FILM PRESENTATION: The message evoked in BELLADONNA consists
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: BELLADONNA is a film about (not) seeing,
on a ground of human relations and it switches on an emotional feeling
about our superficial perception of each other and the prejudices that
and also empathy for the main protagonist. After an internal outbreak
result from it. In the context of an ordinary, everyday situation, I wanted
she changes her mind when hearing about a misfortune of an old lady
to contrast the external with the internal, the visible with the invisible, by
that she seems to reject in the first place. The stylistic approach – a
using the motif of a Renaissance ” belladonna”, the woman who used a toxic
blurred point-of-view – speaks about limitation, not only for her sight
substance to widen and brighten the pupils of her eyes. To look beautiful,
after an ophthalmological consult but also for communication. The
she had to temporarily impair her eyesight. Just like a” belladonna”, the
director portrays a woman who will realize that the most beautiful
film’s heroine is temporarily unable to see, but at that exact moment she
thing about the sensitivity towards the world of others is the
experiences something that will metaphorically ‘open her eyes’. This time,
emancipation of her own perception and the courage to go beyond the
however, the beauty achieved through the loss of eyesight is internal.
superficial appearance of things.
(DUBRAVKA TURIĆ)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film - 72nd
Venice International Film Festival / Zagreb Film Festival – Checkers
PRODUCER: Zdenka Gold
Competition / Gijón International Film Festival - International
Competition Short Films / Cinemaforum, Poland / Auteur Film Festival
Belgrade - The Brave Balkans / Sundance Film Festival - International
Competition / International Film Festival Rotterdam - As Long As It
Takes: Short.
WORLD SALES: Ivana Ivisic - everything works LLC
M: +385 91 1811 002 | E: [email protected] | W: www.
everythingworks.hr
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: M: +385 98 1835 714 | E: [email protected]
www.belladonafilm.com
103
GOLDEN SHORTS
BATRACHIAN’S BALLAD
11’, 2016, Portugal
DIRECTOR: LEONOR TELES
SCRIPTWRITER: Leonor Teles
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Leonor Teles
EDITING: Leonor Teles
SOUND: Bernado Theriaga, Joana Niza Braga
PRODUCER: Filipa Reis
LEONOR TELES
FILM PRESENTATION: Once upon a time, before people came along,
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: The genesis of Batrachian’s Ballad occurred
all the creatures were free and able to be with one another”, narrates
when I learnt a surprising fact – the Portuguese tradition of placing
the voiceover. “All the animals danced together and were immeasurably
ceramic frogs in the doorways of restaurants and other commercial
happy. There was only one who wasn’t invited to the celebration – the
premises to ward off gypsies. Through this personal tale of mine, I wanted
frog. In his rage about the injustice, he committed suicide.” Something
to call attention to a growing tendency to use belief and superstition to
Romani and frogs have in common is that they will never be unseen, or
deride other human beings and to keep them at bay.
stay unnoticed. In her film, young director Leonor Teles weaves the life
circumstance of Romani in Portugal today with the recollections of a
(LEONOR TELES)
yesterday.
Anything but a passive observer, Teles consciously decides to
participate and take up position. As a third pillar, she establishes
an active applied performance art that becomes integrated in the
cinematic narrative. Thereby transforming “once upon a time” into
“there is”. “Afterwards, nothing will be as it was and the melody of life
will have changed”, explains a voice off-camera.
(Berlinale)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Golden Bear for the Best Short Film Berlinale 2016
104
WORLD SALES: PORTUGAL FILMS
THEME PROGRAM FOR TEENAGERS
REBEL WITH A CAUSE
105
SPECIAL PROGRAM
THE GUESTS
10’, 2015, Australia
DIRECTOR: SHANE DANIELSEN
CAST: Matilda Ridgway, Cate Wolfe, Gertraud Ingeborg,
Dirk Nagel
SCRIPTWRITER: Shane Danielsen
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Anna Howard
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Bethany Ryan
EDITING: Simon Njoo SOUND: William Ward
PRODUCER: Vanessa Humphrey, Raquelle David
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Screen New South Wales &
Hopscotch Features
\\
REBEL WITH A CAUSE
SHANE DANIELSEN
FILM PRESENTATION: Inspired, among others, by Roman Polanski’s
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Inspired by the films of Roman Polanski (in
Repulsion, as the director himself acknowledges, SHANE DANIELSEN’s
particular, classics of domestic horror like Repulsion and The Tenant), and
directorial debut was selected in the official Palme d’Or competition
by the fiction of Robert Aickman and Julio Cortazar, The Guests is a ten-
at Cannes Film Festival 2015. THE GUESTS, set in the Eastern Europe
minute meditation of motherhood, travel and identity, as a woman—a
of the 1960’s, follows Anna as she admits some uninvited guests into
new mother, alone in a new city, awaiting the return of her husband—
her home while waiting for her husband’s return. Shortly, an almost
finds herself gently besieged by unexpected visitors, and forfeits her
psychotic Anna is assailed by shadows and voices while pursuing a
own identity in the process. Shot almost entirely in single takes, its
desperate quest for her baby in her own home, by now morphed into a
classical mise-en-scene foregoes the typical montage-based aesthetics of
nightmarish setting. This short film is like a fit of delirium, leaving Anna
genre cinema, for something more patient, remorseless and (hopefully)
a different person than she had been at first. As for us viewers, we are
disquieting.
