Maria Palacios Cruz (Spain) is the director of Courtisane, an annual festival in Ghent, Belgium, devoted to artists’ moving image. She has curated screenings and exhibitions for festivals and institutions including Cinematek (Royal Belgian Film Archive), Impakt Utrecht, MuHKA Antwerp, Naples Independent Film Show, Sala Parpallò Valencia and Centre Pompidou. She teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts and École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels.
COMPETITION
Norbert Pfaffenbichler (Austria) is a filmmaker and independent curator. His work has been exhibited at many international festivals including the IFF Rotterdam, the Toronto IFF, Ars Electronica (Linz) and the 9th Media City in 2003. For this year’s Media City he will also introduce a program of historical Austrian films (see pages 4851) and present the new book from sixpackfilm, Film Unframed, to which he has contributed an essay on the work of Marc Adrian.
JURY
Jonathan Walley (USA) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema at Denison University. He received his BA from Bard College and MA and Ph.D in Film Studies from the University of WisconsinMadison. His writing has appeared in October, Senses of Cinema, The Velvet Light Trap, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and in numerous essay collections on avantgarde film and art. He is currently writing a book about expanded cinema.
OPENING AT THE DFT • TUE MAY 22 • 8:00 PM
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differently, Molussia
Nicolas Rey, France, 16mm, 81 min, 2012
A film in nine chapters, shown in random order and based on fragments from the novel Günther Anders (“Differently”) wrote between 1932 and 1936: The Molussian Catacomb. Prisoners sitting in the pits of an imaginary fascist state, Molussia, tell each other stories about the outside world, as so many philosophical fables. Shooting was done between 2007 and 2011 on outdated Agfa stock. The processing and prints were selfmade at L’Abominable, an artistrun film lab in the suburbs of Paris. There are 9! = 362,880 possibilities to arrange the reels. “Nine reels of unbelievably gorgeous 16mm, with allegories drawn from philosopher Günther Anders’s posthumously published novel, which exposes the fascism inside capitalism and vice versa. The sequencing of the reels (i.e. the stories and the way certain motifs, aesthetic strategies, and cinematic devices are introduced and worked through) is interchangeable; what carries over from reel to reel are the colours and textures. Few works so perfectly combine cinesensuality and Marxist dialectics.” — Olaf Möller, Film Comment
differently, Molussia premiered at the Berlinale in February 2012, won the Grand Prize at Cinema du Réel in Paris in March, and receives its first North American screening at the DFT as part of Media City. Filmmaker in attendance from Paris.
Unlike the famous American director, Nicolas Rey’s name is not a pseudonym. Nor is he the son of the French experimental filmmaker Georges Rey. He is also not related to the other Nicolas Reys who live at Place de Paris, although he often gets their mail. Since 1993, he has made several short and longform films that combine elements of photography, documentary and experimental film. His work has screened at numerous international festivals, including the 8th edition of Media City in 2000 which presented his tripleprojection 16mm film Opera Mundi (1999). He is also a cofounder of the collective film lab L‘Abominable, founded near Paris in 1995.
OPENING AT THE DFT • TUE MAY 22 • 8:00 PM
“I wanted to make a film based on a novel that I couldn’t read, since it was written in a language that I don‘t understand, and there’s no translation. Looking back I can say that I made no mistake; the novel is profoundly topical today. But how to film it? Just film this imaginary landscape. No need to travel very far.” — Nicolas Rey
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IAN BAXTER& S8 FILMS • WED MAY 23 • 7:30 PM
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IAIN BAXTER&: Super 8 INFORMATION
Organized jointly by Media City Film Festival and the AGW, this program marks the first public screening of the Super 8mm films created by IAIN BAXTER& from the mid1960s to the 1970s. During this period, BAXTER& used Super 8 film to both document the activities of the N.E. Thing Co. and to create independent artworks. Many of the films are of considerable historical importance to both BAXTER&’s own practice and to the larger field of conceptual art of the era. Intended to celebrate one of Canada's most significant artists, this special program will features thirteen singlereel Super 8 films (shown in their original format) accompanied by an animated talk by BAXTER& himself One of Canada's foremost living artists, IAIN BAXTER& is recognized internationally as an early and important pioneer of conceptual art. He is Professor Emeritus at the School of Visual Arts University of Windsor, a recipient of a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and an Officer of the Order of Canada. Until August 12, the Art Gallery of Ontario is exhibiting IAIN BAXTER&: Works 19582011, a major career retrospective that was also recently presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Program includes:
&
Train Snow II (3 min, 1968) Train Snow I (3 min, 1968) Building Stucture SFU III (3 min, 1968) Honeymoon Cottage (3 min, 1967) Monopoly With Real Money (3 min, 197273) Columbus Reel 1 (3 min, 1970) Still Life Lines and Trees (1 min, 1968) Out Toward an Important Point (3 min, 1969) Ski Works (3 min, 1969) untitled (“Fashion Show”) (3 min, 1966) Bagged Place Movie (3 min, 1969) Telephone Lines II (3 min, 1969) Lucy Lippard Walking North (3 min, 1969)
FRIDAY, MAY 25 • 2PM AT THE AGW:
Book signing and discussion with IAIN BAXTER& and Adam Lauder (Toronto). Adam Lauder is W.P. Scott Chair for Research in eLibrarianship at York University in Toronto, where he is developing an electronic catalogue raisonné of the work of IAIN BAXTER&. The discussion will include a screening of two new video works by BAXTER& commissioned by Media City, and will launch the book IAIN BAXTER&: Super 8 INFORMATION, a special Media City publication that includes numerous images from the artist’s films and an extensive essay written by Lauder (excerpted on the following pages).
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IAIN BAXTER&: Super 8 Information. Adam Lauder
Recalling the body of Super 8 films which he shot during the 1960s and 1970s — screened publicly in their original format for the first time since those decades as part of the 18th Media City Film Festival — conceptual artist IAIN BAXTER& has identified a legendary pedagogical experiment as a catalyst for his distinctive brand of expanded cinema.1 Early in his tenure at Simon Fraser University (19661971) as head of the visual arts division of the interdisciplinary Centre for Communication and the Arts, BAXTER& orchestrated an allday event known as 24hr. Class, which replaced the Cartesian boundaries of the conventional classroom with the mobile laboratory of the automobile. Recalling the radical pedagogy of media theorist Marshall McLuhan — a constant source of inspiration to the artist since 1964 — BAXTER& harnessed the potential of new media such as Super 8 and Polaroid to transform the three cars which he commandeered for this project into a participatory “classroom without walls.”2 Equipped with portable media and connected via walkietalkies, students were encouraged to document the built environment of Vancouver as its streets and skyline sped by. Although this pedagogical “happening”, which condensed twelve weeks of classes into an ad hoc, intensive seminar, was certainly not the origin of BAXTER&’s Super 8 work, it crystallized his thinking about film as one component of a larger media environment which, under the influence of McLuhan and French communications theorist Abraham Moles, the artist had begun to conceive of as a continuum of “Sensitivity Information”.
