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MASTER OF FILM MAGAZINE

MOMCHIL ALEXIEV (BG)

ELLENOOR BAKKER (NL)

OLIVIER DELEBECQUE (FR)

MIRKA DUIJN (NL)

NINA JAN (SI)

BRAM LOOGMAN (NL)

BALINT MARK TURI (HU)

PABLO NÚÑEZ PALMA (CL)

ROSANNE PEL (NL)

SIGNE TØRÅ KARSRUD (NO)

NAMFON UDOMLERTLAK (TH)

Master of Film Graduation Show 2015

Introduction 4 Momchil Alexiev 6 Ellenoor Bakker 10 Olivier Delebecque 14 Mirka Duijn 18 Nina Jan 22 Bram Loogman 26 Balint Mark Turi 30 Pablo Núñez Palma 34 Rosanne Pel 38 Signe Tørå Karsrud 42 Namfon Udomlertlak 46

Mirka Duijn, Shangri-La: paradise under construction 2

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Index

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The Master’s programme at the Netherlands Film Academy is a two-year international master’s course for a select group of filmmakers and artists with a few years of professional experience under their belt.

The programme’s focus is on ‘artistic research in film’, which means privileging questions over answers, process over product, experimentation over mere execution and long term effects over short term gain…

Eleven graduates of the Master of Film of the Netherlands Film Academy present themselves ‘The Master and the Giant’ is the title that the 2015 Group came up with for their Graduation Show in EYE and the Tolhuistuin.

It’s the English title of Johan van der Keuken’s ‘De Meester en de Reus’ , dealing with the theme of rivalry in creation: one God creates the world and a second destroys it in order to create another, better one. It’s an apt title for this group of graduates, whose two-year research journeys led them to consistently and permanently question their own and their medium’s boundaries.

It’s interesting to see too that despite their individual differences and their unique interests and artistic voices, there are also common themes. Foremost among them is

the question of truth and reality: what’s real, what’s fake, what’s a lie, what’s a myth and what’s authentic? And how does filmmaking relate to these questions, how does it document them, how does it answer them and most importantly: how does it create them?

Other common interests of this year’s group deal with the tension between cinematic authorship and interactivity, the 1980’s in Amsterdam, the role of space and location, and what it means to do artistic research. All of these topics will be addressed by the graduates in lectures and debates during the Graduation Show.

finished the programme with a proposal rather than a finished project, while others re-found the liberty of filmmaking and made several feature length films for no money at all. Equally telling is that one of them diverted from film altogether and that others continue their experimentation at the Graduation Show itself. This diversity characterizes the programme. Because ultimately the MA-course is about makers finding their own working method and their own themes or points of view; it’s about creating a reservoir of experiences and ideas that they can tap into in the future as well.

Befitting the idea of research and experimentation is that several of the graduates

The 11 graduates from 2015 then come from different countries – Bulgaria, Chile, France,

Hungary, Norway, Slovenia, Thailand and of course The Netherlands – and have equally different professional backgrounds – in film, in visual arts, in theatre and in performance. These backgrounds fed into their research trajectories and let to 11 different graduation projects.

Momchil Alexiev took his interest and practice in film and theatre to investigate how one can tell stories in space. His ongoing process of experimentation led him, in the end, to make a 360-degree essayistic film to be viewed with an Oculus Rift. One of the most interesting, and fundamental, issues that immersive media give rise to is the question of trust.

For Ellenoor Bakker, having worked for years in location theatre, it all starts with space and the way space generates behavior and meaning. In her documentary project proposal ‘Exercise in idealism’, she takes us with her into her squat which is about to be evicted. Using different narrative forms, the film essay will analyze the relations between past and present, politics and practice, resistance and violence and of course the role of the media and image making in general.

All of this against the backdrop of a Calvinist desire for idealism.

Olivier Delebecque is a cameraman questioning what it means to be a man with a movie camera. In order to see if one could liberate both the cameraman and the camera, Olivier’s research led him from an interest in painting generally via action painting and expanded cinema to experiments with performance and live film events.

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Mirka Duijn moved from fiction to documentary to escape psychology and focus instead on space and movements in space. Her documentary proposal ‘Shangri-La – paradise under construction’ investigates, in what is best described as a hall of mirrors, how the workings of tourism create, undermine and re-create what’s real and what’s fake. And that’s where the tourist and the documentary maker meet...

Choreographer/performance artist Nina Jan’s trajectory led her from questioning the capability of dance film to capture the joy of physical performance to using the production methods of filmmaking for her performance practice – a practice that then evolved towards a more curatorial one. In her online ‘museum for (un)sent emails’ (‘MUSE’), all these developments come together, combined with her (scriptwriting) interest in what moves people and how they talk about that.

