Mastermagazine Lichting 2017

2017

Framing Traces

The master Artistic Research in and through Cinema at the Netherlands Film Academy is a two-year international course for a select group of filmmakers and artists with several years of professional experience under their belt.

They are offered time and space to research and experiment in an open-ended trajectory in which thinking and making are one. The programme privileges questions over answers, process over product, experimentation over mere execution and long term effects over short term gain…

During the Artistic Research Week, the graduates present their research and the projects related to it – proposals, films, installations, … These lectures, performances and workshops contextualize the projects and raise questions for further development.

More information about the course: www.masteroffilm.nl and the Artistic Research Week programmme www.filmacademie.ahk.nl/master/

1

2

2

2

INTRODUCTION / FRAMING TRACES

4

KRISTINA DAUROVA

8

SOPHIE DIXON

12

DANIEL DONATO

16

LOUIS HOTHOTHOT

20

WIETSKE DE KLERK

24

GUSTAVO LORGIA GARNICA

28

MARÍA MOLINA PEIRÓ

32

ALEX PERRY

37

EMILIO REYES BASSAIL

40

LISA-MARIE VLIETSTRA

44

JAD YOUSSEF

1

FRAMING TRACES Introduction Framing Traces is the general theme the graduates of 2017 have identified for the public presentation of their research projects. Their artistic research journey over the past two years has had them look for the traces of the past, on the one hand, and for traces we as filmmakers create or leave behind on the other hand. Traces that exist only when they are framed, when they are questioned, taken apart, interpreted. That is: when they’ve been reworked in the subjective process of artistic research.

This year’s Master’s Graduation Show has been renamed the ‘Artistic Research Week’, to underline the focus of the master’s programme and its participants, whom, as a consequence, we’ve chosen to call ‘researchers’ rather than students from now on. Emphasising experimentation – in and through cinema - rather than mere execution, their research has led many to develop projects and forms that extend traditional filmmaking. Some venture into VR and MR (mixed reality), others combine film with theatre and performance and yet others propose methodologies for filmmaking rather than scripts or film plans. That inter- or transdisciplinary aspect of the researchers’ work – often in the form of project proposals as the focus of the course is on process rather than product – is extremely exciting.

It befits the time in which we live but it also demands that rigid divisions in the world of art funding and production are questioned and overcome.

Framing Traces could have been given a subtitle too: ‘On Memory and Ethics’, summarized perhaps by two questions posed: What does it mean to remember? and Who owns the stories we tell? If in the early days of cinema, it was praised as ‘a new source of history’, now, with our growing suspicion towards absolute truths, we’re seeing film more and more as a new source of memory. But what is memory? What is it, where is it, how is it, whose is it, do we want it, can we get rid of it? Those are some of the questions worked on by this year’s researchers. Ethics is another topic at play in the 2017 group: whose stories do we tell? Makers carry a direct responsibility for the stories, performances and emotions that they get entrusted with. The question is: how to deal with that responsibility and how to share it with the audience?

THE GRADUATES AND THEIR RESEARCH PROJECTS Kristina Daurova (Russia), studied philology but quickly expanded her interests to include, not just text, but also dance, or choreography, and cinema, in particular documentary cinema. These three passions led her to investigate a methodology to transform private documentary material, like memories or diaries, into cinema by having her ‘actors’ research that material through their bodies. This method, ‘documentary movement’, has led to the production of a film, Listen to the grass growing and a first project proposal, Virginia W, based on the diary of Virginia Woolf.

2

For many years visual artist Sophie Dixon (UK), has been interested in what happens to people’s memories of places that have ceased to exist.Srbská in the Czech Republic, or Wünschendorf as it was called before, being one such place. Dixon’s research led her to delve into understanding processes of remembering as well as investigating the possibilities of VR (Memori of Loci) and Mixed Reality (The Chorus) to reveal those processes as an experience for the viewer to enter into.

Daniel Donato is a cameraman from Brazil who’s interested in the complex existence and experiences of transvestites.

It’s a complicated and often contradictory mix of questions about the body, sexual and gender identity, aging and the different socio-political contexts, combined with the ethical issues raised when making a film about or with them. Under the heading ‘Looking for the real person’, Donato set up a collaborative film project with Agnes / Harry, resulting in a work in progress called Hello cinta pertamaku (Hello my first love).

Louis Hothothot (China) was an illegal second child under Mao’s infamous ‘one–child policy’, a political decision with enormous and often tragic consequences. After 5 years in the Netherlands Louis Hothothot decided to go back and confront his past. Red Kid Black Kid is a proposal for a documentary project, both personally and politically charged, using his graphic design-background to construct his own cinematic language.

Wietske de Klerk (the Netherlands) has always been intrigued in her filmmaking practice by the institution of the family and the way cinematic space can relate to it. This set of fascinations led her to investigate and understand ‘the family as a mise-en-scène’ and to analyse the tension between one’s personal sense of self and one’s role in the family system. Can I have a memory of you and The Quiet Event are the (in progress) outcomes of that research.

Coming from Colombia, Gustavo Lorgia Garnica has always been interested in the indigenous communities in his country and the question how to create a kind of ‘decolonial’ cinema to present, rather than re-present, these communities’ understanding of the world. He undertook two field trips to the Sibundoy Valley and the Inga community and found not only the main character and collaborator for a potential documentary project – The secret voices of the valley - but also someone to mirror himself, decolonialise his gaze and help him develop his artistic subjectivity.

Alex Perry is a community filmmaker from the UK, whose first venture into cinema was a project featuring his grandfather.

The underlying ethics of the cinematic choices he made then still concern him today, raising fundamental questions about authorship and appropriation in cinema. These questions are part and parcel of his diary experiment, Borrowed Time and the short fiction film Estates that is also still a work in progress.

Emilio Reyes Bassail is a filmmaker and sound artist from Mexico who delved deep into the question of memory and came out with ‘memory as a methodology for filmmaking’.

Using memory, or rather the process of memorising, at every step of the way of making a film – from describing the characters to finding the actors to play them, from finding the locations to deciding what to shoot and how, and even letting the editing process be determined by the act of memory – Reyes Bassail is slowly creating a feature film, Tiempo Crocodilo.

In a painstakingly precise manner Lisa-Marie Vlietstra (the Netherlands) is investigating the myriad relations involved in filmmaking and their effects: the relations between director and actor, actor and character, film and audience, audience and character and last but not least between the director and him- or herself. Vlietstra’s different projects, The Seventh Pain – a film that does not exist and the performance Fractal Story Spaces – ‘Trust me, Touch me, Assume me’, raise the question: use and abuse of power and trust – isn’t that’s what film and art are all about?

Jad Youssef is a filmmaker from Beirut, Lebanon, whose research centered on alienation. An alienation that undoubtedly has socio-political roots but has consequences way beyond. Refusing the distinction between life and cinema, Youssef’s understanding of self-inflicted alienation makes him ‘portray’ characters who lack the morality to engage in whatever may come.

Mieke Bernink Programme director Master of Film / Head of Research Netherlands Film Academy

María Molina Peiró (Spain) is a visual artist with a special interest in post-production whose focus for the past years has been on memory and its inverse: forgetting. The fragility of memory, its neurological relation to imagination, the fear of forgetting that is almost endemic as a result of growing digital means of storing memories, .. these are all elements in Molina Peiró’s plea for an ‘ecology of memory’. In her two ongoing projects, One Year Life Strata (a new media project) and The Refuge (an experimental film), she connects this ecology also to a vertical, geological notion of time.

3

KRISTINA DAUROVA

DOCUMENTARY MOVEMENT Kristina Daurova

Kristina Daurova (Russia, 1988) is educated as a philologist.

She participated in several educational film programmes and different international contemporary dance workshops. Kristina worked as a teacher, a journalist, a translator and as a documentary film programmer and she has been a performer and choreographer.

Kristina explores different ways to represent and to recreate reality driven stories.

She is curious about exploring new ways to construct a narrative. One of her current interest is the use of physical memory and movement. Her previous works include Renaissance, short essay film (2016), Sadness, short film (2015), Masha and Society, dance performance (2013), and In III chapters with an epilogue: Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, dance performance (2012).

research.kristinadaurova.com kristinadaurova.com kristina.siberiadoc@gmail.com

4

After finishing my studies in philology in 2010, I moved to Poland for a year, for a scientific research project based on Polish Cinema (Metaphysics in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s films).

