Film II

The Sufferings of a Wounded Egg(fr)

A surrealist saga in four parts: 1.) The credit sequence in which title cards show successively larger foetuses pulsating on the screen until the baby is born and cries. 2.) Etoile-directly referring to Cocteau, Lethem shows an adolescent sucking a starfish and then giving birth to a smaller starfish. A statement of inadequacy. To give birth involves an emasculation and a loss of vitality. 3.) Corps-two images of a man on a couch groping for each other, watched by a mysterious peeping Tom. As the two superimposed images come together, the heavy breathing subsides…the statement that the birth of desire is a self – realisation. 4.) Hymen – The decaying body of a girl is shot through green filters, and the final image reveals her vagina crawling with maggots and overlain with a crucifix. A representation of Catholicism preventing the free expression of desire.

Haemocyanin(en)

Soft arms and rigid tunnels, bendable limbs and transparent shapes, words that speak and languages that dance. In his visually striking video Haemocyanin, artist Tuomas A. Laitinen observes how an octopus interacts with a glass structure, entering its folds, exploring its interstices, inhabiting its transparent mass while having its body traversed by dynamic flows of letters and hieroglyphs.

Eating(en)

Three women, wear makeup or masks, having a meal.

BOILK(en)

A man marked by an ambiguous though discernibly violent past returns to the scene of a ghastly crime he committed years prior, only to find that his perception of the events which transpired has been obscured by the festering delirium and guilt that accompanied them.

Dolls(en)

An experimental film by Dutch filmmaker Frans Zwartjes.

Wallflower(fi)

An overdressed girl tries her luck in dance events that are for Finnish tourists in a small Estonian health resort town, Pärnu.

Easy Rider(nl)

A young man in a tram is asking a bit too much from a stranger.

The Announcer(fi)

An elderly lady pushes the limits of customer service at an up-market department store by continuously requesting announcements for interesting-looking men.

Broad Sense(en)

Broad Sense is based on an three day long intervention in the European Parliament in Brussels. The video reveals the diversity of security responses to the artist’s visits.

Cremaster 5(hu)

Cremaster 5 is a five-act opera (sung in Hungarian) set in late-ninteenth century Budapest. The last film in the series, Cremaster 5 represents the moment when the testicles are finally released and sexual differentiation is fully attained. The lamenting tone of the opera suggests that Barney invisions this as a moment of tragedy and loss. The primary character is the Queen of Chain (played by Ursula Andress). Barney, himself, plays three characters who appear in the mind of the Queen: her Diva, Magician, and Giant. The Magician is a stand-in for Harry Houdini, who was born in Budapest in 1874 and appears as a recurring character in the Cremaster cycle.

LIBRA(en)

Investigating autumn, temporal alterations, and their effect on movement

Recoil(en)

1981 short film made by Nik Allday, the drummer on Cabaret Voltaire’s critically acclaimed third album ‘Red Mecca’, and features music by Allday and the Cabs’ Stephen Mallinder. The 10 minute abstract film uses raw material of video feedback and some nuclear bomb footage to represent “the cruel chaotic dysfunctional nature of the human condition with all its potential for self destruction”. Allday wanted a soundtrack that complemented the film thematically and approached Mallinder to see if he’d be interested in creating the audio.

Karaoke(en)

Failed musician Vanessa comes home from her stale office job one evening to find a version of herself already inside her own house, and descends into a nightmare from which she struggles to awake.

Imagens(pt)

Without any sounds, dialogues and with unknown actors, the images are the focus of this film. Images that want to awake, to question determinant moments, state of a system's languages, the morality of deaths, the immobility, the silence, among other subjects. Shot at the height of the Brazilian military dictatorship, it is an affront to the most diverse types of repression in that period.

Wild Grass(fr)

Marguerite loses her wallet, and it's found by Georges, a seemingly happy head of family. As he looks through the wallet and examines the photos of Marguerite, he finds he's fascinated with her and her life, and soon his curiosity about her becomes an obsession.

Anoche(es)

Three memories that become one. An attempt to merge heterogeneous materials: a film sequence shot in Rome, a photo from the 1930s, a noisy soundtrack. Fragmented lines, exploding bass frequencies and flickering.

Untitled / Aubrac(en)

Rodez(xx)

An exploration of Rodez Cathedral and its stained glass windows: praying figures and scientific imagery. A study on color, repetition and flickering consisting of 292 photographs.

Claire(xx)

Claire is composed of digital scans and blow-ups of a series of three ink-on-paper artworks created in 2012 by French-Spanish researcher, publisher and artist Claire Latxague. While collecting drawings, written documents and other printed materials for a (yet unreleased) project called Un film de papier, I’ve stumbled upon Latxague’s artwork, entitled À la renverse. The blow-ups were made in an attempt of unearthing cartographic imagery in abstract compositions.

Voz(es)