confused, perhaps firghtened, but by no means unmoved.
(SHANE DANIELSEN)
(Andreea Udrea, BIEFF 2016)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Official Selection, Short Film Palme d’Or – 68th
Festival de Cannes / Competition – 69th Edinburgh International Film
Festival / Sydney Film Festival / Competition – Melbourne International
Film Festival / Competition – Vladivostok International Film Festival
Pacific Meridian / Darwin International Film Festival / Fantastic Fest,
Austin Texas / Calgary International Film Festival / Leeds International
Film Festival / London Short Film Festival / Sleepwalkers International
Short Film Festival (Tallinn).
106
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: W: https://www.facebook.com/TheGuestsFilm
WORLD SALES: PREMIUM FILMS
T : +33 (0)1 42 77 06 31 | E: [email protected]
W: premium-films.com
CUTAWAY
7’, 2014, Canada
DIRECTOR: KAZIK RADWANSKI
CAST: Becky Shrimpton, Caitlin Macintosh,
Tanya Casole-Gouveia
SCRIPTWRITER: Kazik Radwanski
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Nikolay Michaylov
EDITING: Ajla Odobašić
SOUND: Gabe Knox, Finlay Braithwaite
PRODUCER: Daniel Montgomery
KAZIK RADWANSKI
FILM PRESENTATION: In CUTAWAY, premiered at Locarno Film Festival
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: Radwanski’s films are not unlike Côté’s in their
2014, director KAZIK RADWANSKI succeeds in telling a whole lot about
generosity to outsiders, their precise, minimalist construction, and their
the life story of a young man using nothing more besides close-ups of
reliance on strong, singular performances from nonprofessional actors.
his hands in motion, and of objects upon which they take action, the
The film’s clear-eyed, unsentimental realism also recalls the humanist
latter turning into our only temporal and allegorical references. All
documentaries of Allan King.
we are to know about the personage is conveyed by the image of his
hands which become, in the absence of dialogue and facial expressions,
metaphors of his internal experiences. The realism of the shots and the
minimalistic approach, together with an intentional lack of background
information, enhance rather than restrain a profound empathy with the
character, bestowing an emotional quality on the film, its objectivity
notwithstanding.
Cutaway is both a refinement of those earlier films’ craft and an
experimental departure of sorts. It’s an impressionistic study of a young
labourer, whose life over a few days is glimpsed entirely through his hands’
interactions with the world around them—from the cracked cell phone on
which he furtively texts his partner to the work materials he transforms
into products at the expense of his calloused palm.
(ANGELO MURREDA, Torontoist)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Locarno International Film Festival 2014 / ClermontFerrand International Short Film Festival 2015 / TIFF Canada’s Top Ten,
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Medium Density Fibreboard Films
Toronto 2015 / Museum of the Moving Image: First Look, New York 2015 /
Hamptons International Film Festival, New York 2014 / Chicago International
Film Festival, Illinois 2014 / Dokufest International Documentary and
Short Film Festival, Kosovo, 2014 / International Film Festival Message to
Man, Russia 2014 / Oldenburg International Film Festival, Germany 2014 /
Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival, United Kingdom 2014
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: T: + 1 416 885 1998 | E: [email protected]
www.ladistributrice.ca/catalogue-films/cutaway/
WORLD SALES: LA DISTRIBUTRICE DE FILM
E: [email protected] | W : www.ladistributrice.ca
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SPECIAL PROGRAM
THE RIVER UNDER THE TONGUE
DIRECTOR: CARMEN JAQUIER
CAST: Marilyne Canto, Marie Cornil, Sacha Gravat-Harsch,
Slimane Dazi
SCRIPTWRITER: Carmen Jaquier
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Thomas Szczepanski
EDITING: Raphael Lefevre
SOUND: Eleonora Vittoria Polato
MUSIC: Grace Core
PRODUCER: Consuelo Frauenfelder, Stefan Lauper
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Garidi Films
CARMEN JAQUIER
daughter. She is in search of the child who was transformed. At the
journey and makes us witness (or partake in) the infringement of one’s
heart of this round shaped as a duel, another curious child, the younger,
hidden thoughts and desires. After reading his elder daughter’s diary,
discovers her love for nature. Against the bark, in the ground, the
one mother, feeling to what extend they have drifted apart, takes her
fantasies are released. The unknown tree becomes all the sudden
and her younger daughter for a walk in the forest. But above the scenic
father, brother and lover. It is the missing part, the balance to be found.