I worked as a documentary film programmer and I have been a performer and a choreographer. During my two years at the master of film I experimented with three of the passions that stem from my background: text, choreography and documentary cinema. There is a language of choreography and a text based language. The language of cinema contains both of them. I’m curious to research how I can drift between these three components of my artistic practice, flowing from one to the other and back; by moving from cinema to choreography, by including a text into each of them, by combining all of them at once.

Our lives are often stranger than any scriptwriter can come up with. This belief explains my obsession with the world of documentary cinema. And in cinema as an art form I respect honesty, simplicity, minimalism and unpredictability.

Admiring the works of Krzysztof Kieślowski and Pina Bausch, I’m always looking for invisible and subconscious connections between the screen/stage and the viewer. I try to discover what kind of chemistry can happen on the screen or stage that will make the viewer feel reflected. What triggers this mirroring process, what tools can be used in order to touch the spectator’s inner world?

This technique is a form of documentary theatre in which plays are constructed from the precise words spoken by the people interviewed about a particular event or topic. This technique allows to deliver rich authentic writing by capturing the natural rhythm of a contributor’s speech, absorbing all the textures, sounds and fabric of life.

I used the principle of the verbatim technique to first transform the outcomes into text and then into movement, according to the needs of the research.

With a group of nine people we worked together to convert personal stories into a physical language, into movement.

We were searching for specific movements to describe all those short stories without using words. At the end of the laboratory period, each participant had a personal physical statement, a short performance based on his or her own memory: a personal story was turned into a movement.

The laboratory method helped me to create an intimacy between me and the ‘memory owner’; it touches on the owner’s inner emotions, activates the physical memory and finds a way to transmit the memory from the text into a movement.

The short documentary film Listen to the grass growing and the project proposal Virginia W. are the next steps in further developing this methodology of documentary movement.

Both are based on personal memories. In the first case, it’s the story of Maria, the main and only protagonist of the film.

In the second case, the storyline is built around the diary of the British writer Virginia Woolf.

METHODOLOGY

MASTER OF FILM 2017

I was born in Russia, but my colleagues appreciate it more when I introduce myself as being ‘from Siberia’. I guess this land still signifies a metaphysical mystery in people’s minds, with an ambiance of silence, tranquility and immensity.

My artistic research, Documentary movement, is based on a philosophy of bodily memory and how it unfolds into movement metaphors. My aim is to construct a methodology of working with private documents (diaries, personal memories, memoirs, autobiographical texts etc.) and their transmission through the body into a cinematographic frame.

The idea is that our body holds many stories. I am working in particular with the physical memory of the owner of the documentary materials, the author of the ‘text’. The work implies a journey into the origins of the materials; it implies text analysis, reconstruction or rethinking of certain situations and finding the specific possibilities and conditions for that.

How can I turn the text of a memory into a cinematographic language? How to frame it? How to film it? Which location would be suitable? And the basis of this process is working with body and movement.

LABORATORY DOCUMENTARY MOVEMENT September 2016, Russia The ‘laboratory’ is a part of my working method. It’s dedicated to collaborating with the owners of the private texts, with their own memories. The laboratory is based on physical improvisation and partly uses the ‘verbatim technique’.

Laboratory “Documentary movement” (September 2016, Russia)

5

Listen to the grass growing

2017, short dance documentary Listen to the grass growing is a short abstract personal memory; sometimes too emotional, sometimes too illogical.

But that’s the way our thoughts are floating in the space of our consciousness. This is the story of Maria. We are observing her at the beginning of her ‘new life’ in a new and unknown place, an unfamiliar house that holds no memories for her yet. Her past belongs to other spaces, far away. She’s exploring this new place with her body, in order to awaken her body’s physical memory and to reach an authentic inner movement. Maria is trying to feel this place; her body is trying to feel this space; her movements, driven by old memories, are filling the void.

In term of the general artistic structure, the life of Virginia will be literally reconstructed in a reverse order – starting with her tragic death and continuing the narrative until the cloudless childhood with her family, thus trying to find our own answer: what was the reason for such a sorrowful end?

Her ”stream of consciousness” literary style will be turned into a cinematographic metaphor of unwinding a film.

Director Kristina Daurova Starring Mariia Vlasova Cinematography Daniel Donato Sound design Sergio González Cuervo Editing Kristina Daurova

Virginia W, KRISTINA DAUROVA

(working title) The life of Virginia Woolf will be used as the basis for a dance performance/film. The diary and letters of ‘the only woman in England free to write what she likes’ will become its framework.

The story of Virginia Woolf is unique material to work with.

She went through war, love, friendship, madness and the rise of a career in art. This palette of human emotions can potentially speak to any viewer. The way Virginia Woolf reflects on her own life inside the text provides perfect guide through her history. And this guide will construct a frame for the actors/dancers personal stories and emotions, which will be the key to constructing a character.

The fact that this character does not exist in real time makes the project more challenging. It allows one to interpret Woolf’s biography more freely and more subjectively and to include in the working process two interpretations of it: the interpretation of the maker (director) and the interpretations of the actors/dancers performing the leading roles.

This project is an attempt to translate the biographical texts of Virginia Woolf into motion by selecting specific gestures, movements and descriptions. This process will, of course, be a subjective interpretation. However, the choreography created by real facts will have an individual significance; all the personages will have an individual ‘identity’ which will be directly connected with the personality of the actors/dancers as they will go through the process of “appropriating” the text and then by “mirroring” and finding connections with their own life experiences. The lab component will play a key role here as well. Each actor/dancer will go through his/her own memories regarding a particular character and a particular fragment of the diary.

6

Stills from the film Listen To The Grass Growing

MASTER OF FILM 2017 Stills from the film Listen To The Grass Growing

7

SOPHIE DIXON

PLACE IN MEMORY I MEMORY IN PLACE re-membering the past Sophie Dixon

Sophie Dixon is a cross-disciplinary artist from the UK. Her recent work uses Virtual and Mixed Reality, as part of her continued enquiry into how we construct narratives about the past. Less interested in portraying an historic truth, her work explores the connections between events across time – an attempt to open up the spaces between the experience of an event, and our later interpretations of it.

Sophie graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art, Kent University, UK, and was awarded the CVAN Platform Graduate award in 2014. She has undertaken residencies in the UK and Europe and has exhibited in solo and group shows, including at CRATE gallery and the Turner Contemporary, UK.

8

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. ― Zadie Smith I have come to understand remembering as a process, a narrative process of accumulation, modification and forgetting.

Remembering is a process which belongs in the present.

The questions at the heart of my work are: how can I uncover places and events which are embodied within this process of remembering and, in turn, how can I reveal the process as an experience into which the viewer can enter?

I’m presenting my research project as an online dossier structured around two key experiments, Memory of Loci and The Chorus. One is an experiment into how places which exist in memory can be re-created and experienced by the viewer in Virtual Reality. The second is a Mixed Reality installation which invites the viewer to explore different stories telling of, and residing in a single place.

After a traumatic incident Mrs Jiraková refuses to return to her childhood home in order to preserve what she describes as her happier memories. During these years, the house has fallen to ruin but how does it exist in her memory? And what stories are held there?

The objective of this experiment is twofold. First, how to uncover events and places in the past through the perspective of those who remember them - specifically when the physical place no longer exists. Second, how to open these places in memory to the viewer as ‘real’ spaces which act as a catalyst for creating new and memorable narratives of the past.

Memory of Loci uses the a process of photogrammetry to recreate No.51, a ruined house in the village of Srbská as remembered in an interview with Mrs Jiraková. In Virtual Reality, the viewer can walk through this place in memory, encountering extracts of audio, video and interacting with digitised items from the archive.

MASTER OF FILM 2017

The experiments take a different approach but are based on content relating to the village of Srbská / Wünschendorf, a personal archive which I have spent ten years uncovering and curating. Both Memory of Loci and The Chorus explore how we remember the past - reflexively implicating the viewer within that narrative process.

1. Memory of Loci : A place in memory

Still from Memory of Loci. A Virtual Reality experience for the HTC Vive Interviewee Mrs Jiraková Interpreter Marcela Šomjáková Created by Sophie Dixon and Edward Silverton Photogrammetry by Sophie Dixon Sound design by Ryan Bentley Artefacts from Srbska.org Built in Unity for the HTC Vive

9

Srbska.org - an Online Archive in Development Srbská, previously named Wünschendorf was once a thriving village with over a hundred houses and many hundreds of residents. In 1946 its entire ethnic German population was exiled, and since that time it has fallen to ruin, disappearing almost entirely from the map.