24hr. Class is a rare source of information about the Super 8 oeuvre of BAXTER& that assists us in understanding the artist’s description of film as “moving sensitivity information”. This idiosyncratic nomenclature reflects the visionary informatic paradigm developed by BAXTER& as President (later Copresident) of the critical company N.E. Thing Co. Ltd. (NETCo), which he created and founded in 1966 as an “umbrella” for his intermedia art practice, and subsequently coadministered with his then wife, Ingrid Baxter, from January 1969 to 1978.4 By at least early 1967,5 the Company was categorizing its corporate actions according to a classification scheme that divided the arts into subclasses of Sensitivity Information, or SI: Sound Sensitivity Information, or SSI (“music, poetry [read], singing, oratory, etc.”), Moving Sensitivity Information, or MSI (“movies, dance, mountain climbing, track, etc.”), Experiential Sensitivity Information, or ESI (“theatre, etc.”), and Visual Sensitivity Information, or VSI (“a term developed and used by the N.E. Thing Co. to denote more appropriately the meaning of the traditional words ‘art’ and ‘fine art’ or ‘visual art’”).6 Several years prior to American filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek’s pioneering articulation of cinema as information in 1970,7 BAXTER& was employing the language of information science to propose a crossmedia approach to the moving image. In some cases, Super 8 films shot by BAXTER& under the NETCo umbrella also register a renegotiation of the relationship between moving image and spectator, a reconfiguration that was again posited in specifically informatic terms
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through instructions issued by the Company resembling the formulas deployed information theorists such as Moles to define expanded conditions of display.8
In her study of Expo 67 as a largescale experiment in expanded cinema, Janine Marchessault has characterized the multiscreen environment of the NFB organized and McLuhaninspired Labyrinthe pavilion as projecting “the flexibility of the city in movement.”9 The Super 8 films shot by BAXTER& during his time at SFU and, subsequently, during a sabbatical in Europe and later at York University in Toronto, exemplify a parallel entanglement of fluid screens, McLuhanesque theory, technology and transportation. Indeed, the relative absence of critical commentary on this significant body of film may be attributable precisely to the fact that the films of BAXTER&/NETCo exemplify a filmic modality that runs counter to the betterknown, contemporaneous production of fellow Canadian artist and filmmaker, Michael Snow. The filmic concerns of BAXTER&/NETCo. are also distinct from the critical dialogue with the representational system of Hollywood cinema that defines the Vancouver School of Photoconceptualism.10 In contrast to the analytical, structuralist concerns of Snow as well as the semioticallygrounded ideology critique of Jeff Wall and Rodney Graham, the Super 8 corpus of BAXTER& and NETCo. reveals a preoccupation with the circulation of sensory data in an environment defined by newly fluid boundaries between media under the impact of television and video. The sensory concerns of NETCo lend its informatics brand of conceptualism a very different emphasis relative to the analytical and linguistic strategies generally associated with conceptual art. For NETCo, the concept is first and foremost sensation, not idea. 1. IAIN BAXTER&, conversation with the author, January 5, 2012.
2. Edmund Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan, “The New Languages,” Chicago Review 10, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 51. 3. Joan Lowndes, “The Message is—VSI: The Plastic World of Iain Baxter,” The Province, February 3, 1967: 3.
4. David Tomas, “The Dilemma of Categories and the Overdetermination of a Business Practice: N.E. Thing Co. at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, June 4 July 6, 1969,” in Documentary Protocols (19671975), ed. Vincent Bonin (Montreal: Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, 2010), 219.
5. IAIN BAXTER& in Dorothy Cameron, “Iain Baxter (N.E. Thing Co.),” in Sculpture ’67: An OpenAir Exhibition of Canadian Sculpture (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada = Musée des beauxarts du Canada, 1968), 84. 6. N.E. Thing Co, “Glossary,” 1966, Box 5, File 11, Iain Baxter Fonds, E.P. Taylor Research Library and Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
7. Mark Bartlett, “Socialimagestics and the Visual Acupuncture of Stan Vanderbeek’s Expanded Cinema,” in Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film, ed. A.L. Rees, Duncan White, Steven Ball, David Curtis (London: Tate, 2011), 50, 53; Yvonne Spielmann, “Conceptual Synchronicity: Intermedial Encounters Between Film, Video and Computer,” in Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film, ed. A.L. Rees, Duncan White, Steven Ball, David Curtis (London: Tate, 2011), 201.
8. N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., Still Life – The American Flag [Super 8 film; 3:44 min.], 1968, http://archives.library.yorku.ca/iain_baxterand_raisonne/items/show/1744 (accessed February 26, 2012). 9. Janine Marchessault, “MultiScreens and Future Cinema: The Labyrinth Project at Expo 67,” in Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema, ed. Janine Marchessault and Susan Lord (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 31. 10. Bart De Baere and Dieter Roelstraete, “Introducing Intertidal,” in Intertidal: Vancouver Art and Artists (Antwerp; Vancouver: MuHKA; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2005), 13
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INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 23 • 9:30 PM
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Springtime
Jeroen Eisinga, Netherlands, 35mm, 19 min, 2011
A man, a table, a camera and twentyfive kilos of bees. This adventure ended in hospital. Jeroen Eisinga is a visual artist, educated at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and at the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles. He has made eleven short films since 1993, winning at Tiger Award at the 2012 IFF Rotterdam for Springtime. He lives in Rotterdam.
Ben Russell, USA, video, 11.5 min, 2011 “Animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others.” — Graham Harvey, Animism A trance dance water implosion, a newer line drawn between secular possession and religious phenomena. Filmed in one shot at a sacred site on the Upper Suriname River, the minor secrets of a Saramaccan animist are revealed as time itself is undone. Ben Russell is an itinerant photographer and filmmaker whose work has been presented in spaces ranging from 14th century Belgian monasteries to Japanese cinematheques, from police station basements to outdoor punk squats, in bathtubs in Chicago and on boats in Vienna, in Parisian storefronts and at the 15th and 17th editions of Media City. He has had solo screenings at the MCA Chicago, the IFF Rotterdam, the Wexner Center (Columbus), and the New York MoMA. A 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, he is currently living in Paris.
INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 23 • 9:30 PM
River Rites
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INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 23 • 9:30 PM
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Rite of Spring
Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor Romania, video, 8 min, 2010
An annual ritual performed by children. The white poplar fluff implies the promise of renewal. It only requires a catalyst. Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor have been collaborating on films and other artistic projects since 2000. Their work has been presented in solo or group exhibitions at venues including Mercer Union (Toronto), Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong) and the Venice Biennale. Their films have screened at festivals including the IFF Rotterdam, the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and the Vladivostok International Film Festival. This is their first appearance at Media City. Based in Bucharest, they are currently living in Berlin on a DAAD Kunstlerprogramm residency.
