May 35

Duration-Landscape: Rocks(gl)

"The evaporation or the centralization of the self. Everything is there." —Charles Baudelaire A sensorial approach to landscape In the deep contemplation of landscape the senses are altered. We feel a sublimation experience where the mental image of landscape undergoes a metamorphosis. The actual space is distorted, time flows in a different way: it stops in our consciousness. It is the connection at the "full instant," the idea of "durèe" of Henri Bergson, where the intensity of the experience makes the image of landscape expands.

Our Lady of Loreto(en)

An experimental documentary portrait of director Malcolm Quinn Silver-Van Meter's grandfather

Notes on the Circus(en)

The short film is a montage of sped up clips of The Ringling Brothers Circus in action set to a musical track. The film is separated into four segments, each segment which focuses on different acts within the circus. The later segments often incorporate clips from earlier segments, mostly as background to the featured acts. The speed of the clips match the tempo of the soundtrack music.

Cinema Exercises(it)

A workshop film made with a group of students of the Pietro Zorutti School in Palmanova, Esercizi di Cinema is an experimental adaptation of Raymond Queneau's book Exercises in Style.

Rock Piece (Ahuriri Edition)(en)

Using natural elements and sounds, this experimental film explores the connection between the body and land.

Woman(sh)

Between four walls of her apartment, a girl enjoys in intimate idleness and being her true self.

Didactica Magna: Against the Grain(cs)

The film is an insight into a teacher's soul and a contemplation upon his teaching fate. This portrait of a unique, experimental filmmaker and teacher Martin Čihák takes a look at his teaching methods, his meetings with his students at FAMU and at a park where they work with film, or in his studio.

Replika(pl)

Monument(en)

In the fall of 1967, intermedia artists Ture Sjölander and Lars Weck collaborated with Bengt Modin, video engineer of the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation in Stockholm, to produce an experimental program called Monument. It was broadcast in January, 1968, and subsequently has been seen throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. Apart from the technical aspect of the project, their intention was to develop a widened consciousness of the communi - cative process inherent in visual images. They selected as source material the "monuments" of world culture— images of famous persons and paintings.

Eighteen fragments from Malcolm Le Grice’s After Leonardo(en)

"This installation or performance work puts my own earlier film of the Mona Lisa (1973) through another stage of transformation – my own irretrievable self of some 34 years ago is now also part of the subject I first saw the ‘actual’ ‘Mona Lisa’ when I was about thirteen. Of course I had seen dozens of reproductions in books and postcards by then and the popular mythology of the enigmatic smile was already well engrained in my mind. My strongest impression, as I recall, was how small and unsurprising it was – a heavily protected cultural icon – no longer really a picture – and I was much more excited by the painting of the distant landscape than by the face. My own ‘version’ of ‘la Giaconda’ was never an homage, nor like Marcel Duchamp’s ‘L.H.O.O.Q’, an attack on its cultural power. Instead it came from a fascination with change and transformation – maybe also with arbitrary appropriation." Malcolm Le Grice

Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head(fr)

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

Bodybuilding(de)

Games with muscles, games with power, SM games. The naked body employed as a prop. Perceptions of one's own body are the focus of Body-building, and it leaves the good-girl role far behind, sometimes in striking poses, sometimes in martial dress.

Alma(en)

"The details of the script for Alma were modeled from data that the artist collected from her own digital devices. The film describes a woman who enters into a private contract with a room. The objects in the room monitor how she feels as they respond to her in real time, comforting her with their physical presence and touch. The room tracks the character’s steps and her screen time, but it also monitors impossible data points, like what she would have accomplished if she had lived a different life. The first half of the film celebrates the unreality of her wishful thinking that technology is capable of solving any problem. In the second half of the film, these optimistic ideas are traded for a catastrophic vision of her digitally connected self. In the end, she is immersed in a space that describes what it once was like to be among other people. While physically separated, she waits indefinitely in a digital rendering, surrounded by a phantom of human presence." — Jane Lombard Gallery

Mapocho(en)

A visual journey through the Mapocho river.

Terminal City(en)

Terminal City records the demolition of the Devonshire Hotel in Vancouver; through extreme show motion (200 frames per second) and symmetrical diagonal framing, Gallagher underscores the passage from order to chaos within the event. The sparseness of this centering and he patience required of the viewer heightens the literally explosive climaxes of the film, and transforms the everyday violence of the events into moments of convulsive beauty. – Jim Shedden, Michael Zryd, The Independent Eye

Ripple(en)

RIPPLE, 2020. HD digital video loop & steel & hardware, duration: 5 minutes. Soundtrack by Kevin Carey.

Bill Laswell - World Beat Sound System: Live at Soundstage(en)

Throughout three decades, Bill Laswell has been a constant innovator, fusing seemingly disparate genres into a whole new sound. Touching upon everything from worldbeat, funk, rock, hip-hop and jazz, there are no limits to his experimental approach. Among his many talents is his ability to bring together well-matched singers and players to create a distinct style that defies easy classification. His Soundstage episode embodies his unique approach, transcending any genre boundaries and delivering an engaging performance. From the World Beat of Tabla Beat Science, to the jazzy flavors of Pharoah Sanders backed by Material, it’s an exciting mix. Other surprises include a rocking Buckethead set that includes a little breakdancing and songs by Praxis. The show culminates with an all-star performance, funked up by Bootsy Collins.

ACT(ru)

Several fragments of one day in Leningrad in the autumn of 1989, refracted in the imagination of the artist.

The Ride(nl)

A man and a woman move deeper into the dark of the night. Through the impersonal images of Google Earth, their erratic path leads us towards a place where something dramatic appears to have taken place. The only compass is the beating of the hearts that guide their way.

Paradise Now(en)

At least forty films have been made about the Living Theatre; it remained to the American underground filmmaker Sheldon Rochlin (previously responsible for the marvellous Vali) to make the 'definitive' film about one of the most famous of their works, Paradise Now, shot in Brussels and at the Berlin Sportpalast. Made on videotape, with expressionist colouring 'injected' by electronic means, this emerges as a hypnotic transmutation of a theatrical event into poetic cinema, capturing the ambiance and frenzy of the original. No documentary record could have done it justice.