When I moved there in 2007 I had no idea of its past, of what had been there before, but over the years the sensation of absence which permeates Srbská was for me gradually occupied by fragments of stories, of glimpses into a village which had been ‘dismembered’. To find these stories I have sought the testimonies of those who remember the village as it was, namely a group of elderly Germans, who, exiled from the village in 1946 returned annually between 2009 – 2016.

School photograph showing interviewees as children in Wünschendorf, ca. 1937

SOPHIE DIXON

In parallel to my research I have developed an online archive - srbska.org - a collection of photographs, artefacts, video and documents from this village which has provided a video platform for my experiments.

Czech residents being interviewed in Srbská, 2016

Former residents of Wünschendorf visit the site of their childhood homes in 2013

10

2. The Chorus : Memories in Place The Chorus is a Mixed Reality experiment using the Microsoft HoloLens.

,

What happens to our memories of the past when the physical places they reference threaten to disappear? What happens when multiple stories of the past reside in the same place? Which stories of the past can we believe?

The viewer is invited to become an active participant in re-membering a story of the dis-membered village of Srbská / Wünschendorf, moving through the installation, encountering stories, holographic artefacts and video from the archive in development - Srbska.org.

The Chorus running inside the Microsoft HoloLens (Model: Mai Spring) Interviewees Mrs Jiraková, Ines Müller, Mr Ressel, Mr Scholz Interpreters Marcela Šomjáková, David Lion Voice overs Sophie Dixon, Vanessa Nitsche Location recordings Sophie Dixon Composition Colin Riley HoloLens development Edward Silverton, Colin Dixon Cinematography Daniel Grasskamp Narrative treatment Sarah Naomi Lee Actors Phill Rees (Mr Ressel), Shirley Jaffe (Jiraková), Mrs J..., Bridgett Dixon (Ines Müller) Photogrammetry Sophie Dixon Artefacts from Srbska.org Built in Unity for the Microsoft Hololens

MASTER OF FILM 2017

It is my understanding that places such as Wünschendorf and Srbská exist as a complex lattice of individual subjective experiences. I have attempted to understand this village through the stories of those who remember it - namely those who were exiled in 1946, but also through the stories of residents who occupied their homes in the following years.

The Chorus also presents the viewer with the one story I know best. My own. Over my years of discovering the village I have heard many stories, many voices, uncovered many things and yet I can only perceive them through a story which is always re-created in relation to the present context. A story which is constantly being formulated to incorporate newer fragments of information, making me question the veracity of any one interpretation of the past.

Still from The Chorus.

11

DAINIEL DONATO

LOOKING FOR THE REAL PERSON

Daniel Donato

Daniel Donato is a cinematographer and filmmaker from Brazil. He got his Bachelor degree in Filmmaking at UNISINOS (Brazil, 2009) and his Expert in Cinematography at Centro de Formaciรณn Profesional del SICA (Argentina, 2012). His previous works include Rotina Matinal (Morning Routine, 2009), What you are? (2016) and ร null set, (2016) vimeo.com/danieldonato publication: http://bit.ly/2qTVmWJ

12

RESEARCH My work always starts with a fascination for a person, someone that I would like to get to know. I feel the need to get close to my character, to understand who he or she is.

I believe our identities are not defined, they change constantly. They are complex, and full of contradictions. I want to be able to portray a real person and bring to the surface the contradictions within him/her. Therefore, I focus in my research on the following question: how can I reveal the contradictions within a person and depict a fluid and fragmented identity in film?

In order to work on this question, I developed a practical approach to performing research: ‘research through making and shooting’. I created an environment in which my character and I both felt vulnerable. A setting that helped us to discover ourselves, live together 24/7 and be in constant dialogue.

MASTER OF FILM 2017

I investigated the role of interaction, friendship and intimacy between my character and me in the process of creating a film together. We worked in between ‘life and fiction’: a situation in which we were using the memories of my character, the experiences we were going through and our newly created narratives, as the guiding principles in developing the project. I challenged my subject to reflect upon his/her own life, upon his/her identity, to reveal the ‘real’ within him/her as a person, character and actor. At the same time, I created a situation in which I could project myself and my life onto him/her.

Hello cinta pertamaku / Hello My First Love

13

ARTIST STATEMENT Cinema is a passion. It is a way to discover life. It is a way to discover myself.

I have always felt like I did not belong to anywhere or anyone.

The power of creating atmospheres and characters and to rehearse real life allows me to be the other. It is my escape.

It makes me feel more secure to face real life.

At least we are together in this journey, we are there for each other. Maybe just because we are too afraid to be alone, maybe just because we need each other for that period of time.

So, we just play and like children we go so deep into this journey that it can interfere and change our lives in a way we could have never imagined. There is no distinction between documentary and fiction, pretending and real life. Everything takes place in another world where we can no longer distinguish you from me, where our personalities and identities grow and diminish every second.

DAINIEL DONATO

Are we afraid or just fearless? I still do not know.

I rather think we are brave and we want to create something meaningful. Even if it has to come from our guts. Even if we have to expose ourselves and be afraid again, more helpless than in the beginning. At least we try.

I do not know what happened to you, but at least I am starting to feel that I belong to something that I still cannot describe.

My work is about people. My work is about love. My work is about loneliness.

Hello My First Love

14

PROJECT

Starring Hans Aturut, Agnes Geneva, Mauro Soares

MASTER OF FILM 2017

Hello cinta pertamaku (Hello My First Love) is a mid-length film which functions as a test case for working on my research question. The film was developed by working and living together with Harry / Agnes, two identities which are both part of the same person. It’s a film about love and loneliness, in which the young man Harry goes to Lisbon to look for Arief, his first love from when he was fifteen. During his search, Agnes appears and tries to relive this love experience again. However, these two identities cannot coexist, either Harry or Agnes has to leave.

Director Daniel Donato Script Daniel Donato, Lucas Camargo de Barros Cinematographer Daniel Donato Editor Lucas Camargo de Barros

Hello My First Love

15

RED KID BLACK KID

LOUIS HOTHOTHOT

Louis Hothothot

Louis Hothothot was born in China in 1986. He studied graphic design, video art, and animation at the China Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing from 2004 to 2008. He enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts program at the Dutch Art Institute in 2012 and graduated in 2014.

He works as a multimedia artist combining video, visual arts, graphic design and performance. His current research focuses on film narrative and cinematic language.

In 2013 Louis Hothothot started a long-term collaboration with French performance artist and choreographer ArtĂŠmise Ploegaerts. He regularly shows his works in museums, galleries, and theatres. In Amsterdam, he has exhibited in the EYE Film Museum, Dansmakers, the Oostblok Theaterand in the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

Louis Hothothot regularly publishes his art and film reviews in media outlets, such as the Financial Times and in the magazines Art & Design, Art World and New Graphic. https://louishothothotart.wordpress.com/

16

Art is much more than a tool that can liberate personal pain, it is also the connection between personal pain and collective pain. The Chinese American writer Ha Jin argues: Without a lasting literary work, the sufferings and losses will fade considerably in the collective memory, if not altogether. What was needed was one artist who could stay above immediate social needs and create a genuine piece of literature that preserved the oppressed in memory.

Yes, to preserve memory is the key function of art. But it serves not only to combat historical amnesia, but also lies.

Our environment is full of lies, fed by politics, ideologies, propaganda and so on. These lies try to force people to obey the authorities and shut down the space for questioning.

It is therefore imperative for art to strive to think freely; artists must fight political oppression.

In my own art, the subjective narrative, personal memory and use of different media are key tools in my attempt to challenge the voice of authority. Looking ahead in my career, beyond my present projects, I have tried to summarize my artistic identity: as a son, I desire to move away from the influence of my father; as a black son, I desire to challenge authority’s oppression; as an immigrant, I desire to blur cultural boundaries; as a citizen, I desire to escape ideological control; as an artist, I desire to think freely.

MASTER OF FILM 2017

Thanks to Mao’s one-child policy, I came into this world as an illegal, second child and lived like a refugee in my own country. As a ‘black’ kid (I use this term to describe such illegal Chinese children), I was confused about whether my father loved me or not because he wasn’t very nice to me when I was young, and I felt guilty because he had had to bear substantial expenses in fines, worth almost a 3-year salary.

At the age of 30 I felt the desire to liberate myself from this sense of guilt, to repair the alienated family relationship and fix the gap between my past and present. So, I decided to travel to China to visit my family.

My family moved to a new apartment in Beijing a few years ago. In this new environment, as we gradually began interacting again, the relationship with my family got better.