background, above the pictures that linger on the elder daughter’s lips,
Three women’s generations observe their selves in the reflections of a
skin and nymph-like hair, floats the erotic poetry of her diary’s entries.
lake where the mother, dives into the words of her daughter, pursues
After all our senses are engaged, the perversity of infringing on one’s
the erotic experience that is lacking in her life. To grow up leaves
intimacy is belittled by the philosophic and poetic sensuality.
bruises on the bodies. A woman, left to the mere role of mother, forgot
REBEL WITH A CAUSE
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: A mother enters the space of her elder
the short film THE RIVER UNDER THE TONGUE takes us on an intimate
\\
FILM PRESENTATION: World premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2016,
Film Locarno 2015 / Competition – Festival International du Film
to allow herself to grow. But the children are there, such as guides, to
connect living spaces with others, imaginary. And their caresses come
to wake the time passing by.
(Claude Forestier)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Competiton Pardi di Domani – Festival del
Francophone Namur 2015 / Solothurn Filmtage 2016
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WORLD SALES: GARIDI FILMS
E: [email protected] | W : www.garidifilms.ch
SUNDAY LUNCH
13, 2015, France
DIRECTOR: CÉLINE DEVAUX
CAST: Vincent Macaigne, George Blagden
SCRIPTWRITER: Céline Devaux
ANIMATION: Céline Devaux
EDITING: Céline Devaux, Chloé Mercier
SOUND: Lionel Guenoun
MUSIC: Flavien Berger
PRODUCER: Ron Dyens
CÉLINE DEVAUX
FILM PRESENTATION: In SUNDAY LUNCH, the experimental delirium
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: I recently became very aware of the changes
of hand-drawn animation, music and voice encapsulates the essence
that come along with the first ‘grown up’ experiences, and especially in
of all family lunches’ atmosphere. Jean, a young adult, stuck in the
the way you consider time. In the family circle, time is an elastic concept
family Sunday lunch routine, has to cope with the usual weekly inquiries
when you’re growing up, there is seldom such a thing as lacking time. You
and boredom. The lunch guests – Jean’s parents, maiden aunts
share mornings, evenings, and when you are a teenager, sometimes too
and grandmother – take a keen interest in his personal life, sexual
much time with your parents and siblings. When you reach this uncertain
orientation, job and house. The family reunion stimulates nostalgic
age when apparently you are an adult, time is abruptly shrunken to
thoughts, discussions on traffic and Tupperware and comments on
socially-defined time capsules, such as the Sunday lunch.
taxes and life. Enhanced by comedian’s Vincent Macaigne voice and the
instrumental rhythm, the animation’s originality and visual delirium
hint at both the guests’ tipsiness and unconsciousness. In the end,
the French director’s Céline Devaux animation sets the scene for a
meditation on growing up, the passing of time, and their effects on
intrafamilial dynamics.
All the leverage and total transparency that comes with shared everyday
life is replaced by a need to define oneself, even unconsciously, during the
three hours you are given to do so. And even in the smartest families, three
hours is never enough time to be utterly thorough, utterly honest.
(CÉLINE DEVAUX for The New Current)
(Andreea Udrea, BIEFF)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Nominated Palme d’Or - Best Short Film,
Nominated Queer Palm - Short Film – Cannes Film Festival 2015 /
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Sacrebleu Productions
Won Best Short Film – Animation – César Awards 2016 / Best French
Speaking Animation, Special Jury Award National Competition –
Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2016 / Won Silver
Hugo Best Animated Short – Chicago International Film Festival 2015.
WORLD SALES: AUTOUR DE MINUIT
T: +33 (0)1 42 81 17 28 | E: [email protected]
W: www.autourdeminuit.com
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: W: https://vimeo.com/celinedevaux
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SPECIAL PROGRAM
WELCOME AND...