Filmmaker Bram Loogman developed a method for analyzing and producing films: reverse-engineering film. This resulted in no less than three feature films, ‘The Quinten Trilogy’, which are an ode to the joy, wonders and freedom of film and filmmaking.

Balint Mark Turi’s research into non-linear or digressive storytelling, starting from the strategies of W.G. Sebald, led him in the end to develop an alternative, interactive method of story development and working with actors. The result: a linear feature film, ‘No Place Like On The Road’, about what it means to be a contemporary young European, having to travel abroad to find his place in the world.

introduction

Pablo Núñez Palma, from Chile, came to investigate the possibilities of internet and interactivity for filmmakers wanting to tell their stories. ‘One City Ago’, a proposal for a web documentary about the Amsterdam of the 1980’s, is an experiment connecting the linear experience of cinema with the fragmented nature of the Web. Filmmaker Rosanne Pel’s interest in human imperfection and extreme or destructive behavior led her to study the works of the political philosopher Hannah Arendt. This resulted in ‘Light as Feathers’, a proposal for a black comedy feature about sexual violence from the point of view of the perpetrator.

Norwegian visual artist Signe Tørå Karsrud’s original question about the divine in cinema – how to speak about that which cannot be put into words? – necessarily led her to also question the role of art and the artist and thus to involve herself, as performer, in her three part installation ‘Oppdrift – As I walk along the bottom of the sea, I remember how to breathe’.

Namfon Udomlertlak’s two-year research-bydoing combined her interests in everyday life, food and family relations with her interest in time-based media. The latest result of that investigation is ‘Free Falling’, in which she questions truth, reality and documentary in a film about a young Thai woman trying to find her independence.

Mieke Bernink Lector / Head of the Master’s Department Netherlands Film Academy

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Momchil Alexiev

My research started with a fascination for the combination of video and live performance.

I was focused on the question: how to incorporate the qualities of space into the fabric of film?

My presence, my position and my moving around in a shared space would then become an integral part of the film experience, an element fundamentally different from cinema as we know it.

The possibility to use physically perceived immersion of the spectator in the film fascinated me as a tool for storytelling.

360 degree camera preparations

Brand New Trust?

Film spectatorship in the context of immersive cinema.

Immersiveness as a tool Immersive visual techniques do not literally transport me into an alternative reality and, as a spectator I am physically aware of that. Nevertheless they have the potential to convince sufficient part of my brain that something is true. This makes it possible to transform presence, space and realness of perception into instruments of the narrative. My focus here is on the changes this introduces in the debate on film spectatorship today.

the Oculus Rift. This screening device creates the impression that one is physically present in the scene and gives the possibility to explore the space by looking around in 360 degrees. This means first of all, a very different cinematic agreement. My goal is to provoke a discussion about this new condition by working through the medium of film itself. I have done that in the form of an essay film.

Cinema is based on an unwritten contract.

I, the spectator trust the director.

The Frames of Trust This immersive condition opens up new perspectives for conceiving film spectatorship. I decided to start by asking one precise question: How does the immersive condition affect the trust relation between maker and spectator?

Any unwritten contract has an element of trust in it. For example I trust the person I lend my car to. Cinema is also based on an unwritten contract. I, the spectator, trust the director when buying my ticket and sitting in the darkness in front of the film frame.

Before the start of each screening spectators are asked to countersign a formal written agreement.

This performative element, from the very beginning, provides a perspective from which to “read� the essay. Inviting people to sign an agreement is asking them to think and talk about the experience they are about to step into.

But not signing or not fulfilling the agreement may bring us equally fruitful discussions. With this agreement, I ask the spectators (and myself as well) to act deliberately and conscientiously and I make them come up with opinions, conclusions and critical positions.

In terms of the medium I use: I firstly experimented with holographic diffraction glasses and installations based on the use of reflections. Later I decided to proceed with

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

BIOGRAPHY Momchil Alexiev (Bulgaria, 1984) was born in Sofia and spent his childhood in Moscow and his home town. His background is in Performance Studies with a BA from La Sapienza University in Rome (2008).

Over the last eight years he has worked as a filmmaker and theatre scenographer in Italy, Bulgaria and the Netherlands. As co-founder of Aesop Studio research centre (since 2009) he works on establishing new organic connections between performance, cinematic space and video projections. His recent work is a continuation of this process.

momchil.alexiev@gmail.com www.momchilalexiev.com

Momchil Alexiev

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Spectator’s ship 360 VR video “Spectatorship, Trust, Responsibility. Long John Silver is not interested in those. All he cares about is his missing eye and an old gold treasure. I, on the other hand, am concerned. I start understanding why Captain Flint insisted on signing a contract before departure. We left the port ahead of schedule and the ship will have to be finished on the way. We are reaching open waters very soon. The question is who is going to be the captain and who the master of this journey.”