Austria, 16mm, each 3 mins, 2011
Ulrich Gregor and Heidi Kim at the W Hong Kong Hotel: A triangle story. Two people in a hotel room. Both look into the camera. As of now they are a threesome in this experimental lab, “he,” “she,” and vom Gröller: the camera, the choreographer.
La Cigarette places five people before the camera. The location of the gathering remains vague — a small room with a table, chairs, a sink, open bottles, a film projector. Four members of the group observe a young woman observed on camera, posing as if she were a studio model. It soon becomes clear that this comparison can’t be right. In People on Sunday we see a group of people in a room eating pizza, perhaps having a party. The room is small, denying a sweeping view. Pizza is cut and distributed to the guests, and the camera cuts the room and everything in it, all that moves in it, into handy little pieces.
The distinguished career of photographer and filmmaker Friedl vom Gröller began in the 1960s. Her work was the subject of an exhibition and retrospective screening at Media City in 2010. She lives in Vienna.
INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 23 • 9:30 PM
3 films of Friedl vom Gröller
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INTL PROGRAM 1 • WED MAY 23 • 9:30 PM
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Rita Larson’s Boy
Kevin J. Everson, USA, video, 11 min, 2012
One of three films included in the Tombigbee Chronicles Number Two, a series of films based on famous people and objects from Columbus, Mississippi. Rita Larson’s Boy portrays ten actors auditioning for the role of Rollo Larson in the 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son. The actor Nathaniel Taylor, raised in Columbus, portrayed Rollo Larson (Rita Larson’s boy) in Sanford and Son. Tombigbee is the river that runs though Columbus. Kevin J. Everson received his BFA from the University of Akron and an MFA from Ohio University. Over the past fifteen years he has completed several feature films and over fifty short films. His films and videos have been widely show at venues including Whitechapel Gallery (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the New York MoMA, the IIFF Rotterdam and the 15th, 16th and 17th editions of Media City. He was the subject of a recent solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum (New York), and his work was also selected to screen as part of the 2012 Whitney Biennial. He is an associate professor at the University of Virginia.
CORRESPONDENCES • THU MAY 24 • 2:00 PM AT AGW
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Correspondences
Celebrating three distinguished British artists working in diverse media Correspondences features work by the filmmaker Nicky Hamlyn, painter Angela Allen and video artist Simon Payne. The exhibition deals with questions of colour, frame, medium, perceptual modalities and translation between media. Exhibition continues until June 12, 2012. THURSDAY MAY 24, 2:00 PM: All of the artists will be in attendance from the UK for an exhibition walkthrough and accompanying panel discussion, moderated by York University Film Studies Professor Tess Takahashi. Angela Allen (UK) Sequences and Correspondences, 2007–11; oil on canvas/board Interruption VII, 2006; Ink, pencil and pastel on paper
Nicky Hamlyn (UK) Sequence XIII and Interruption VII, 2008; 16mm looping film projection Correspondences, 2011; 16mm looping film projection Simon Payne (UK) Primary Phases, 2006–12; threechannel video installation
Simon Payne
Primary Phases (2006–2012) was originally shown at “Colour Fields”, an exhibition of colourbased video projections hosted by the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection at Central St. Martins School of Art in London, UK. The work is generated wholly in a computer using default additive primary colours. A looping series of red, green and blue ‘wipes’ traverse the projected image in vertical and horizontal directions. The loop that each projector shows is a different duration, causing their synchronization to phase. While the work employs a very formal approach to screen space, resembling the aesthetics of early abstract film, the patterns of the piece directly influence what’s outside the frame: the space between and surrounding the colours is made a part of the work; and the reflected light simultaneously affects the look of the entire space. The continuous movement of the imagery emphasizes video’s form of presentation, which is based on the continuous updating of an alwayspresent image. A new version of Primary Phases, made specifically for Windsor, uses three projectors with red, green and blue wipes. The sound has a different tone, rising and falling in volume for each colour. The arrangement of the projectors is specific for the space. The black area of the projection — the negative space — adjacent to and between the red, green and blue operates as a constituent part of the piece — i.e. not just a blank or nothing but a colour that interacts with the other three.
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Nicky Hamlyn
I originally approached Angela Allen to discuss making a film with two of her pictures: a drawing (Interruption VII) and a painting (Sequence XII). The resulting film, Sequences and Interruptions (2008), and a selection of Angela’s work were shown at a Light Readings event presented by no.w.here (an artistrun screening space and film workshop in London, UK), where a discussion was held between the two of us. The pictures were exhibited and the film was screened together with related pieces by filmmakers Kurt Kren: Bild Helga Phillip (1965), and Marie Menken: Mood Mondrian (1965). A new film, Correspondences (2011), and its accompanying series of paintings are presented here, alongside the earlier work. In contrast to Primary Phases, the three 16mm films in this exhibition use the intermittent, framebyframe form of presentation peculiar to the film medium, which causes the generation of superimpositions in the visual cortex through the alternate presentation of two different frames. This can result in a flicker effect, but here flicker is reduced and the emphasis is on the spurious motion artifacts generated (cerebrally) by rapidly alternating, similarbutdifferent frames. The work also considers notions of translation between static and “moving” imagery, and the different kinds of perceptions these generate.
A central question is the relationship between the pictures and the films, since the structures of the pictures directly inform the filming strategies. The films neither document the pictures, nor do they simply use them as raw material. Rather, the work becomes a collaboration between the pictures and my filming activities. It is thus a kind of composite or hybrid, neither picture nor film, but something else. The work sits between the two media, in that the experience, the area of exploration, arises from and is an effect of seeing the pictures and the films in the same place at the same time. The idea of using the topography of the profilmic to inform, as strictly as possible, a film’s structure is something that I have been working at for a long time, but never before by working with a found image. My strategies attempt to isolate some of the relationships within the pictures, by reference to the film’s rectangular frame, whose edges take on a precise metrical function.
These relationships, focused and augmented by the film’s frame, are then animated, or are used to generate spatiotemporal effects that at the same time make some of the pictures’ inherent structures explicit. One could argue that these structures are produced through the act of framing, as they often are in a situation where one is enframing bits of the world. However, in the case of these found images, there are found relationships that are inherent, so that the question becomes much more open and ambiguous. Inevitably, the film directs the viewer’s attention in a way that pictures won’t necessarily do, although the latter can of course draw the eye in a certain direction.
(left: Sequence XV, 2008, oil on canvas on board.) Angela Allen
In exhibiting paintings and films, it would seem that the differences between media are highlighted, but I would like to foreground some shared preoccupations. As makers, we all three use structuring principles in generating our work and avoid any narrative or illustrational associations.