I spoke with my mother, discovered what happened during the time of my birth, and started a conversation with my father with whom I have been in conflict for more than 20 years. Slowly and carefully, I am rediscovering my past, while beginning to understand my father and his relationship to Mao and the politics of his generation.

17

LOUIS HOTHOTHOT 18

In Red Kid Black Kid, I re-read my family archive, re-visit my birth place, re-think the time of my birth, re-discover my past, re-construct my identity.

Therefore “Re-“ is my methodology. I am addicted to working on this project, it is joyful because it recreates my past and recreates history The Return is an adventure! The past is the future!

19

MASTER OF FILM 2017

WIETSKE DE KLERK

THE FAMILY AS A MISE-EN-SCÈNE Wietske de Klerk

Wietske de Klerk graduated in 2012 from the Art academy St. Joost in Breda. In her graduation film Continuüm she concentrated her research on family (the theme of the film) the acting and the architecture of the location. Especially this last element, architecture, is used on a metaphorical level in Continuüm, querying the medium of film. Both architecture and the notion of the family are concepts central to De Klerk’s current work and research, leading to an understanding of ‘the family as a mise-en-scène’.

Her previous works include Love and Engineering (interactive film, VPRO), Parre (short fiction, film by the sea&Columnfilm) and her graduation film Continuüm which is archived in the EYE film collection.

Research Publication: www.family-as-a-mise-en-scene.com www.wietskedeklerk.nl

20

For me, the family is a dynamic system. As is suggested by the ideas of Family Systems Theory, I conceive of the family as a network of power relations, which defines itself and redefines itself over and over, each time any member introduces new thoughts. These mechanisms of interaction are present, yet to most of us virtually invisible. I am fascinated by the dissonant fact that the family appears to be a self-reconstituting and adaptable apparatus, but is in fact governed by strict social roles and rules. The aim of my work is to demonstrate the nature of this familial apparatus.

Spatiality plays an important role in both my work and my working methodology, especially regarding the mechanisms through which families interact. When I start writing a scene, I begin by mapping it out in space. Through researching the needs and thoughts of a character, new movements and positions are defined in relation to cinematic space. By showing the constellation of characters, one shows the mise-en-scène of the family.

In the filmmaking process, mise-en-scène is often undertaken as a primarily technical step. But for me, exploring the dynamics of the family by means of constructing and reflecting upon their physical placement in a scene has always been a vital and essential working method, through which I question my own ideas.

In order to reach my aim, I asked myself: how can I reveal the many layers of subjectivity that determine the mise-en-scène? Firstly, I observe the real familial events of other people that occur in the world around me. Secondly, I construe my observations in terms of my role as the filmmaker who constructs the scene, like a puppeteer playing with dolls. Thirdly, I research personal perceptions of the mise-en-scène through the points of view of the characters I have written.

MASTER OF FILM 2017

When I was a little girl I used to play with dolls, and I would imagine a whole world for them to inhabit. My bed and the chairs formed a landscape within which I could play out little tragedies or comedies with the dolls as characters. I did this from around the age of six to ten; I loomed above the scenery, controlling the placement of the dolls. Sometimes I would lie down on my belly so that my eyes were level with the dolls, staring at the scenery I had created. I definitely had a favourite doll: sporty Barbie. What is going on? I would whisper while my face was close to hers. As she told me her thoughts about the other Barbie’s and about how deeply she wanted to sit next to Ken – Barbie’s male counterpart – I decided to rearrange the composition of the characters and create a new set-up. A new mise-en-scène.

Most of the time – as is often the case with little children – the dolls I was playing with would end up resembling a family. From the innocent fictional world I established as a child, to the present day, I have always been playing with the idea of family.

Stills from the documentary project Can I have a memory of you

The moment I laid down on my belly and heard Barbie’s desire to be close to Ken, I realised that no static, definitive situation can possibly exist. The situation shifts the moment I create a point of view, filled with thought and intention. In that moment, my mise-en-scène was born.

21

The Quiet Event video installation Three different storylines featuring three family members during a single event. The constellation of the points of view during the event and its simultaneousness are for me the core of this project. I want to reconstruct the mise-en-scène of this event from the different points of view, using the tools I have researched over the last two years. Reframing by projecting and using the space to spatially reconstruct the event, which will create a new mise-en-scène.

Director Wietske de Klerk First AD Rieks Soepenberg Cinematographer Twan Peeters Focuspuller Niek Groven Sound Sam Huisman, Jaap Smallegange Gaffer Simon Ruesink Assistant gaffer Louis Gambardella Production Jasinka Rosenmüller Make-up Marina Macciocu Costumer Esther Edenburg Rainmachine Marnix Bloemberg, Olivier Rijnsaards Editor Jasper Verkaart Sound designer Sam Huisman Starring Hidde Simons (father), Jet Pagnier (mother), Nick Slokkers (Nils)

WIETSKE DE KLERK

With many thanks to Margiet and Romko de Kan, Marja de Kan, Nicolette en Niek de Klerk, Hetty Vermeer, Joost Kuiper, Tjoonk GVL, Frederik Duerinck, Marijn de Zeeuw, Eccotemp Martijn Bonnema, LightUnit, Timo Geschwill and Eugenie Jansen.

Stills ‘The Quiet Event’

22

23

MASTER OF FILM 2017

VISUAL ANTHROPOETRY

GUSTAVO LORGIA GARNICA

Towards an artistic approach of indigenous knowledge Gustavo Lorgia Garnica

Gustavo Lorgia Garnica is a Colombian filmmaker, visual artist and researcher. He has a BA in Social Communication with emphasis on audiovisual media. During his career, he has participated in major fiction film projects and he has worked together with different indigenous groups of Latin America, mainly the Huichol people in Mexico and the Nasa and Inga communities from Colombia. His dance film Bridges and other string theories was selected for exhibition circuits in the U.S.A., Brazil, Argentina and the Netherlands, among others.

cosmicreflectionsblog.wordpress.com vimeo.com/kinokopf gustavolorgia88@gmail.com

24

My artistic research departs from the personal belief that the birth of film was an anthropological gesture itself. Once the Lumière brothers stood in front of the their factory and filmed the workers leaving, they started a tradition in which the camera serves as a medium not only to depict and narrate the others, but also to understand and get closer to the experience of otherness. In the latter sense, it was a very successful gesture: the alchemy of light transformed into reality, so the life of the other - who is also us and is always different from us, as Octavio Paz suggests is transmitted through a new kind of myth...

In a mystical zone between the Andes Mountains and the Amazon Rainforest, I found Mercedes Jacanamijoy, an elder woman from the Inga indigenous community. As an intimate bond was woven between the two of us through the time, space and words we shared together, she agreed to be the main character of a film proposal composed of poetic stories, images and sounds, all of them inspired by the millenary legacy of indigenous culture. This encounter was, for me, the main outcome of the process: I didn’t just find a character for my project, but I found another to mirror myself, decolonize my gaze and recreate my hidden indigenous roots to further cultivate my artistic subjectivity.

MASTER OF FILM 2017

If anthropology is intrinsically bound to the practice of film, what is the meaning and significance of visual anthropology? Given that the laws that the social sciences have thus far discovered about what determines human behavior, present me with more questions than answers, I propose to frame my artistic practice, instead, within the concept of what I would call visual anthropoetry; positioning poetry as a primarily intuitive and symbolical attempt to grasp the experience contained in the encounter with the other, and the self-knowledge gathered in the encounter with the unknown.

In this sense, I avoid approaching indigenous communities as subjects of study, but try instead to approach them as ancestral sources of inspiration and values that are deeply rooted in the territory where I was born and raised.

Yet there is an aspect from the realm of visual anthropology that I find quite significant as an artistic method, which is ethnography as a practical discipline. It is a category that I feel is more suitable to the cinematic language, since its linguistic roots suggest graphos instead of logos as a way to reach a certain group of people, as an effort to narrate them.

This is the reason why my research is mainly developed by a series of ethnographic journeys through the south of Colombia, for me to experiment with the relationship of the camera to the indigenous peoples in a place in my own country that I did not know before. This encounter ended up creating a new universe of overwhelming, complex and multilayered realities that propelled the recognition of my personal identity within cultural diversity.