OUR CONDOLENCES
30’, 2012, Israel
DIRECTOR: LEON PRUDOVSKY
CAST: Ola Schur-Selektar, Gera Sandler, Irit Kaplan, Vitaly
Voskoboynikov, Yigal Adika, Anabella Danka Yaakov, Roza Livshitz
SCRIPTWRITER: Leon Prudovsky
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Israel (Sergei) Friedman
EDITING: Evgeny Ruman
SOUND: Michael Goorevich, Slava Frenklach
MUSIC: Amsterdam Klezmer Band
PRODUCER: Haim Mecklberg, Estee Yacov-Mecklberg
\\
REBEL WITH A CAUSE
LEON PRUDOVSY
FILM PRESENTATION: The year is 1991. Young Misha together with his
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: In 1991 I immigrated to Israel from the
family and his aunt Roza migrate from the Soviet Union to Israel. Using
Soviet Union. My father gave me a camera so I won’t get in the way of
a home-video camera, the 12-year-old boy documents this journey
my parents, who were busy and stressed, so I started to shoot. Last year,
and more than 20 years later, he recreates in WELCOME AND... OUR
21 years later, I decided to make probably the most intimate film I have
CONDOLENCES, the emotional state and the reactions generated
ever done, and probably I will ever do. I decided to tell the story of my
inside himself by the whole immigration process. Merging original
immigration, in my comic way, but nevertheless truthful, based on my
and staged shots, director LEON PRUDOVSKY pushes the account
memories, what it was for a 12 years old kid to change his home, his
of the traumatic experiences of immigration towards the absurd, as
country, his language and culture. Now, 21 years later I feel I can look
Aunt Roza’s passing away in the aeroplane, during the flight to Israel,
back, with my adult point of view, with my understanding of the society
triggers a series of tragicomic episodes, which convey the feelings of
I live in, and tell this story, a story of wishful expectations and absurd
confusion, helplessness and senselessness experienced by the director
reality, a story of helplessness in front of the unknown, a story of the old
at the age of 12.
and the new worlds, the story of immigration.
I chose to tell from the same point of view, of me 21 years younger
and I even used some shots I have made back then, combining those
documentary shots it with the “staged” mockumentary ones, hoping to
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Youth Jury Award – Clermont-Ferrand ISFF 2013 /
Silver Bir – Seoul International Drama Awards 2013 / CINÉ+ Award – Montpellier
International Mediterranean FF / Best Short Film – Golden Apricot - Yerevan IFF
get the closest feeling to what I remember.
(LEON PRUDOVSKY)
2013 / Grand Prix – International Film Festival Nancy Lorraine / Best Short Film –
Jameson CineFest International Film Festival, Miskolc, Hungary / Best Short Film,
Best Actress – NY Picture Start IFF 2013 / Best Short Film – New Jersey IFF 2013 /
Best Independent Short - Tel Aviv SIFF 2013/ Best Short Film, Audience Award, TV
Acquisition Rights Award – Panoazorian IFF 2013/ Audience Award – Kaliber ISFF
35, Munich / Best Script – La Cabina – Valencia
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WORLD SALES: 2-Team Productions: T: + 972 3 687 5111
E: [email protected] | W : www.2teamproductions.com
SPECIAL PROGRAM
EXPERIMENTED IN
ROMANIA
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SPECIAL PROGRAM
BUCHAREST.
A WORLD OF ION BÂRLĂDEANU
AND CARMEN LIDIA VIDU
9’, 2015, Romania
DIRECTOR: CARMEN LIDIA VIDU
CAST: Ion Bârlădeanu
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Adi Bulboacă
EDITING: Cristina Baciu
MUSIC: Ovidiu Chihaia
FILM PRESENTATION: Ion Bârlădeanu is already an iconic figure,
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: The movie depicts an urban, cultural,
known worldwide as a homeless art-world darling starring in Alexander
emotional and fantastic Bucharest. It is composed of houses, buildings,
Nanău’s documentary, ”The World According to Ion B.” CARMEN
parks but also of movie characters, a political and real world, of
LIDIA VIDU portrays him as a unique soul who ingenuously asserts his
imagined-mainstream figures of today. Ion Bârlădeanu is a character
obsessions and favourite things found in Bucharest. Through editing
in his own right: he has always dreamt of playing in the movies, of
she captures fragments of his digressive desires and memories,
becoming a hero...The collages he creates are nothing more than his
emphasizing his mercurial personality joined by a significant number of
own movies, therefore he is a truly director; he imagines all kind of
real and fictional figures which exist in his famous collages. She reaches
stories. The inherent dynamics of Ion Bârlădeanu’s collages is in tune
his iconography following his artistic direction swamped in irony and
with the director’s rhythm of her art video, providing a well-planned
social critique. The collages he puts together are his own films but
surprise. There is no contrast between the two visual approaches, on
Carmen succeeds to create a moving collage placing him in the center
the contrary, they make the most of each other.
of his own picture.