With Nicky Hamlyn, I have a shared interest in the observation of everyday phenomena, for example, the moiré effect visible in a metal chair back for Nicky; the movement of leaves seen through Venetian blinds for myself. With Simon, I share an interest in the perception of colour and a tangential interest in computers.
I use “found systems”, like found objects, to organize my series of Sequence pictures. Some years ago I noticed patterns on the inside of envelopes and started to collect them. I later noticed small, square postal marks on envelopes from Germany and added them to the collection. For me they resembled the scraps that Kurt Schwitters used in his collages and I thought of them as computer waste. I enjoyed the idea that the pattern on the envelopes was used to conceal the contents, as QRcodes also conceal the information they carry. My own use of the code as an organizing system for the elements of a painting diverts its original purpose, focusing on its visual properties. A difference between our respective media is the static/object quality of a painting and the apparent movement and evanescence of film. I intend my paintings to be optically dynamic and, to this end, I use the optical contrast of fully saturated complementary colours and directional marks; the technique of broken colour. To further challenge the eye, the colour is overpainted with grey and white, but allowing previous layers to be visible, so that with sustained looking, colour sensations can emerge, somewhat as they do in Jackson Pollock’s work, Lavender Mist: Number 1 (1950).
In this exhibition, both Simon and Nicky have generated emerging colour in their films. Nicky through layering and overlapping and Simon through colour mixing as a phenomenon of vision whereby apparent colours are registered by the eye of the viewer, an experience understood and used by painters such as Pissarro and Seurat. We all rely on retinal stimulation and fatigue for the sensation of colour to be present.
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Simon Payne studied Time Based Media at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, Maidstone and Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee. He holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art and is currently Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Anglia Ruskin University. His work has been shown at numerous venues around the world, including Anthology Film Archives (New York), the IFF Rotterdam, EMAF (Osnabrück), and two previous editions of Media City. The Serpentine and Whitechapel Galleries in London have also exhibited his work, as has Tate Modern, for which he curated a series entitled Colour Field Films and Videos (2008). Payne has also written extensively on experimental film and video and is editor of Sequence, an artists' journal published by no.w.here in London, UK. Nicky Hamlyn studied Fine Art at the University of Reading. From 1979 1981 he was workshop organizer at the London Filmmakers’ Cooperative, where he cofounded the magazine Undercut. He is currently professor of Experimental Film at the University for the Creative Arts, Maidstone, Kent, and visiting lecturer to the Royal College of Art, London, UK. His work has been exhibited at venues and festivals worldwide, including at six previous editions of Media City and in recent solo screenings at the Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Double Negative (Montréal) and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. His book Film Art Phenomena was published by the BFI (2003). He has also published widely on aspects of artists' / experimental film and video, most recently on the expanded projector films of Lis Rhodes, Steve Farrer and Guy Sherwin in the book Expanded Cinema (Tate, 2011). He has completed over forty films, videos and installations since 1974. Angela Allen studied Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art and received an MFA from Coventry University. Since 1980, her paintings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at a variety of galleries in and around London, England. This is her first exhibition in Canada.
above: Correspondences, Nicky Hamlyn, 16mm film, 15 min, 2011. facing page: Interruptions VIII, Angela Allen, ink, pencil, pastel on paper, 2006
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REGIONAL PROGRAM • THU MAY 24 • 6:00 PM
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Regional Artists Program
15 new works from Windsor, London, Detroit & SE Michigan Curated by Brandon Walley Parade #7
Matt Rossoni, London, 16mm, approx. 7 min, 2012
A loop of found footage is manually defaced until it degrades and breaks.
Se reveiler
Oren Goldenberg, Detroit, video, 2 min, 2011
There were 636 frames of film. Two were left for her on her pillow.
While You Were Sleeping
Ted Kennedy, Ann Arbor, video, 5 min, 2012
A Hi8mm camera and videotapes were stolen from my home as I slept. I called the police.
Nuclear Energy
Andrea Slavik, Windsor, video, 7.5 min, 2012
A study of a sculptural monument by Henry Moore that commemorates the first generation of nuclear power on the University of Chicago campus.
Gerald McKay, Pinckney, video, 2 min, 2011
An exploration of a forest through complex, collaged layers.
Second Phase
Charlie Egleston, London, 16mm, 13 min, 2012
A cycle of seasons at the “commons” in Victoria Park (London, Ontario). Things pass through, change and remain the same.
It’s a Fine Day
Iain Maitland, Detroit/England, video, 3 min, 2012 A dead hare ruefully remembers its last days alive.
Contact
Gerald McKay, Pinckney, video, 4 min, 2011 An abduction in a dark forest.
Vanishing Acts
Scott Northrup, Detroit, video, 6.5 min, 2012
Discarded 8mm reassembled as an ephemeral melodrama, inspired by the temporal nature of romance in this world.
REGIONAL PROGRAM • THU MAY 24 • 6:00 PM
Glisten
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REGIONAL PROGRAM • THU MAY 24 • 6:00 PM
The Olympian
Gerald Pesta, Clarkston, video, 5 min, 2012
The evolution of bodybuilding as an art form and as a sport.
Independence
Chantal Vien, Windsor, video, 4 min, 2011
Movement and shadow play, a fragmentation of the body.
Last Friday in April
Rhonda Rudnick, Grosse Pointe, video, 3 min, 2011
I was eleven when my father died. Without him, my family was splintering in pieces, just as a tornado fractures a house.
Shisha (Mirror)
Riaz Mehmood, Windsor, video, 3.5 min, 2011
The crude figurine of an “Eastern Warrior” critiques reductive stereotypes.
Creation of a Brand II
Steve Coy, Detroit, video, 4 min, 2011
The Hygienic Dress League creates its brand.
Cattales
Kevin Eckert, Oxford, video, 2 min, 2010
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Made from a few seconds of video recorded accidentally on a digital photo camera. The subject has since passed away.
INTL PROGRAM 2 • THU MAY 24 • 7:30 PM
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Meteor
Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet Germany, 35mm, 15 min, 2011
“Meteor empathises with childlike realms of imagination, accompanying a boy’s stages of development towards individuation. The boy sets out on a phantasmatic journey. Conditions of detachment emerge visually against an emotionally charged aria expressing a desperate and futile longing for proximity.” — IFF Rotterdam Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet have made eleven films in collaboration since 2000 which have screened at numerous festivals worldwide (including the 11th Media City in 2005), winning the prize for best short film at Cannes in 2006. The artists also independently make films and other artworks; Müller's own films have won Grand Prizes from the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (1999) and the Ann Arbor Film Festival (2003) and screened at the 8th Media City in 2002. Girardet’s work has been exhibited at major institutions such as the Stedelijk and Hirshhorn Museums. Müller is Professor for Experimental Film at KHM (Cologne), Girardet lives in Hanover.