Jacque is an actor who gets an offer for an unusual role. We follow him in the process of preparation for it.

Country of production The Netherlands Year of production 2015 Duration 12’ Director Momchil Alexiev Co-director(s) Yana Alexieva Esther Simao Writer Momchil Alexiev Camera Esther Simao Editor Momchil Alexiev Sound Kamila Wojcik Cast Hidde Simons Dieuwke De Mooij Adrian Brine Momchil Alexiev

360 degree camera and audio set preparations Still Spectator’s ship

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Rehearsals and location Still Spectator’s ship

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Momchil Alexiev

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Coming from a background of location theatre,

Ellenoor Bakker

I’m interested in both the meaning of location or space and the meaning of acting.

As Shakespeare said: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’.

To play, or to act, is a way to position yourself in life and to get across what it is you want or will fight for. Doubting which role to adopt or The Snakehouse

changing one’s role is an on-­going process.

The performativity of squatting and the filmmaker as actor Understanding squatting as a play One example of such role play is my own situation. Until very recently I lived in the oldest squat of Amsterdam. I experienced my house often as a museum piece in the ‘Amsterdam experience’. In that sense I was forced in the role of an actress playing the character of a squatter on the pictures and holiday movies of tourists that were standing in front of my house while consuming the story of the Dutch squat movement.

In Exercise in idealism I’m investigating the nature of squatting from the perspective of squatting as a play or a theatrical performance. The film documents the last weeks before the eviction of the squat and the way my fellow housemates and me took position in this game. For instance, we had to make a choice how far we would go in our resistance. Our house rejected the use of violence during eviction; other houses in the street, though, were making themselves ready for the fight with the riot police. How to negotiate one’s position among the other squats and what to communicate to the outside world?

The filmmaker as actor I’m using the notion of ‘acting’ or ‘play’ as an analytic tool to better understand the world. At the same time I’m using it as a formal tool as I’m taking up the role of the docu­ mentary filmmaker to investigate my personal situation and the dilemma’s that go with it. Exercise in idealism exposes and discusses the role of the filmmaker. ‘How can you make a film about a situation you’re completely involved in?’ ‘How will my film contribute to, or even form, the future image of squatters and the squatter’s movement?’ By explicitly sharing my choices and considerations with the spectator, I hope to tell a multi layered story, offering multiple perspectives.

Until very recently I lived in the oldest squat in Amsterdam

I’m contrasting these events to the way in the 1980s – the grand old days of the Amsterdam squatters’ movement – squatters, politicians and police interacted. Some of these examples I re-create to understand them better by investigating from within. For this I will organize re-enactments whereby the original ‘actors’ will advise and coach those who will re-enact those events. One such example is a famous event, filmed by Johan van der Keuken in The Way South: a squatter is giving a speech to a heavily armed military and police force, declaring that their massive eviction operation is pointless since the squatters left the building hours before through a secret hole to the church next door.

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

The film also shows how the presence of a camera influences the way roles are acted out during evictions and what sense of theatricality this evokes. The police, the squatters, the TV-crews and photo­graphers, they all use a set of fixed ingredients for their roles, for the way they act, the way they dress, the way they speak or the attributes they carry. And what happens when someone decides to divert from his expected role and shows up dressed as a ‘Sinterklaas’ during an eviction?

BIOGRAPHY The roots of Ellenoor Bakker (the Netherlands, 1980) are in theatre. Since 2007, she has been directing location theatre with location-based stories at the core of her work. As a director, she has been involved in performances of theatre groups Dogtroep, lab08, de Montan and tobetonotbe and PeerGrouP. With the latter she started to experiment with filmmaking (Koud, Nat and Onland). Her approach towards filmmaking is influenced by her background in location theatre. Even if her style has shifted much more towards documentary, the element of play and the theatrical remain crucial in her work.