The Secret Voices of the Valley

25

Kimsa Maki Iaku / Three Hands in the River

GUSTAVO LORGIA GARNICA

Written by Mercedes Jacanamijoy and Gustavo Lorgia Garnica Iaku ñambi Kausaipa ñambi Takiikunata munachii Kamba pacha tarispa Muskuikunata sakispa Ariksina puñukuspa Punchakuna ialichispa -ñi kallarii ñi puchukaiKuiaspa chagramanda tujtukunata

Artery of water Pathway of life The lullabies provoked by your encounter with the world unleash my dreams when I sleep like a volcano after devoting my days -without beginning or endcaressing the flowers of my garden.

Kamba patapi pichaspa iuiaikunata Uiakunimi sachakunapi kamba miski samaikuna Maikan tunkinalla iuksiskapi Chakchailla rigsiskapi

As I clean my thoughts by your side I hear the sweet secrets of the mountains where the mystery of your origin hides an origin only known by stars.

Nuka achalakuna, kikinkuna Niwankuna tukuimanda muiurii Nukanchipa ruraikunaua michaii Imasami paikuna kuiankuna nukanchipa kaugsaita Imasami kaugsaikuna achalakuna sakirkakuna Tulpapi kaugsanakuskata

My ancestors, from the stars plead me through their universal dance to protect you with my steps such as they embrace our existence through the millenary myths that live within the heart of fire.

Amarunpa waka iachai Maituku rimaikuna mandachar iachangi Kamba iuiaikuna man tukuringapa?

Sacred serpent of knowledge how many stories are witnessed, by your infinite streams?

Mercedes Jacanamijoy

In the city, he was homesick for those first evenings on the prairie when, long ago, he had been homesick for the city. He made his way to his professor’s office and told him that he knew the secret, but had resolved not to reveal it.

“Are you bound by your oath?” the professor asked.

“That’s not the reason,” Murdock replied. “I learned something out there that I can’t express.”

“The English language may not be able to communicate it,” the professor suggested.

“That’s not it, sir. Now that I possess the secret, I could tell it in a hundred different and even contradictory ways. I don’t know how to tell you this, but the secret is beautiful, and science, our science, seems mere frivolity to me now.”

After a pause he added: “And anyway, the secret is not as important as the paths that led me to it. Each person has to walk those paths himself.”

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Ethnographer”

26

The Secret Voices of the Valley

community, Colombia

Film Project Proposal

Mercedes Jacanamioy, an elder woman of the Inga indigenous community in Colombia, explores the language of nature through a poetic journey across her territory in which she interacts with the animals, the stones, the rivers, and other live spirits that invite her to permanently recreate the extended oral tradition of her ancestors.

MASTER OF FILM 2017

The Secret Voices of the Valley

Past Imaginaries / Future Images Multimedia Installation

This installation is based on colonial footage from the EYE Film Archive about indigenous people from around the world and the images I made during my field trips to the Sibundoy Valley, the territory of the Inga indigenous community in Colombia. In this piece, I’ve performed a colorful intervention on traditional elements from indigenous peoples that are getting lost due to the accelerated rhythm of modern times, contrasting the monochromatic texture of the images.

I subtract these images from the virtual space of film and place them again into a physical medium, as a reflection on how digital technologies are affecting both memory and its relationship to our material environment.

Institutional support EYE Film Museum Sound Recording Camilo Martínez Photography Daniel Donato Sound Design Sergio González Cuervo Cinematography Andrés Bernal Sanchez Special thanks to the Inga indigenous

Past Imaginaries / Future Images

27

THE VERTICAL HORIZON

MARÍA MOLINA PEIRÓ

Towards an ecology of memory María Molina Peiró

María Molina Peiró is a Spanish filmmaker and audio-visual artist. She works in an open format mixing film, animation and digital media. She started her career combining video and new technologies. One of her early works Silogism was chosen to participate in the International Festival Art Futura. Since then she has been working on a wide range of music videos, fiction, documentaries and advertising. Beyond these commissioned works, she has also had art works shown in international festivals and museums, including MACBA (Barcelona), EYE Film Museum, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC) and Centre de Cultura Contemporània Barcelona (CCCB). Her portfolio includes collaborations with filmmakers and choreographers like Julio Medem (Caótica Ana) and Dani Panullo (Camel).

Since 2015, María Molina Peiró has focused on a research project where she explores the intersections between different memory systems (Human Memory, Digital Memory, Historical Memory and Geology).

28

A RESEARCH PROJECT INTO THE FEAR OF FORGETTING IN THE DIGITAL AGE We have never been so aware that our present will be a memory in the future.

Revolutions taking place today in different fields, from neuroscience to digital memory, are affecting our lives in profound ways. They’re changing the way we understand human memory and create and preserve our memories. All these changes are creating a deepening awareness of memory in our society. However, this awareness also brings with it a growing fear of forgetting and being forgotten.

The fear of forgetting is at the core of human nature. But nowadays this fear seems to be making deeper inroads into our psyche. Most of us have been directly or indirectly affected by some form of memory illness around us. These diseases open deeply troubling questions about what constitutes human identity and emphasise the importance of memory for selfhood.

The goal of my artistic research is twofold. On the one hand, to create a reflection and awareness about our irrational fear of forgetting and our obsession with the past. And on the other, to think actively about how positive forgetting could be, in individual and collective terms, as a way to overcome our fear.

The scope of my research has led me to raise very distinct questions, just as a brief example:

MASTER OF FILM 2017

But this fear is also reinforced by a hyper cognitive society that places great emphasis on rational thinking and secularisation. The promise of an afterlife has vanished through empirical arguments. Has memory become the new soul?

— Is the duty to forget sometimes as important as the duty to remember?

— How does digital memory reshape the view of our past?

— Is our ability to remember the past directly related to our ability to imagine the future?

— If we have access to our past at any given moment, to what extent can we get rid of it and look ahead?

29

One Year Life Strata New Media Art Project

One Year Life Strata is a new media project that emerged from an experiment I started in 2015. Throughout the year, I wore a camera that takes photos every thirty seconds. After impulsively recollecting my daily life during one year the experiment became a project on digital forgetting.

The project is composed of 4 steps: 1. Digitalisation: The use of the camera for one year.

MARÍA MOLINA PEIRÓ

2. Virtualisation: The vast archive of images collected during 2015 is shown on an online platform that offers a different representational form of the digital photo archive. This visualisation permits a single vision of the overview of the images, creating a digital strata section of my year, while the individual images are condemned to oblivion.

One Year Life Strata

30

3. Datalisation: One Year Life Strata is not interested in the individual images but in the data that we can get from them, simulating Google Modus Operandi. The data overview is transformed into a 3D topographic profile.

4. Materialisation: The data’s topographic profile is printed in 3D. The external disk that contains the photo archive is stored inside the sculpture. The topographic profile is then transformed into a time-capsule that can only be opened after sixty years, hinting at the possible obsolescence of the archive´s digital format. The sculpture is therefore born with the spirit of an archaeological remain or fossil.

Concept and design María Molina Peiró Creative developer Frederic Brodbeck

The Refuge

Proposal for an experimental film, work in progress What elements of our identity continue when memory disappears?

In The Refuge a granddaughter becomes obsessed with her grandmother’ s dementia delirium, making her wonder if her illness revealed a buried self she never knew. The dialogues between the grandmother and granddaughter - some remembered and some imagined - lead us to the granddaughter’s search to understand what part of the self remains when memory vanishes.

In this experimental film, documentary language and fiction are interwoven to create a labyrinth of mirrors, full of questions about memory and forgetting.

Director screenwriter: María Molina Peiró Cinematographer Beatriz Pagés, María Molina Peiró Trailer Editor Sabine Maas, María Molina Peiró Sound Sergio González Cuervo

MASTER OF FILM 2017

“This life is a bore; for real fun...war!”

The Refuge

31

BORROWED TIME – Thoughts on Authorship and the ethics of appropriation

ALEX PERRY

Alex Perry

Alex Perry is a filmmaker from Manchester in the North of England.

His work tends to focus on marginalized communities and the atomization of society in general, with themes of dislocation and isolation central to much his output.

He started off doing music videos and taking the odd corporate gig, but moved down south to study just as a possible career was beginning to take shape. After a difficult spell in college he became disillusioned by a perceived lack of integrity in the creative industries, and retrained as a chef. Four years later, problems with the law and a failed relationship saw him move back up north, where he again changed direction, learning on the job as a sign-maker for 5 years.

He brings these experiences to bear on his practice as a community filmmaker. With an almost pathological eye and ear for authenticity, his research on the Master’s programme is an evolving essay about struggle and the performance of reality.