JeanClaude Rousseau, France, video, 15 min, 2012 Chora con gran soèdade Este mens olhos cativo — Cantigas de Santa Maria, XIIIth century
“My eyes are imprisoned/ Weeping with great longing”. Soèdade (saudade) — “longing” or "yearning” — is a Portuguese word that does not have a precise translation in English. It has been described as a “...vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist...” JeanClaude Rousseau began working on Super 8 in the early 1980s. In 2002 he switched to digital video. Rousseau's film and video works have screened at the Centre Pompidou, Ceneteca Nazionale, Jeonju International Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival and countless other venues worldwide. He has published several texts on the films of Robert Bresson and the painter Jan Vermeer. A retrospective of his work was shown at the 15th edition of Media City in 2009. He lives in Paris.
INTL PROGRAM 2 • THU MAY 24 • 7:30 PM
Saudade
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INTL PROGRAM 2 • THU MAY 24 • 7:30 PM
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A Preface to Red
Jonathan Schwartz, USA, 16mm, 6 min, 2011
“Beginning with the nighttime taillights of a traffic jam, A Preface to Red soon enters daylight with a series of bright forms in the titular hue. Many are composed against the hot colour temperature of the Turkish sun, and before long the Constructivist beauty of Schwartz’s semi ethnographic fragments are overpowered by a violent, eardamning sound design, wavering somewhere between white noise, stadium cheering, and the cyclical whinny of an unseen factory machine.” — Michael Sicinski Jonathan Schwartz studied at MassArt. He makes films and other sound/image projects. Many of these projects have shown at venues such as the IFF Rotterdam, the “Wavelengths” program at the Toronto IFF, the London Film Festival, and the 17th edition of Media City. He lives in Battleboro, Vermont and is an Assistant Professor in Film Studies at Keene State College.
Olivia Ciummo, USA, video, 5.5 min, 2011
Moving and still images, fragments from various mediated sources, intertwine with sound to imagine the various players in an invented memory. An inability to remember turns personal experiences into fiction for others. Olivia Ciummo works in film, video, sound and photography. She has made more than two dozen short films or videos since 2000, with exhibitions at venues including the Pittsburgh Biennial, the Chicago Underground FF and EXiS (Seoul). This is her first appearance at Media City. She teaches cinema at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.
INTL PROGRAM 2 • THU MAY 24 • 7:30 PM
WithMeNotMe
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INTL PROGRAM 2 • THU MAY 24 • 7:30 PM
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Austerity Measures
Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau USA/France, 16mm, 8.5 min, 2012
A colourseparation portrait of the Exarchia neighbourhood of Athens, Greece, made during the antiausterity protests in late 2011. In a place thick with stray cats and scooters, cops and Molotovs, ancient myths and new ruins; where fists are raised like so many columns in the Parthenon, this is a film of surfaces — of grafitti'd marble streets and wheatpasted city walls — handprocessed in red, green, and blue. Made as part of a handprocessing workshop at LabA in Athens. For biography of Ben Russell, see his film River Rites on page 19. Russell's collaborator on Austerity Measures, Guillaume Cailleau, is a French filmmaker living in Berlin. Cailleau has made ten films since 2006; his film H(i)J (2009) screened at the IFF Rotterdam, the “Views from the AvantGarde” program at the New York Fim Festival and the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen. This is Cailleau’s first appearance at Media City.
Michael Robinson, USA, video, 6 min, 2011
This is the new choreography of devotion, via the vlog of southern nightmares. This is the light that never goes out. This is the line describing your mom. Michael Robinson studied film and photography at Ithaca College and the University of Illinois. He has made more than a dozen films since 2003 which have screened at venues including MoMA P.S.1, the Tate Modern and the 2012 Whitney Biennial, and at numerous festivals such as the IFF Rotterdam, the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, the London Film Festival, and four previous editions of Media City.
INTL PROGRAM 2 • THU MAY 24 • 7:30 PM
Line Describing Your Mom
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INTL PROGRAM 3 • THU MAY 24 • 9:30 PM
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The Corridor
Sarah Vanagt, Belgium, video, 7 min, 2010
For five days, a donkey was followed during its weekly visits to old people in nursing homes in England. Even though Vanagt initially followed the donkey’s steps in search of reminiscences brought about by the animal’s mute presence, she came home with another film. It was only when the donkey entered the room of a man who had lost his ability to speak, that an altogether different encounter took place. Sarah Vanagt studied history at the universities of Antwerp, Sussex and Groningen, and film at the National Film and Television School, UK. She has made nine films since 2003, as well as installations and photographic projects. Her films have screened at festivals including the Leipzig Dokfest, IndieLisboa, FID Marseille, and have twice won the prize for Best Belgian film at the Courtisane festival in Ghent. This is her first appearance at Media City. She lives in Brussels.
Ben Rivers, UK (England), 16mm, 21 min, 2011
Sack Barrow explores a small familyrun factory in the outskirts of London. It was set up in 1931 to provide work for limbless and disabled exservicemen until the factory finally went into liquidation last year. The film observes the environment and daily routines of the final month of the six remaining workers. Years of miniature chemical and mineral processes transform the space into another world. Ben Rivers studied at Falmouth School of Fine Art. In 1996 he co founded the Brighton Cinematheque, serving as its programmer for several years. He has made more than a twenty short and longform films which have screened at venues including the IFF Rotterdam (winning a Tiger Award in 2008), the ICA (London), Courtisane (Ghent) and the 15th and 16th editions of Media City. He lives in London.
INTL PROGRAM 3 • THU MAY 24 • 9:30 PM
Sack Barrow
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INTL PROGRAM 3 • THU MAY 24 • 9:30 PM
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Century and Chevelle
Kevin J. Everson, USA, 16/35mm, 6.5/7.5 mins, 201112
“Two workhorse GM cars at a moment of drastic transformation. Junkyard crushers put metal to metal and smash the cars into tidy rectangular shapes while the life juices and hydraulic fluids drain out of them. The resulting films are partially formalist metaphor and partially the sheer pleasure of seeing stuff get really smashed up.” — Wexner Center for the Arts Kevin J. Everson received his BFA from the University of Akron and an MFA from Ohio University. Over the past fifteen years he has completed several feature films and over fifty short films. His films and videos have been widely show at venues including Whitechapel Gallery (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the New York MoMA, the IIFF Rotterdam and the 15th, 16th and 17th editions of Media City. He was the subject of a recent solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum (New York), and his work was also selected to screen as part of the 2012 Whitney Biennial. He is an associate professor at the University of Virginia.