Idealism Underlying the portrayal of the eviction of my squat and the confrontation with historic examples, is my desire to believe in something bigger than myself. This desire finds its roots in my Christian upbringing. I left behind the texts, rituals and scripts of the Calvinist faith, but its inherent idealism has stayed with me. So core questions for me are: ‘how to give form to idealism in this day and age?’ and ‘how to deal with the tides of resistance and resignation of my Calvinist self?’ ellenoor@gmail.com www.ellenoorbakker.nl

Ellenoor Bakker

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Exercise in idealism

(with practical assignments)

Oefening in idealisme (met praktijkopdrachten)

proposal for a feature length documentary Local TV station AT5 hosts a love stream of the eviction

Squatted in 1983, The Snakehouse is about to be evicted. A filmmaker and resident of the house wonders what to do at the moment of eviction. When the eviction turns out completely differently than expected she investigates what went wrong.

Tourist guide in front of the Snakehouse

A film about the last weeks before eviction of a historical squat in Amsterdam. We follow the residents in their struggle to save the building. How do the principles, which are developed by the squat movement, like ‘do it yourself’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘small organisation’ resonate in 2015?

In the film, events from the squat movement in the 80’s are juxtaposed with the events concerning the eviction of the Snakebuilding in 2015. In the friction between these two different times, a story develops about the search for meaning in a time where everything seems to be coloured by a capitalist paradigm.

Eviction ‘Tabakspanden’ A neighbour accross the street

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Country of production The Netherlands Director Ellenoor Bakker Production Rogier Tolen Camera Ewoud Bron Bianca van Riemswijk Josje van Erkel Ellenoor Bakker Editor Piet Oomes Sound Lucas van Eck Gerben Kockmeijer

Student demonstration Housemate

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Ellenoor Bakker

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At the outset of the Master, I stated that

Olivier Delebecque

the Master should be a cure and not a therapy.

Give me a body then

It did succeed for it has brought me more chaos and new potentialities.

- towards live film performance

Rock Studies

The act of filming I first focused my attention on the camera-person by asking myself: what is the act of filming? What if this act of filming becomes a physiological experience for the filmmaker – both physical and sensorial? What if the camera becomes the continuation of the body of the maker, a human camera? For painters it always seems that the image is a continuation of their bodies, they are not conveying a message but rather evoking a statement or initiating a dialogue with the canvas, each dab is a trace of a force. How can one translate this physicality and spontaneity to film?

The act or filming What forces grasp the body? How do they influence the way the body leads the camera before the mind begins to analyze. By experimenting with the human camera, I wanted to explore a personal approach to this process but I felt somehow that the camera became a handicap to push my exploration further. These thoughts encouraged me to reformulate my research. Indeed the human camera is liberating for a camera person but it still separated me from the direct sensation I wanted to experience with my surroundings.

Thus my next step was to separate the body from the camera and to position myself in front of the camera to explore the act rather than the filming.

BIOGRAPHY by objects. One step ahead of any explanatory or illustrative purpose, to remain in the ‘unthought’, where, as Gilles Deleuze says in ‘The Time Image’, “the body is no longer an obstacle that separates thought from itself, that which it has to overcome to reach thinking”. This was the vulnerability of my being that I wanted to uncover; a moment of complete nakedness - literally and figuratively speaking: the skin becomes a crude surface that refines any gesture. The actor in his/her animality and complexity stripped bare by the lens of the camera.

The act of screening How to present such a work to an audience? How not to explain but to make them feel? This has been the question that I have had to struggle with during the second part of my research process. I found a new direction for my current practice when I discovered a long tradition of expanded cinema that has attempted to open up the space of the film theatre to real time and real life. Inspired by their ethos, I established another form of relation within the film theatre between the screen, the projector, the audience and the camera. I performed a lecture without words, inspired by Stan Brakhage’s Mothlight. To do so I re-arranged the cinema apparatus inside the film theater.

My naked body became the screen while an assistant was covering me with plastic foil to create a cocoon symbolizing the rebirth of another image. At the same time a second assistant filmed the public from the viewpoint of the screen, making them visible and offering them a new space of potentialities. Through this new arrangement the act of filming and the act of screening became a whole that could be seen from multiple perspectives.

For painters it always seems that the image is a continuation of their bodies

The actor filming This means literally to enter the frame just as painters at some point entered the canvas. The frame becomes an arena in which the body becomes an extra sensitive surface that receives and reflects into a web of flux. In a series of short films, Studio Visits, I tried to feel this direct tension of being inside the network of potentialities created 14

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Olivier Delebecque

Olivier Delebecque (France, 1981) studied Art History in Tours (Les Tanneurs) and Film Studies in Paris 1 (La Sorbonne). He worked as a cameraman for television documentaries and joined the amateur theatre in Confluences (Paris) as a stage actor. As a result of these experiences, his early work focused on the presence of the body in the act of filming and the act of screening. Spanning video and performance, his current artistic practice continues to explore the relationship between the reality of the space of filming and the exhibition location. Drawing from the traditions of experimental film, his work activates the interactions between the bodies of the spectator, space and performances.