(CARMEN LIDIA VIDU)
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EXPERIMENTED IN ROMANIA
CARMEN LIDIA VIDU
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: International premiere
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WORLD SALES: E: [email protected] | T: 0722151011
W: bucuresti-ion-barladeanu.tumblr.com | W: www.carmenlidiavidu.ro
REVOLUTIONARY GEAR:
THE HISTORY OF ART RETOLD
THROUGH THE BLACK SQUARE
16’, 2015, Romania
DIRECTOR: VEDA POPOVICI
CONCEPT & PERFORMANCE: Veda Popovici
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Alexandru Dan
SOUND: Witch Microphone
VEDA POPOVICI
FILM PRESENTATION: VEDA POPOVICI depicts through this video
CURATOR’S STATEMENT: The artist’s body of theoretical work is
performance a series of tableaux vivants inspired by art poses of
massive, supporting the claims made in the work itself. It is certainly
Renaissance paintings, Orientalism or sculptures (such as Venus de
no accident that over the course of the instructional video, POPOVICI
Milo), providing an intensive discourse about art history retold through
at various times looks like contemporary depictions (and misguided
the black square created by Kazimir Malevich one hundred years ago.
conflations) of terrorism – and indeed, she suggests that the ‘threat’
The artist smashes this sign of erudition and class distinction with an
of the work is its most potent component. The attachment of new
enchanted story that guides its audience to reflect moments in the
meaning to Black Square is itself, perhaps, a kind of revolution. The re-
art history and its political contexts. Her delicate movements and
historicisation is repeated in the artist’s borrowing from her own oeuvre
discerning eyes, disguised and cloacked with the same black square
– the triangles from last year’s LGBT workshop, the monumental nature
brings attention to the patriarchal structures which dominated our
of their presentation from Migrant’s Monument (2014), the attack on
world, highlighting a feminist discourse which invites you to choose
the supposed neutrality of law and the figure concealed in black derives
your own revolutionary gear: to participate or to watch.
from Story of the Fall #3 (2014). More than previously in POPOVICI’s
works, perhaps, REVOLUTIONARY GEAR has a reflexive quality, flirting
with introversion, recycling concerns as if re-examining past decisions.
(Richard Pettifer, ARTA Magazine, 2015)
VOICE: Mihaela Drăgan
WORLD SALES:
E: [email protected] | [email protected]
DIRECTOR’S CONTACT: W: http://veda-popovici.blogspot.ro/
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SPECIAL PROGRAM
NO SHELTER FROM
THE STORM
6’, 2015, Romania
DIRECTOR: ARNOLD ESTEFÁN & ANCA BENERA
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán,
Mihai Dină, Liviu Dochiță
AERIAL FOOTAGE: Cosmin Giurgiu, Ionuț Voinescu
EDITING: Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán
SOUND: Attila Faravelli
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ARNOLD ESTEFÁN & ANCA BENERA
FILM PRESENTATION: NO SHELTER FROM THE STORM is a video-
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: The Eastern European landscape of mass
installation set in woodland that has been devastated by deforestation
deforestation provides a backdrop for the song whistled by the artists.
and therefore offers no place to hide for those escaping any kind
The tune is that of the famous 1960s anti-war song “Where have all the
of conflict. Besides its ecological viewpoint which talks in terms of
flowers gone”, which has been recorded and performed in many different
mass destruction by multinational corporations, the video echoes
languages over the years. The original lyrics were adapted by Peter
about human condition and loneliness in a homeland that struggles to
Seeger in 1956 from a Ukrainian Cossack folk tune mentioned in Mikhail
maintain its habitat. An optimistic note is provided by the intermingled
Sholokhov’s 1928 novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”, in which war –in the
whistling seen as a solitary struggle, in the hope of collective solidarity.
form of both international conflict and civil uprising – provides the epic
Shot in black and white, the textural images offer a timelessness
backdrop to the narrative. Throughout history, forests have provided a
feeling of insecurity, while camera movements depict a paradox
natural place for people to hide in times of war. Fleeing to the forest was
between the absence of the forest and its beauty.
often the only choice. Today, in a political landscape in which militarism,
global power and war in all its forms are becoming a way of life, almost
half of the forests that once covered the Earth are gone.
(ARNOLD ESTEFÁN & ANCA BENERA)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Exhibition: Walking without Footprints, tranzit.
sk - Bratislava, Slovacia 2016/ Exhibition: Austeria, BWA Sokol - Nowy
Sącz, Polonia 2015/ Exhibition: The School of Kyiv -The Biennale, Kyiv,
Ucraina 2015.