Adriana Salazar Arroyo Costa Rica/Germany, 16mm, 7 min, 2010 The film traverses Cuba from Havana to the Sierra Maestra, ending at the jetty where the young revolutionaries first arrived in 1956. Using postrevolutionary monuments as coordinates, it follows, in reverse, the trajectory of the guerrilla movement that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959. The basis of the film’s structure and rhythm relates to extracts from “History Will Absolve Me”, a speech given by Castro at a trial in 1953. Each letter of the speech is translated into a single frame of film; each word is translated into a shot. Originally from San José, Costa Rica, Adriana Salazar Arroyo now lives in Berlin. She works in both film and photography. This is her first appearance at Media City; Found Cuban Mounts was previously shown at the Berlinale and the “Wavelengths" program at the Toronto IFF.
INTL PROGRAM 3 • THU MAY 24 • 9:30 PM
Found Cuban Mounts
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INTL PROGRAM 3 • THU MAY 24 • 9:30 PM
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The Mutability of All Things and the Possibility of Changing Some Anna Marziano, Italy, video, 17 min, 2011
A journey which starts in the Abruzzo region, a territory seriously damaged by an earthquake in 2009. A journey which starts when everyone reacts in a different way to this shared experience. How do we continue to act in the face of such transformations, how can we take part in the life of a community? Anna Marziano studied at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Rome) and Atelier Varan (Paris). Her previous films have screened at venues including the London International Doc Festival and the Torino Film Festival. This is her first appearance at Media City. She is currently an artistinresidence at Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, France.
Johann Lurf, Austria, 35mm, 5 min, 2011
“From his Vespa, Johann Lurf documents around 100 rotunda islands in Lower Austria — and thus creates something of a catalogue of local building malfunctions. A to A is not only a study of the islands themselves, but above all, of the terror of the mundane, of everyday architectural horrors, which one can count on seeing in the field of traffic islands. The monotony of the rotunda suggests a commentary on the emptiness of Austrian scenery, punctuated only by the piping of the Vespa, which produces diverse whining, highpitched motor sounds through the changing of gears, as if even the vehicle itself was lamenting the views to which it is exposed.” — Stefan Grissemann Johann Lurf studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. He has made a dozen short films since 2003 which have screened at festivals including IndieLisboa, the IFF Rotterdam, the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, and the 15th edition of Media City in 2009. He lives in Vienna, where he also works as a projectionist.
INTL PROGRAM 3 • THU MAY 24 • 9:30 PM
Kreis Wr. Neustadt (A to A)
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AUSTRIAN PROGRAM • FRI MAY 25 • 7:30 PM
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Marc Adrian and the Founders of the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative This program features work by key filmmakers operating in Vienna in the 1950s60s. In 1968, six artists (Kurt Kren, Valie Export, Peter Wiebel, Gottfried Schlemmer, Ernst Schmidt Jr. and Hans Scheugl, pictured above clockwise from right) founded the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative. By this time the Vienna Art Club had already been in operation for almost two decades, through which more than one hundred films were made between the early 1950s and 1968.
Although Marc Adrian was not a founding member of the AFC, his early films made with Kurt Kren are key to understanding the development of Austrian experimental cinema. Adrian studied sculpture under Fritz Wortruba and Cognitive Psychology with Hubert Rohracher. His films have recently been acquired for distribution by Sixpack film. Filmmaker and curator Norbert Pfaffenbichler attends from Vienna to introduce and discuss the screening. He has contributed an essay about Marc Adrian to the new publication, Film Unframed.
1. Mai 1958 Marc Adrian with Kurt Kren, 3 min, 1958
4/61 MauernPositivNegativ und Weg Kurt Kren, 6 min, 1961 Go Marc Adrian, 3 min, 1962
Orange Marc Adrian, 4 min, 1962
5/62 Fenstergucker, Abfall, etc. Kurt Kren, 5 min, 1962 Hernals Hans Scheugl, 11 min, 1967
TAPP und TASTKINO Valie Export, 2 min, 1968
Schnippschnapp Peter Weibel with Ernst Schmidt Jr, 2 min, 1968 13/67 Sinus Beta Kurt Kren, 6 min, 1967
Kunst und Revolution Ernst Schmidt Jr, 2.5 min, 1966
Black Movie II Marc Adrian with Kurt Kren, 3.5 min, 1959 Einzweidrei Ernst Schmidt Jr, 10 min, 196568 15/67 TV Kurt Kren, 4 min, 1967
AUSTRIAN PROGRAM • FRI MAY 25 • 7:30 PM
All 16mm:
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FILM UNFRAMED
A HISTORY OF AUSTRIAN AVANTGARDE CINEMA A FilmmuseumSynemaPublikation. The unique contribution of Austrian avantgarde film is universally acknowledged. To date, no single English book dedicated to illuminating its historical and aesthetic evolution has appeared. Film Unframed addresses this lack with a comprehensive publication, including an exhaustive and richly illustrated text of avantgarde film production in Austria, past and present. This overview, written by editor Peter Tscherkassky, is accompanied by a series of essays by respected international authors. Each essay focuses on the work of individual filmmakers and contextualizes their emergence and contributions. Reprints and facsimiles of important texts relating to the Austrian avantgarde are included, making the book a handy reference, with short biographies and complete filmographies for all of the artists described. 360 pages. Contributors include Peter Tscherkassky, Stefan Grissemann, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Maureen Turim, Hans Scheugl, Maya McKechneay, Bert Rebhandl, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Maureen Turim, Steve Anker, Livio Belloï, Christa Bluemlinger, Andréa Picard, Nicole Brenez, Christoph Huber, Steve Bates, Barbara Pichler and Adrian Martin. Media City is pleased to introduce the new book Film Unframed in North America. A limited number of copies of the book are available during the festival.
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INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 25 • 9:30 PM
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Traces 1 – 6
Scott Stark, USA, 35mm, 7 min, 2012
A series of works generated from digital still images printed onto 35mm motion picture film. The top and bottom half of each image alternate in the projector gate, creating arrays of rhythms and patterns. Scott Stark has made more than 75 films and videos since the early 1980s, as well as installations, performances and photocollages. His works have been exhibited at venues including the New York MoMA, the IFF Rotterdam, Image Forum (Tokyo), the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and the 8th and 10th editions of Media City. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. He is webmaster of Flicker (www.hibeam.net), a resource for experimental film and video. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Kurt Kren, Austria, 16mm, 3 min, 1965
“An optical abstraction of an optical abstraction: Kren has simply intercut filmed movements and sections from an Op painting by Helga Philipp: the result is motion opticals.” — Stephen Dwoskin Kurt Kren created his first 16mm film in 1957 and in 1960 made his first serial montage film of many to follow. It is due to these early serial works that Kren is considered one of the most influential pioneers of structural filmmaking. From 1964 through 1966 Kren also made films based on the “material actions” staged by Otto Muehl and Günter Brus. He was Cofounder of the Vienna Institute of Direct Art (1966) and of the Austria Filmmakers Cooperative (1968), a member of the Vienna Secession, the London Filmmakers’ Coop (1967), the New York Film Makers’ Cooperative (1968), P.A.P. Munich (1969) and of the Assembly of Authors in Graz. His work is distributed by sixpackfilm (Vienna), Light Cone (Paris), LUX London, Canyon Cinema (San Francisco) and New York FilmMakers’ Cooperative. Kurt Kren died in 1998.
INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 25 • 9:30 PM
11/65 Bild Helga Philipp
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INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 25 • 9:30 PM
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Correspondences
Nicky Hamlyn, UK (England), 16mm, 15 min, 2011
Made from a set of four abstract paintings by Angela Allen, each of which is based on three complementary colour combinations (redgreen, orangeblue, yellowpurple) plus one black and white pairing. The film’s structure is strictly derived from that of the paintings, which are cellular in form, and based on a 14 x 14 grid. The film is made frame by frame in plannedout, single–frame sequences. I am interested in ideas about translation between media, and the idea of inbetweeness: the ideal experience of the work is generated by the relationship between the paintings and the film, and thus is peculiar to neither, but sits elsewhere. From 19791981 Nicky Hamlyn was workshop organizer at the London Filmmakers’ Cooperative, where he also cofounded the magazine Undercut. He has completed over forty films, videos and installations since 1974. His work has been exhibited at six previous editions of Media City and in recent solo screenings at the Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Double Negative (Montréal) and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. He lives in Lewes.
Vincent Grenier, Canada (QC)/USA, video, 10 min, 2011
Ruminations on cinematic time reversals as versatile continuums. Rediscovering the outdoors as a (stage) set where the natural is made to pose as the artifice. Vincent Grenier has been making films since the early 1970s. His films and recent video works have been exhibited at venues including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museum of Modern Art (New York), and countless international film festivals. His video Tabula Rasa (2004) won 2nd Prize at Media City 11 and he was the subject of a retrospective screening at Media City 12 in 2006. A Québec City native, he now lives in Ithaca, New York and is Chair of the Cinema Department at Binghamton University.
INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 25 • 9:30 PM
Tableaux Vivants
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INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 25 • 9:30 PM
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Portrait de la Place Ville Marie
Alexandre Larose, Canada (QC), S8mm, 3.5 min, 2011
“Both hub and landmark, Montréal’s Place Ville Marie is significant as much for its underground city as its modernist towers. In this film Larose frees the edifice from its foundations, allowing the forms to dance an abstract pas des deux against a dazzling blue sky.” — Images Festival Alexandre Larose studied cinema at Corcordia University in Montréal. He has made five short films since 2004, with screenings at festivals including the IFF Rotterdam, the Belgrade Documentary and Short FF, Images Festival (Toronto) and the 16th edition of Media City in 2010. He lives in Montréal.
Lois Patiño, Spain (GA/MD), video, 4.5 min, 2011 “Nada tan embriagador como la atracción del abismo.” Viaje al centro de la Tierra
— Julio Verne,
One part of Hacia el Origen, a series of video works about “the process of the formation of the Earth”. Seen only from a distance, people explore with an innate curiosity. They are anachronisms. m
Born in Vigo (Galicia), Lois Patiño now lives in Madrid, where he first studied psychology at the Complutense University before completing his cinema studies with a Master in Cinema Documentary at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He has also worked in the studios of artists and filmmakers such as Joan Jonas, Donald Kuspit and Pedro Costa. Since 2007 he has created ten video works which have screened at venues including the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid), Videoformes (ClermontFerrand) and the Jihlava FF. This is his first appearance at Media City.
INTL PROGRAM 4 • FRI MAY 25 • 9:30 PM
Na Vibración da Auga
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INTL PROGRAM 5 • SAT MAY 26 • 7:30 PM
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Dark Garden
Nick Collins, UK (England), 16mm, 8.5 min, 2011
The filmmaker’s garden in winter. Skeletal and silvery plants and their supports appear out of the black of the screen. Since 1976 Nick Collins has been making films which have screened widely at festivals internationally, including recent screenings at Image Forum (Tokyo), the International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, EXiS (Seoul) and the 13th, 16th and 17th editions of Media City. He lives in Lewes,
Fern Silva, USA, 16mm, 6.5 min, 2011
“Plumes dust the arid land, east to west, shapeshifting as they lift in ascension. Something lowers. An ark ran aground where revolution took root: ropes raise stones in baskets. Hearts heavier and lighter than the feather, permitted passage. Tethered or freed, resting from life or dawning anew.” — Charity Coleman Fern Silva studied at the Massachussets College of Art and at Bard College. He has made more than a dozen films since 2005 which have screened at venues including the IFF Rotterdam, the “Views from the AvantGarde” program at the New York Film Festival, the World Film Festival of Bangkok, MoMA P.S.1 and the 17th edition of Media City. He lives in New York.
INTL PROGRAM 5 • SAT MAY 26 • 7:30 PM
Passage upon the Plume
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INTL PROGRAM 5 • SAT MAY 26 • 7:30 PM
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Young Pines
Ute Aurand, Germany, 16mm, 43 min, 2011
Young Pines grew out of three trips to Japan between May 2009 and November 2010. All of the images were filmed before the disaster of the tsunami and Fukushima, but the final editing was done in the following months.
“While the subjects in Young Pines are undoubtedly iconic, it isn’t so much the content that captivates as the way in which the kinetic energy is carried from one shot to another, crafting a precise and purposefully rendered experience […] Aurand reminds us to look rather than be swept away…” — Aily Nas Ute Aurand has made more than thirtyfive films since 1985 which have been widely screened internationally, at venues including Anthology Film Archives (New York), the “Wavelengths” program at the Toronto IFF and at three previous editions of Media City, winning the festival’s Grand Prize in 2009. Since 1989 she has curated numerous events for Kino Arsenal and Filmkunsthaus Babylon in Berlin, and has held teaching positions at institutions in Hamburg and Zürich. She lives in Berlin.
Cho Inhan, Korea (R), video, 4.5 min, 2011 Ball, wind and tree. Surface and shadow.
Cho Inhan holds an MA in Media Studies and Film from the New School, New York. His previous films have screened at EXiS (Seoul); this is his first appearance at Media City. He lives in Seoul.
INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 26 • 9:30 PM
February
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INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 26 • 9:30 PM
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Back View
Vincent Grenier, Canada (QC)/USA, video, 17 min, 2011
The Upper West Side has some of the tallest brick apartment buildings in NYC. The orderly but deserted and aging concrete courtyards, their metal stairs and shafts, register a dramatically changing atmosphere. This is a cinema that seeks to observe, obscure, shorten and protract, and redefine, while remaining open ended. Vincent Grenier has been making films since the early 1970s. His films and recent video works have been exhibited at venues including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museum of Modern Art (New York), and countless international film festivals. His video Tabula Rasa (2004) won 2nd Prize at Media City 11 and he was the subject of a retrospective screening at Media City 12 in 2006. A Québec City native, he now lives in Ithaca, New York and is Chair of the Cinema Department at Binghamton University.