Vimeo.com/alexiperry Research publication: www.alexiperry.com/borrowedtime

32

BORROWED TIME To live on borrowed time is to be aware of a finite resource evaporating inexorably. The flight towards mortality can render you with a sense of urgency; impending deadlines exacerbate the sense that now is an opportunity not to be repeated. The moment we exist in also has a value ascribed to it by what came before.

Borrowed time also has a second meaning, time becomes a unit that can be traded and swapped in the form of experience. I literally borrow the time other people invested and use that authenticity to add texture and depth to a fictive work.

APPROPRIATION There is a wealth of experience from which we can draw to communicate an idea or feeling effectively. If the language I use seems to cheapen or commodify the history of others, that is a conflict I am trying to explore in my research - to constantly check that if I am to use this other perspective, I do so in good faith, and in a way that is both respectful and earned. In this way I hope to acknowledge the consequences of my practice and explore motivation sufficiently so that I can proceed in it with a clear conscience.

As a community filmmaker I hoped to provide a platform for people to tell their stories, and in some ways my role was less creative than administrative. Moving to Amsterdam meant disconnecting from these communities and I began to pursue fiction writing as a way to explore similar themes, but in what I hoped would be a more nuanced and effective way than the single-track subjectivity of some of my earlier work.

By assuming the role of the author, however, I realized that I had a different relationship and therefore responsibility to the films I was making. I became anxious about charges of exploitation and the issue of faith was a constant counterpoint to my creative impulses. It created a feedback loop of critical reflection and evaluation, every strophe or sentence a miniature crisis of confidence that demanded probing and sustained interrogation.

1930s and later appropriated by president Kennedy, among others). I liked the concept, and its sophisticated employ garnered much sage approval among my peers.

Like many people, I regurgitated a lot of this received wisdom throughout my formative years, and it was only as I matured that the responsibility I held for my opinions and beliefs became apparent. I was surprised and disappointed when some of the notions I had taken to be sacrosanct collided with immutable reality. I withdrew and became cautious, choosing words and definitions carefully.

I learned to question my understanding. Doubt plays a big part in my practice. Self-reflection and critical analysis are not just exercises, but rather a daily crisis of conflicting priorities. But this is not a document about ideas so much as relationships and what we do with information. Due diligence demands a certain amount of doubt. Certainty is recklessly absolute. The tension between affirmation and questioning forms the fertile crisis of my enquiries.

JOURNAL / FICTION Using my personal archive, and accessing this material in the context of an ongoing journal film essay, I am trying to explore how I relate to that which I write about. This is not to say that I draw inspiration for the fiction from the archive, or that the basis of my final project can be found among this material; there is no direct causality. Rather, this journal can be seen as a laboratory in which I am constantly investigating ethical quandaries and how they relate to my practice.

To rub against myself the notions of loneliness and loss, grief and regret, and in this perpetual movement of affirmation and questioning create the conditions for sustained and enlightened critical enquiry. It is a simmering stew of conflicting histories and narratives, through which I hope to reconcile some of the antagonisms of appropriation.

MASTER OF FILM 2017

“You always have to have a base. If you haven’t got a base to work from and you’re working out of a suitcase, the handicapping is so great, so huge. You can’t gather any bits that you need together, because the suitcase is not big enough for a start, is it. You’ve no roots where when things do go against you, you can go and hide away. You’ve got no roots to go and hide in or under. And life becomes very, very hard. Very tough.”

— Samuel Perry

I’m often reminded of a simple quote that seems to describe the basic philosophy behind creative writing: Fiction is Freedom. The implication is obvious, and it’s a message that I welcome for its optimism and simplicity, but my brief experience of turning an idea into something more tangible has profoundly challenged that notion. Or as my Granddad would often say: it has to be more complex than that.

CRISIS / CRITICAL THINKING When I was a young boy my dad once told me that, in Chinese culture and language, they use the same word for crisis and opportunity. I passed it off as my own wisdom for many years hence, never bothering to check if it was true (it isn’t but was popularized by American self-help gurus in the

Borrowed Time

33

Borrowed Time In my research/journal film Borrowed Time (work in progress) I use a family archive to explore my own subjectivity as the author of fictional stories grounded in a familiar, authentic reality. By inviting the spectator into these dilemmas, and then challenging the status of that relationship, and the material itself, I hope to raise questions about subjectivity and ownership. The material also acts as a form of confession, through which I seek permission to write freely, without so many moral burdens or constraints. This is not necessarily intended for release, but as a laboratory in which I rub against the notions I’m writing about in the final project.

Borrowed Time

Director Alex Perry Starring Alex Perry, Luise Krizek, Samuel Perry, Maya Perry, Ivor Perry, Helen Bowen, Lee Jackson

Estates

ALEX PERRY

My final project, Estates (work in progress), is a short fictional drama about two women whose lives collide, and in this moment of crisis find solace and support. It began as an exercise in fiction writing, with the script providing a vessel for a lot of my research themes, but over time the film has changed quite a lot, narrowing in focus. It remains at its core a story of loss, love and forgiveness.

Director Alex Perry Cinematography Daniel Donato Sound Sergio GonzĂĄles Cuervo Editor Courtney Sherives Starring Alie Beck, Kristina Daurova

Borrowed Time

34

Estates

Borrowed Time

MASTER OF FILM 2017

Estates

Estates

35

THE MEMORY MACHINE

EMILIO REYES BASSAIL

Memory as a methodology for filmmaking

Emilio Reyes Bassail

Bachelor in Communications with specialisation in Film Universidad Iberoamericana, 2012.

Emilio Reyes Bassail (Mexico City, 1987) is a filmmaker and sound artist. His work, always intersected by the threads of history, memory and narrative, comprises of experimental video, radio art pieces, sound installations, illustration, photography and film. His career started as a radio producer in public radio and as an editor for the independent art magazine Bustrรณfedon. From there on, he started working as a film editor and directorof independent films, online series and advertising. Parallel to his work as a filmmaker, Reyes Bassail is a composer and has scored the music for more than a dozen films.

www.emilioreyesbassail.com Project: www.memoryforfilm.com

36

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to control our memories at will? To be able to forget painful or traumatic events from our past and to remember things that we thought were long forgotten? How would our everyday experience and our relationship towards our past change if we were given limitless control over memory? How would our identities be transformed?

Surely something new could be bred out of this power, some new attitude or perspective, maybe some special kind of images.

Over the centuries people have devised several methods to tame the memory beast: classical antiquity organised words and concepts in memory palaces, eastern mysticism developed meditation methods to remember everything, autobiographies were written to keep a trace of personal narratives during romanticism, etc. Every society faces the dilemmas of remembering and forgetting with their own set of tools and perspectives. I wonder, which contemporary tools could allow us to control our memory? Could we build a memory machine?

Thinking about contemporary tools, one would immediately be pushed to think in computers and information. Yet memory, despite all of its associations with information and data, cannot be considered a machine. Memory will never be a hard drive or an archive where elements are stored and retrieved for consultation. We know from studies in mind processes that memories are perpetually in a state of transformation, they change with time, they are always influenced by present circumstances and they rarely keep an accurate trace of the past. If memory is not a storage space, how can we conceptualize memory?

We only keep memories of memories. Every time we remember, something new is formed; the past is in flux within our conscience. Memories embody the weight of affects and emotional resonance of events. Memories stand as something independent of reality or fiction, they are a thing on their own. To remember is to create, to produce something new. Memory is an act of imagination in which we fool ourselves to believe that what we imagine really did happen. Can we think of memory as a production process? And if so, how can this process be controlled and materialised?

Memory is not a machine, indeed. Yet, I believe I can build a machine that works like memory, that embodies its mental processes as core mechanisms in every step of the production process. Can we transform a mental process into an industrial apparatus? My challenge was to build a memory machine, to develop a method, a series of processes that

could make visible the way memories operate: visualisation as a first step towards understanding.

I believe, against traditional convention, that memory is not something that exists only within the mind: since memory is a process, it can be materialised. Would it be insane to say that writing a memory is in fact an action of memory? We don’t write memories; we remember through writing. The act of giving form to the formless, of giving semantic structure and assigning words to experiences is an act of memory, of remembering. We can remember through other methods too: we sing a song from childhood and the words, the way the mouth is compelled to form another syllable, the movement, the dance, they are all different forms of remembering. If the classical antiquity visualised memory as a palace, would it be insane to think of it as a film? Could I externalise/ materialise my memory through the filmmaking apparatus?