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WORLD SALES: W: www.ancabenera.ro | W: www.arnoldestefan.ro
EXERCISING FAILURE
5’, 2013, Romania
DIRECTOR: DRAGOȘ ALEXANDRESCU
CAST: Amanda Storm, Dragoș Alexandrescu
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Dragoș Alexandrescu,
Jukka Rajala-Granstubb
SOUND: Stefan Backas
DRAGOȘ ALEXANDRESCU
FILM PRESENTATION: DRAGOȘ ALEXANDRESCU is willing to
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Watching someone knit can be a visible
show us how the simulative nature of our existence, of the inherent
reminder that there are things more valuable than efficiency’ (Kate
constraints of the system affect us in our daily life and in our personal
M.Daley). The art piece is a documentation of a handicraft process
development. The biggest three doctrines exposed with their specific
that turned away from its commercial/ornamental purpose and
books: marxism, religion and capitalism are buried under the failure of
become critical/political.The video is a personal interpretation of the
the entire society; they’re being deconstructed through a meticulous
contemporary society, in which the idea of failing is getting more like a
work process of tearing out and aligning paper fragments in a highly
taboo subject to deal with. According with some researchers of cognitive
organized labor which gives us the successful ideological image, that of
science, knitting is a good example of accepting the failure easier.
binding together people. However, the counterpoint is the girl who sits
Expanding this idea, my project is dealing with the failure of the society
and knits and rejects the nostalgia of simpler times, emphasizing the
rather than an individual one, a ‘dogmatic’ failure in which the perfection
fact that having flaws still let you succeed in your creation and in what
is infallible and can’t be denied.
must be reconstructed.
(DRAGOȘ ALEXANDRESCU)
FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Viennafair – Vienna, Austria, 2013/ Silencio –
Paris, France, 2014/ Loop Fair – Barcelona, Spain, 2014/ ”Appearance
EDITING: Dragoș Alexandrescu
& Essence” Contemporary Art Encounters – Timișoara, România 2015/
Between Democracies 1989-2014 – Johannesburg, South Africa 2015/
In Times of Hope and Unrest – MNAC, Bucharest, Romania 2015.
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SPECIAL PROGRAM
AT THE MIRROR
11’, 2015, Romania
DIRECTOR: LARISA CRUNȚEANU
CAST: Larisa Crunțeanu
LARISA CRUNȚEANU
FILM PRESENTATION: In this video LARISA CRUNȚEANU performs
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: “This is a performative video which
herself in front of a ”fictional” mirror that extends her beauty routine
disappears with every projection. Every new presentation of it is a
and converts this action in a memory with every projection of it. A
recording of the previous projection. Just like memories, in the end the
young girl watches herself in the mirror while she combs her hair and
image disappears, leaving behind a fiction resembling the original story.
braids it. Her act of performance is underlined by a song she sings;
the lyrics are from George Coșbuc – a Romanian poet – which also
(LARISA CRUNȚEANU)
given by his poetry is overthrown by the final act of our performer. She
Larisa Crunțeanu studied Photography and Moving Image and is currently
cuts her hair and, therefore, destroys the myth of beauty through her
a PHD candidate at the National Arts University of Bucharest. She works
authenticity and confidence.
at the intersection of video and performance between research and
speculation, often collaboratively, creating contexts for the emergence of
new practices and organisation. From 2012 together with Xandra Popescu
she powers Atelier 35, a project space from Bucharest.
\\
portrays a beautiful and unique girl with braids. The worshipping tone
116
WORLD SALES: E: [email protected] | T: 0727779636
COBALT BLUE
12’, 2015, Romania
DIRECTOR: DIANA MIRON
CREDITS: Marina Oprea, Methos Alexandru, Mihai Gheorghe,
DRAGOȘ ALEXANDRESCU
FILM PRESENTATION: This video performance – two frames in which
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: Far from the intention to emanate sexuality,
the artist lets a blue liquid flow down a girl’s naked body and mouth
COBALT BLUE combines two frames, favoring a parallelism of ideas,
– delivers an intensive course which talks about the most important
reaching instead a space of comfort and vulnerability; a human fragility
factors of defining and understanding aesthetics. Over the course
completely permeable to everyday fireworks that give the illusion of
of history, art has had many different fixed meanings but the most
meaning, obstacles to spiritual elevation. The climax is numb and it
difficult thing to define was related to aesthetics. Its interpretation is
follows a road between ignorance and helplessness and vice versa. The
deepened in the spirit of time and in the nature of being – just like the
aesthetic insensibility, coming from the assimilation derived from the
two frames which reflect susceptibility and embodiment. The deep
synthetic mundane (whether it is subliminal or undisguised) and the
incursion in aesthetics shapes the consciousness through our personal
human alienation opposite the semantic oscillation in the collective
experiences and circumstances, whereas our senses aren’t recorded;
consciousness of the concept of time becomes a perpetual violence
we let ourselves transformed through senses, guiding our aspirations
towards information.
and values, reflecting upon perceptual differences which submit to the
idea that we were systematically made as aesthetic beings.