Robert Todd, USA, 16mm, 12 min, 2011
“Feathers, foliage, flowers, tree bark… Undergrowth saunters through the woods, crawls under brush, climbs trees and branches…” — Andrew Rosinski The prolific Robert Todd has made more than fifty films since 1985, while teaching at Emerson College and working as a film editor in Boston. His films have screened at venues including the “Views from the AvantGarde” program at the New York FF, the IFF Rotterdam, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival (winning its Kodak/Colorlab “Best Cinematography” award in 2012 for Undergrowth). At least one of his films has been presented at every edition of Media City since 2004.
INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 26 • 9:30 PM
Undergrowth
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INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 26 • 9:30 PM
Under the Shadow of Marcus Mountain Robert Schaller, USA, 16mm, 5.5 min, 2011
Made with a rudimentary pinhole technique, traces of a mountain landscape are captured in black and white. The structures of our thought filter what we see, and in fact there is no seeing apart from those structures. Our eyes see constantly, but what do we actually notice? That vision is excessive, wasteful, even; in paring down, it becomes both more spare and more concentrated. Robert Schaller received his MFA at the University of Colorado, studying under Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon. His is the founder of The Handmade Film Institute, an organization dedicated to “preserve the knowledge and technical ability necessary for working with the medium of film.” He has made fifteen films since 1993 which have screened at festivals including Ann Arbor, Rotterdam and Images (Toronto), winning several awards from the Black Maria Festival in New Jersey. This is his first appearance at Media City. He is a faculty member at the University of Colorado.
Richard Tuohy, Australia, 16mm, 13 min, 2011
A movement study of a restless hand. Made from one five second shot. Sound constructed from an old French folk tune played on a handcranked music box. This film exploits the visual possibilities of the 16mm contact printer. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Richard Tuohy was an active member of the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group. He suspended his work in film for several years, studying philosophy, music and botany, before returning to the medium in 2005. Since then he has created almost 40 films, first on Super 8 and more recently on 16mm. His films have screened at venues including the Melbourne IFF, EXiS (Seoul), EMAF (Osnabrück), and in 2011 a program of his work toured Europe at venues in Vienna, Paris, Berlin, London and Leeds. This is his first appearance at Media City. He lives in Melbourne where he is the proprietor of nanolab, an artistrun film laboratory.
INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 26 • 9:30 PM
Etienne’s Hand
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ROMAN CARTOGRAPHERS LABELED UNKNOWN REGIONS “HERE BE LIONS”. MY PERFORMANCES PRESIDE OVER THE TAMING OF FEROCIOUS MACHINERY AND OPTICAL SOUND AND WHILE STRUCTURING IN TIME TO DISAMBIGUATE TERRA INCOGNITA. I EMBRACE METHODOLOGICAL BLUNDERS AND CONTINGENCY IN AN ARGUMENT WHOSE CONCLUSION, WHILE UNDEFINED, IS WHOLLY CONCERNED WITH THE OPERATIONAL STRUCTURE OF ORGANIZATIONS THAT TRANSFER INFORMATION, ENERGY AND MATERIAL. IN THE SHADED SPACE WHERE SPECTACLE IS ACCESSORIZED, ANTHOLOGIZED AND ARCHIVED MOTLEY AGENTS OF PROVOCATION ARE NORMALIZED AS PERFORMANCES COMMISSIONED TO THE PUBLIC WITH TANGENTIAL BENEFITS IN A METAPHOR FOR CONSCIOUSNESS. WRESTING FREE OF CAMERA OBSESSION AND ADOPTING AN ASYMPTOTIC RELATIONSHIP TO FILM I RENOUNCE THE NORMATIVE IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNOLOGY WHILE FOREGROUNDING HETERODYNES IN A TELEMETRICAL BEATING OUT OF GAME. MY CONCORDAT OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES AND A REIGN OF TANGIBLE “HARDWARE” OPENS PROVISIONAL FISSURES ONTO THE LIMBUS OF THE ENCEPHALIC BULWARK WHERE A LITTLE MAN SITS IN THE BELLY OF THE HIPPOCAMPUS AS ACTION POTENTIAL CURTAINS RISE AND FALL. LEAVING THOUGHT TO THE INTELLECTUALS AND WITH NO CONCERN OF THE GUINNESSES, REFLEX ARCS ARE CELEBRATED IN A GANGLION OF SHARED SUBJECTIVE STATES SENTINELLED BY NIGHTTIME PERCEIVERS AND ENTERTAINMENT ESTHETES.
THIS IS THE ONLY TERRITORY TRULY WORTHY OF ATTENTION INTL PROGRAM 6 • SAT MAY 26 • 9:30 PM
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THIS HARMONIC CONDENSER ENGINIUM Bruce McClure, USA, 18 min, 2 x 16mm, 2011
Projector 1: Bipacked. A common loop patterned with one base to three frames of emulsion (c = 200 frames) with a negative print with one emulsion removed (c = 199 frames). At the cut there is an interval of 6 base frames. Projector 2: Bipacked. A common loop patterned with one base to three frames of emulsion (c = 200 frames) with a negative print with one base removed (c = 199 frames). At the cut there is an interval of 2 base frames. Bruce McClure is an architect, licensed to practice in New York in 1992. In 1994 he began working with stroboscopic discs as an entry to cinematic pursuits. Since 1995 his films and projector performances have been exhibited at numerous venues including the IFF Rotterdam, the “Views from the AvantGarde” program at the New York FF, and at eleven consecutive editions of Media City since 2002, winning several awards, including the Grand Prize in 2006. He is the recipient of a 2011/12 Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Brooklyn.
above: Bruce McClure's studio on Brooklyn, with a test of This Harmonic Condenser Enginium on screen. below: McClure performs with Throbbing Gristle at the Masonic Hall in Brooklyn, 2006.
DAGIE BRUNDERT • SAT MAY 26 • LATE NIGHT
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Films of Dagie Brundert Germany, S8mm
Media City's closing party and Award Ceremony is enlivened by Berlin's Dagie Brundert, who visits phog lounge to present a program of her Super 8 films, spanning more than 20 years of small gauge eccentricities. Brundert is currently engaged in a GoetheLIFT film residency in Toronto. She last visited Media City with a program of her films at the festival’s 8th edition in 2002. Program includes: 23 Barbiepuppen kippen um (3.5 min, 1988) Die 6 Astronauten (6.5 min, 1992) Bruder & Schwester im Schnee (2 min, 1994) Counting Cats Counting Sheep (2 min, 2005) Nightlight (2.5 min, 2009) 2 Cowboys Smoking (1.5 min, 2011) Gésine et Dagie vont en bateau (2.5 min, 2011) Snorizons (2.5 min, 2011) + other surprises!