TWEAKING THE FILMMAKING APPARATUS The proposed method/machine works like this: memory is used as a mechanism that triggers every step of the production process. I tweaked the whole filmmaking apparatus, understood as a paradigm for the production of images and narratives, to incorporate memory in it. I started from writing a series of memories, then I met with an illustrator who did spoken portraits of persons and spaces from my past - images that were later used to cast actors and scout for locations.

In terms of mise-en-scène, I developed a technique in which, through reenactments and improvisation, a dialogue of memories is triggered. I used the actor’s individual experiences and memories to guide the actions and then I edited the whole footage through a series of memory associations.

In short, for every decision that I had to make as a director/ producer/editor, I relied on my memory as a guiding device.

The purpose of this was to make visible the mechanisms of remembering and forgetting.

MASTER OF FILM 2017

Around 500 BCE the poet Simonides approached Themistocles to make him an offer: he willingly would teach the latter the art of memory, a technique he developed to remember everything you could remember. Themistocles, unimpressed, replied to the offer: What’s the use of an art of memory?

Since I remember things that I wish I wouldn’t remember and I cannot forget what I would rather forget, it would be wiser to learn the art of forgetting. Themistocles didn’t live to see the rise of print, photography or film. Nonetheless, as a posthumous offering, I can say that I may have found a way to accomplish what Themistocles so badly desired.

The resulting images are hard to put in words. They seem to be suspended from the pressure of entropy, of narrative, of time. It became impossible to know what happened first and what next. All the exaggerations, ambiguities and contradictions inherent to memory were revealed: continuity is lost, inconsequential events were given epical weights, plots were formed through the union of unrelated affairs, things were forgotten and things were remembered.

The frame, within this context, became a device of memory: the relationship frame/off-frame turned into a question of remembering and forgetting. Which elements will be fundamental to form an image of the past and which will be erased? What is the tone and setting of a memory? All of these questions were put forward to reveal the inner processes of the mind.

The method allowed me to reconstruct whole events from spare rags of time. For example, from just two or three words that I remembered, this machine would render a complete 20-minute dialogue. The locations, tone and behaviour of elements within the memory could be reconstructed. On the other hand, every time that the camera started rolling, the original memories would be completely overwritten.

37

Tiempo Cocodrilo

38

EMILIO REYES BASSAIL

Let’s say that you want to remember a day at the beach with your father that occurred in your early childhood. You keep only small pieces of the event, perhaps the colour of the light, maybe a word or two that you overheard, maybe the sounds. The information you keep of this valuable moment is so scarce that it would be almost impossible to narrate.

Let’s imagine you put these elements into the machine/ method I built. As the process goes on, you start seeing the exact positions of every element in space, you start remembering every dialogue, you see everything as if it was a movie. Nonetheless, after the process is over, the original memories that you inserted into the machine will be lost forever. This is the price you pay for the use of the memory machine.

If we accepted that to remember is always to imagine, all false gods would fall. Nobody would fight on tv to proclaim ‘I am the way and the truth’. We would be more honest with ourselves and our defects. We would inhabit memory like kids who play in a park for the first time: everything is new, everything is seen for the first time and despite it all, we run, we stretch and we fall with the confidence of knowing that we have lived in that place since forever.

— Oswaldo Truxillo

MASTER OF FILM 2017

What would be the purpose of a memory machine like this?

I believe that it can mainly be used as a tool to embody authority over our past. If memory is an act of creation, which new narratives could we form if we are given the right tools? What would happen if I offer this method to victims of traumatic events? Could this method be formulated as a kind of therapy? In historic terms, could we use this method to reveal the feeble skin of historical accounts? In terms of film education, which new kinds of film could be produced from this method? Could we use memory as a founding stone for the development of personal film languages? For me, putting forward a method that unveils memory as an act of imagination is a step forward towards the recognition of human freedom; it is a political act.

TIEMPO COCODRILO This methodology rendered a film, Tiempo Cocodrilo, which is currently in post-production. It is a test case that uses memory as a methodology for filmmaking. My idea with this film was to materialise my own memory, to take my own individual case as a ground for experimentation.

On the other hand, the whole methodology and the experimental scaffolding that led to the film were documented in a research publication (memoryforfilm.com). These first steps are a way of making public these tools and initial experimental results. I believe that understanding memory as an act of creation can be a useful step towards a better understanding of cognition, identity and the interplay between reality and imagination in our everyday lives.

For the current exhibition at DAS Graduate School (Grootlab) I’m presenting footage from this first test case, Tiempo Cocodrilo, reframed as an installation. If memory changes every time we remember and the format in which we remember changes the content of the narration, what would happen if I change the format of display? What would it mean to remember through several screens, through an installation? This is an experiment that tries to find more ways in which this research can be reframed. Also, it is a way of showing the relationship between the methodology and the results in a simple manner. In the projections, you’ll see how the different iterations of the same memory contradict each other, how the method bred a specific kind of image and how all of it fits into an individual narrative.

Tiempo Cocodrilo

Direction, production and editing Emilio Reyes Bassail Cinematography Anibal Barco & Emilio Reyes Bassail Lline production Ilana Coleman & Nicolás SantamarÍa Production design Giuliana Fopianni & Edith Sieck Sound recording Bernardo Loce & Adán Espinoza Scout Mariel Calderón Starring Ulises Martínez (father), Carlo Martínez (son), Carlos Maldonado & Alexandra Bravo (lovers), Omar SM (illustrator) and Emilio Gómez Ruiz (hypnotist) With the support of FONCA, CONACYT and Fundación Júmex Arte Contemporáneo.

39

INTO THE BLEED Forcing the Third Entity

LISA–MARIE VLIETSTRA

An obsessive disquisition on the borders of trust, the act of pretending and the paranoia of permanent disbelief

Lisa-Marie Vlietstra

Lisa-Marie Vlietstra (The Netherlands, 1990) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. She graduated from the photography department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2014.

Working within an interdisciplinary field of film, photography and the performative arts, her work uncovers a sincere interest in the psychological aspects of the human mind.

By positioning the camera between her subject and herself, thus creating a power play, Vlietstra investigates the representation of the self as she enters the territory of an undefined relationship.

Her previous work includes Look at me (2014), We have to do this for Lisa (2013) and Grandmother with horse (2012)

www.lisamarievlietstra.com

40

For the largest part of my life my family re-narrated a collective trauma that had a vast impact on all of our lives. For as long as I remember this is how the story goes: when I was four years old my dad died a peaceful death. By telling me this story my family encapsulated me inside a fictive truth.

Until this truth exposed itself as a lie.

This abrupt disruption of me living in ‘suspension of disbelief’ has turned my state of being into one of permanent confusion, doubt and disbelief.

This state I am in has led me to dissect the mechanisms of (ab)use of trust in relation to the ab(use) of power by imposing the fictional construction of cinema onto my character and myself; forcing us into the bleed of comprehending our imagination in relation to the physical reality that surrounds us. In printing, bleed is printing that goes beyond the edge of where the sheet will be trimmed. In other words, the bleed is the area to be trimmed off.

become characters inside our own lives as fictional stories and play the role of the protagonist in our own autobiography.

We are characters in a construction named reality, mediated through our imagination.

I’m sharing with you my reflections on the subject because the idea of being a fictional character in life directs my attention towards the medium of cinema.

You’ve really impressed me as a ‘little girl’ named Eva. I believe it to be the first and last role you’ve ever played in a movie, ‘The Seventh Continent’, by Michael Haneke.

You starred as the young daughter next to Birgit Doll, who takes on the role of your mother and Dieter Berner as your father, portraying a family that commits collective suicide… excerpt: Reflections on Realities of Constructed Complexity: A Letter to Leni Tanzer, Lisa-Marie Vlietstra, 2014.

The camera has become my tool of power and the pretence of making a ‘film’, a method to conduct my (re)search.

I’m glad to finally have the courage to approach you.

My name is Lisa-Marie Vlietstra and this is my final year studying photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Currently I’m writing a thesis on the complexities of understanding the concept of our reality. A universal desire that’s present in all of us, to distinguish what is real concerning our reality and what is not.

According to Jacques Lacan the entire comprehension of our existence is fictional, as he states that we are only able to comprehend reality if we ‘mediate’ it through self-made transformations of everything that our reality entails including a transformation of the self.

He also believes that the concepts of ‘reality’ and the ‘self’ are intrinsically connected, as one cannot exist without the other.

In his article ‘The Mirror Stage’ he writes about the phase in human life when we start to develop a sense of being a ‘being’. A period in which we start to act and engage on our self, our environing objects and the other human beings that surround us. We take in images of them and transform them, which allows these images to be cast into what Lacan calls the imaginary order, the realm of our fantasy, composed through invested images of imago’s; images of main importance in the life of a human.