(DIANA MIRON)
Gabriela Mateescu
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SIDE EVENTS:
Experimental Film Workshop NISI MASA
BIEFF opens LIKE CNDB 2016
Panel: The Lifespan of Cinematic Experimentation - Festival
Strategies and Beyond
BIEFF on MUBI
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Săptămâna sunetului / Sound Week
118
Experimental Film Workshop NISI MASA
The Experimental Film Workshop is organized by NISI MASA European Network of Young Cinema,
during Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF), between 14 – 20 March.
COORDINATORS:
Sorina Ioana Diaconu, the initiator and manager of the project, NISI
MASA collaborator and member of the international kino movement
and Vlad Andrei Ghinea, director an double alumnus of the NISI MASA
workshop, co-founder of the independent production company mc2
film.
TUTORS:
based in Estonia, the creator of the Fino-Ugric Film Festival, founder of
NISI MASA Estonia and the Fino-Ugric film fund, Adela Muntean (http://
During the 10-day workshop, 30 young filmmakers from
transcinemaexpress.com/) transmedia director and researcher developing
Argentina, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France,
creative concepts that fall within the documentary genre, awarded a
Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia,
Master’s Degree graded excellent and the professional qualification of
Sweden, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom and The USA -
Media Designer at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest,
directors, cinematographers, editors, sound designers, visual
Hungary (2015), Francesco Berta (http://francescoberta.com), Italian
artists, musicians, composers and performing artists, will be
composer and visual artist, based in London, alumnus of the NISI MASA
guided by tutors and create short cinematic experiments that
workshop in 2014, Mihai Patrascu, CEO and founder of VrView (http://
will be premiered on the very last day of the festival.
vrview.ro/), a company that focuses on 360 creative video and virtual
The working method of the workshop is collaboration,
reflection and sharing with fellow participants, with the aim
reality app development. Along the four tutors, the participants will
interact with a diverse community of local artists and musicians.
of learning, exploring and developing creativity together,
The three previous editions of the workshop (November 2012, December
combining the principles of the international kino movement
2013 and 2014) have brought together NISI MASA, BIEFF, The National
with film school exam frenzy.
University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” (UNATC), National
This year’s edition encourages and supports the relationship
between film, music, mapping and live performance, aiming to
render obsolete the gap between the screen and the audience,
by making the whole process a great interactive experience for
all those involved.
University of Art, Radio GrooveOn, Refresh Vision, Cinelabs România,
Hostel Doors and Ceainăria Cinci, Cetatea Artelor, Radio DelaHaze, The
CAN, Carol 53, Elisabeta, The French Institute, Ballasi Institute, Control
Club and J’ai Bistrot as partners and supporters. The most recent making
of material can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/122304190.
NISI MASA is a European network of associations present in 26 countries.
Keep up with us:
These associations consist of young professionals (aged 18-35), students
www.facebook.com/nisimasa | www.vimeo.com/nisimasa |
and enthusiasts with a common cause – European cinema.students and
www.twitter.com/nisimasanetwork
enthusiasts with a common cause - European cinema.
Edina Csüllög (http://edinacsullog.com/) Hungarian director and producer,
119
SIDE EVENT
BIEFF opens LIKE CNDB 2016
Thursday, March 17th, 7:00pm
SYMMETRY, by Ruben van Leer
Screening, making of and debate, with the participation of the
\\ SIDE EVENTS
director
This year’s BIEFF edition partners with the National Dance Centre Bucharest to open together the third edition of the LIKE CNDB Festival. Stere
Popescu Hall will host the screening of the first fiction film shot in The Large Hadron Collider at CERN – Symmetry, a dance-film / dance-opera.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with Ruben van Leer, the director and writer of the film, alongside experts and journalists from
the fields of culture and science. An evening dedicated to the meeting between intimacy and technology.
LIKE CNDB supports thought and experimentation with no set interpretations, and invites you to a series of eclectic events between 17 March
and 17 April, most of which are scheduled at the Stere Popescu Hall in Bucharest. The festival aims to bring together in the urban art space an
alternative audience enthusiastic about contemporary dance, performance, theatre and experimental film, concerts, screenings, conferences
or debates on such topics. LIKE CNDB 2016 fosters abandoned art expressions, such as ‘hybrid forms of performance and other related
representations, resulting out of the encounter between arts’.