This imaginary order can also be seen as our ‘world’, as the imago’s function to establish a relation between our reality and us.

To place ourselves in this mediated reality, we also need to assume our own image.

This imaginary image of the self is referred to as the ego or ideal I and is projected as more complete and unified than we actually are.

Emphasizing that this identification with the image itself is ‘fictional’, as is the image, means that this ideal I will never fit our actual experience of existence and will continue to disrupt our experience of self. It seems we are stuck with an ego that is fabricated and therefore Lacan claims we

MASTER OF FILM 2017

…Dear Leni,

Stills from The Seventh Pain

41

THE POWER OF IMAGINATION: IMAGINING THAT THE FILM ALREADY EXISTS AS A METHOD OF DEVELOPING THE ‘FILM’ The Seventh Pain as a documentary film ‘A director identifies herself with a young girl in a movie, and goes looking for her in order to make a new a film about who she has become’.

‘Just because we call it documentary, it doesn’t mean it is not staged’ The Seventh Pain as a fiction film ‘An obsessive director convinces a now mature child actress to play different versions of who she has become. This schizophrenic process drives them both to madness, as they both find out just how real a fiction film can become.’

‘Just because we call it fiction, it doesn’t mean it is staged.’

LISA–MARIE VLIETSTRA

The Seventh Pain as a meta film ‘A director gets obsessed fantasizing about the adult life of a young actress named Leni. Once she finds the mature actress, she tricks her into thinking they are going to make a film about who she is now and Leni unknowingly exposes herself to the damaging process of a psychological mind game’.

‘Just because we call it staged, it doesn’t mean it does not have a real affect.’

The Seventh Pain – A Film That Does Not Exist ‘Leni finds herself in Austria where she has always lived. One day the phone rings and she is asked if she wants to make a movie about herself. Lisa the director convinces her into signing up and moves into her apartment where they will shoot this low budget movie together; a fiction film about the possible versions of who Leni has become at this point in her life. During this intimate process, they become very close until Leni is starting to get the feeling that something is hidden from her, that there is more behind this movie than she signed up for, now that Lisa wants Leni’s daughter to act in the movie as well. Without being able to see it, Leni gets deeper and deeper involved in a disturbing psychological mind game as Lisa keeps on pushing her limits in the attempt to re-live her own trauma that she is secretly forcing onto her. Lisa is making Leni doubt herself and her life up to the point that Leni is no longer able to separate her life from what they are doing for the film. She can no longer see how this actually damages herself and her daughter.’

42

THE POWER OF SUGGESTION: SUGGESTING A PERFORMATIVE SHADOW PLAY OF PROJECTIONS TOWARDS AN IMAGINED ‘FILM’ Fractal Story Spaces – ‘Trust me, Touch me, Assume me.’

The Seventh Pain is a proposal for a ‘film’ about the lives of Leni Tanzer, explored through three relating expanded cinema performances: Fractal Story Spaces.

This performance triptych, Trust me, Touch me, Assume me, questions the (ab)use of power in relation to the (ab) use of trust; hierarchy and interaction viewed from different perspectives within different relationships in confrontation with the construction of cinema.

Fractal Story Spaces suggests the creation of the film The Seventh Pain and aims to continuously impose alternative positions in between different perspectives -of and -onto the maker, performer and spectator while merging the perceptive experience of cinema, theatre and the performative arts.

Director, cinematographer, screenplay Lisa-Marie Vlietstra Editor Nico Bunnik Sound design Willem Schneider Starring Milena Naëf, Lisa-Marie Vlietstra Appropriated footage The Seventh Continent, 1989 Director Michael Haneke Starring Leni Tanzer

MASTER OF FILM 2017 Stills from The Seventh Pain

43

JAD YOUSSEF

deluge

jad youssef

born in 1989, i am a filmmaker from beirut, lebanon. i finished my bachelor in audio-visual studies, with a specialisation in cinema from saint joseph university, beirut, in 2013 with my graduation film transmission. afterward, i went on to collaborate with ashkal alwan art association, which led to my 2014 on-going film project titled a thin soft layer of. between that and my current film deluge i made several short videos in an attempt to find a specific form. i have worked as a cinematographer on numerous short films, and one feature documentary. my most recent collaboration is panos aprahamian’s yabandjo. from 2008 until 2012 i worked as a light designer/operator for plays, performances and live shows. i also ventured into the production side, working as an online distributor with cinemoz, an avod company, since 2015, as well as taking the position of an executive producer on several online series produced by the same company. http://jadyoussef.berta.me/

44

deluge short film in deluge, floating within the images, the protagonist is blind. he is unable to see, refuses to observe. he is subdued within time, imploding on himself in a gesture of rejection towards any external stimulation. he surrenders to his introspective alienation from the world and senses the heavy burden of existence. unable to see value in anything around him, he becomes a witness of absence, like a ghost, he longs for meaning beyond his current understanding.

because thou art lukewarm, neither cold nor hot i am about to vomit thee out of my mouth

this film was made with the support of friends karim chams eddine mohamad safa fuad halwani mohamed khreizat belal hibri rayssa kanso panos aprahamian tima al ahmad nour ouayda mahmoud ahmed senyawa sander blom karma swearky and the people at the Netherlands Film Academy

saint john, revelation 3:16 the bible come to manipulate the attempts to cover any recollection of what has been, one cannot but transfigure into a bleak forgotten reality that holds vast emotional contributions to the truth. it renders banal and insignificant any comfort held towards the unknown, altering the dominant posture of fact indefinitely. words we spit collide and vanish through the last contact with our saliva, for these words belittle any attempt of cultural reduction we exercise towards social and or political attributions held within the context. the remnants of my memory enhance my disability to decipher emotions. through and through the vision of grief occupies a massive ever-expanding territory in the self. reversibly so, they pretend to be aware of the existent pretext. but there is none.

beheading the protagonist

MASTER OF FILM 2017

ghosts in this particular event are the remnants of the dissatisfied.

deluge

45

JAD YOUSSEF

RESEARCH/PROJECT the research itself – centred on matters of self-inflicted alienation amongst characters who lack the morality to engage in whatever may come – is rooted in a personal struggle to overcome a constant deciphering of reality that comes offered in the form of a system. when caught in wonderment as to what resides behind the walls of that said system, i fell into oblivious dwelling. these characters that i search for, remove themselves from their surroundings and succumb to an infinite state of cognition. my interest resides in the characteristics of these alienating acts and not in the story behind it. so i search for the details that separate us, yet eventually connect us more consciously. i try to gather aesthetic data guided by secrecy, eeriness, estrangement, and a slight act of voyeurism with a delicate sense of bitterness. the flow of the narrative works according to no clear structure and instead sews itself to the state imposed by the setting. therefore, the state itself doesn’t really leak through the whole of the film prior to it becoming one. all of us on set were aware of the surrounding conditions’ deployment and were receptive of their potential implications on the work. the transition from research to project took place due to my lack of interest in indulging in an activity to find forms that would justify my longing to talk about these states. it was a desire to create images for my words. the actor himself became part of the process through his rejection to deliberately portray a state and not a human character, and it was clear that he wants to do this, but he also needs a sort of friction and a devastating sense of irresponsibility.

still from deluge

46

MASTER OF FILM 2017

beheading the protagonist

still from deluge

47

Artistic Research Week | Framing Traces Master of Film Graduation Show is part of the Keep an Eye Filmacademie Festival 23 June – 1 July 2017 Generously supported by festival partner Keep an Eye Foundation

Master of Film, Netherlands Film Academy

Jazz, fine arts, film, photography, design, fashion…

We are keeping an eye on talented young artists.

By providing grants and awards we are assisting the brightest musicians, artists, designers and filmmakers to develop their talents, create new opportunities and above all, to achieve their creative goals. www.keepaneye.nl

Director Netherlands Film Academy Bart Römer Programme Director Master of Film Mieke Bernink Coordinator Master of Film Kris Dekkers Programme Coordinator Sabien Schütte Mentors Sander Blom, Eliane Bots, Agnese Cornelio, Ester Gould, Eugenie Jansen, Stanislaw Liguzinksi, Patrick Minks Design Dog and Pony

©Nederlandse Filmacademie, Amsterdam 2017 Markenplein 1, 1011 MV Amsterdam +31(0)20 52 773 33 filmacademie@ahk.nl www.filmacademie.nl www.masteroffilm.nl

48

Many thanks to

2

1