120
The complete schedule is available on www.cndb.ro.
Panel: The Lifespan of Cinematic Experimentation
Festival Strategies and Beyond
Saturday, March 19th, 3:30pm, French Institute Foyer
professionals invited at the festival, the main Romanian
educational institutions in the field of cinema and visual arts - the
National University of Theatre and Film Bucharest and the National
PARTICIPANTS:
PAOLO BERTOLIN — Member of the Selection Committee, Venice
International Film Festival
University of Arts Bucharest - and film / visual arts students and
ULRICH ZIEMONS — Program Coordinator, Berlin International Film
professionals. The seminar is an opportunity which should not be
Festival – Forum Expanded
missed by young Romanian filmmakers and artists, functioning
as an introduction to the international cinema and visual arts
markets. The seminar is open to all those interested to learn
LUDOVIC CHAVAROT — Member of the Selection Committee, ClermontFerrand International Short Film Festival – LABO Competition
directly from and to gain insight in the experience of experts in
ROEE ROSEN — Visual artist and filmmaker, winner of the BIEFF 2011 &
major festivals such as Berlinale, Venice IFF and Clermont-Ferrand
2014 Main Awards
ISFF, regardless of their creative genre or experience.
BIEFF on
THE FILMS:
The Astronauts, by Chris Marker & Walerian Borowczyk (France, 1959, 14’)
BIEFF 2016, in collaboration with MUBI, offers a series of films
created by seminal auteurs from the history of experimental
cinema, to be streamed by MUBI subscribers for a month, starting
with the 7th of March, 2016. On each day until March 13th a new
work is made available, and each of them can be streamed for 30
days. MUBI is a curated online cinema bringing you cult, classic,
independent, and award-winning movies. Available in over 200
La Jetée, by Chris Marker (France, 1962, 29’)
Coming Attractions, by Peter Tscherkassky (Austria, 2010, 25’)
No compteu amb els dits, by Pere Portabella (Spain, 1968, 26’)
7p., cuis., s. de b., ... à saisir, by Agnès Varda (France, 1984, 27’)
Ghosts Before Breakfast, by Hans Richter (Germany, 1928, 6’)
countries around the globe and on multiple devices, a subscription
Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships and Intersections,
to MUBI is a passport to the world of cinema.
by Jonas Mekas (USA, 1982, 38’)
La Jetée
Scenes from The Life Of
Andy Warhol Friendships
The panel is conceived as a meeting platform for the international
And Intersections
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SIDE EVENT
Sound Week
Thursday, March 17th, 7:00pm
Săptămâna Sunetului/Sound Week wants to give ears the same attention that the big screen attracts. By addressing sound together with BIEFF,
we mean its use in experiments with film, and what better way to start than with Dada, and end with the noise music scene in China!
But Săptămâna Sunetului/Sound Week is also a sound installation with field recordings from Bucharest, a conference with renowned
ethnomusicologist Speranța Rădulescu about her life work, a performance with Charlemagne Palestine, a concert with composer and improviser
Maja Osojnik & local PFA Orchestra – improvisers in training – and acousmatic music with Stephan Dunkelman, the premiere of a 5.1 surround
radio fiction by Ilinca Stihi, a conference about noise and health with Dr. Cristian Mocanu, workshops and presentations...
Because sound can be cinematic, musical, experimental, dangerous, misrepresented and misunderstood, but also a political issue and an
identity.
\\ SIDE EVENTS
We invite you to discover a full program online at www.saptamanasunetului.ro
Selection from an Artist’s Life,
Die Toteninsel by Sándor Vály
Ecce homo, a portrait of Célestin Deliège
part of the series DADAWORKS – short
is a Dada “reconstruction” the artist filmed in
is a documentary by Guy-Marc Hinant
clips put together by Sándor Vály between
2015 using a 1919 Karl Georg Zwerenz (1874-
and Dominique Lohlé filmed in 2011.
2005-2013 in which the artist explores time,
1933) script, which he discovered by chance.
It is presented together with another
loneliness, vanity and the luxury of facing
It recounts the story of the painting with the
documentary feature, Fuck you: Fucking
death as that which poisons the creative
same name by Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901).
Noise in China Now, done by the same team
process, often forcing madness in the
Music by Éva Polgár and Sándor Vály.
from the Belgium label Sub Rosa in 2012.
picture.
This combo starts thus with the theories
of the last great modernist musicologist
Célestin Deliège and reaches very far, where
the entire avant-guarde esthetics stands
on its head, the noise music scene in China.
“Because of good documentary starts from
an intensification of what i mean is...”
122

BIEFF 2016 Catalogue

Transcription

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