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Boat-people live film performance Boat-people is part of a series of ‘live film performances’. This term, boat-people, began to be used to describe the movement of migrants fleeing Vietnam by sea at the end of the 70’s. They fled their country for political and economic reasons. Often overloaded, these boats have made many victims due to drowning, starvation and cold.

Rock Studies V

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The act of seeing By bringing together the act of filming and the act of screening during an experimental evening in March at EYE, I have developed what I called a “live film performance”.

For this first attempt I chose to program an evening about blindness and cinema. To do so I invited blind and visual impaired persons to watch, participate and debate about films with blindness as their main subject. The audience was positioned in two groups facing one another with the screen placed between them. Together they established a new network of perception between bodies within the film theater, a new arrangement, a different understanding of the act of seeing.

With this event I challenged the expectation of a social group during a live event. This was very rewarding for me.

I discovered an inner need for the live presence of bodies, in other words, evidence of presence. I found a better under­ standing and acceptance of rituals, in particular the per-

Blind People

The act screen off My research process has been an inductive process, in which I have been working by elimination, in order to reach the very core of my concern. The live engagement through a local intervention in the film theater (the “live film performance”) has become the core of my recent research process. It finds its origin in the necessity for me to bring back the missing bodies of the screen into the film theatre. It brings back the possibility of an encounter with an audience through both a physical and spiritual act, a step towards the very essence of cinema, its animality and its emptiness.

Documentation of performance at ResearchLab / EYE - 24/03/15 Blind People is an audio-visual document from the first live film performance I directed in the Cinema 2 of EYE. It took place during an experimental evening proposed by EYE on ART. This title, Blind People, was inspired by a film of Johan Van der Keuken, Blind Child, and my naïve need to understand the necessity for filmmakers to make films about or with blind people. I was convinced that our sight makes us blind of our senses and I wanted to bring my ignorance as a departure point for a debate. To do so I created a new arrangement, another understanding of the act of seeing: I invited blind and visual impaired people to watch, participate and debate about films with sighted people.

olivier.delebecque@gmail.com www.olivierdelebecque.wordpress.com

Studio Visits

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Performance includes screening of

formative ritual. I believe that a live encounter with an audience is a necessity.

ResearchLab EYE

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Olivier Delebecque

Country of production The Netherlands Year of production 2015 Duration 24’40” Concept and editing Olivier Delebecque Sound Artist Matteo Canetta Camera Jurgen Lisse Gijs Wilbers Martijn Melis Sound Engineer Sergio González Cuervo Visual impaired and blind people Irmy Vos Hedda Schueler Debby Marchena Jeroen Van der Linden Hannes Wallrafen

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Mirka Duijn

I’ve always been fascinated by the tourist industry. It might be because I grew up in a little beach town, or because my father always took me on his business trips to Istanbul, Ireland, Washington or Venice.

When he was working I walked the streets

BIOGRAPHY

of these towns, like a proper flâneuse.

But the more cities I saw, the more a certain feeling came over me, a weird feeling of slight discomfort that derived from my position as an outsider.

A story made real Odd feelings I still have that feeling, for example, when walking around in a small Chinese village that is ‘opened up for tourism’. Following a neat path along English signs to the ‘rice field’, ‘restaurant’ or ‘family home’, taking pictures of the colourful women working in the fields who do not look up because they are used to being photographed. I even have this odd feeling when I am in a Dutch beach town in wintertime. In winter these towns seem to be hollow non-places or empty meeting grounds. Those places only come alive when people travel trough them in summer time. Yet it feels more honest when it is closed off, since it seems I can then grasp what the town ‘really is’. But is that so? I guess in all of these cases my ‘odd feeling’ can be specified as a feeling of detachment from a place, not being able to grasp reality or to pinpoint the authentic.

How does this gaze affect the daily life in a touristic village?

How does it affect the narration of their local culture?

The story of Shangri-La It was because of questions like these that I stumbled upon Shangri-La, a tourist town in South West China. It came on my radar when I found an article written by anthropologist Ben Hillman: Paradise under Construction: minorities, myths and modernity in Northwest Yunnan (2003). Ben Hillman had done research in Zhongdian, a Chinese little town at the border with Tibet. In the 1990’s Zhongdian wanted to develop a tourist industry.

In order to attract tourists the village was renamed into ‘Shangri-La’, after the mythical Tibetan paradise in James Hiltons famous book Lost Horizon. It was written in 1933 and brought to the screen very successfully in 1937 by director Frank Capra. It’s a story about four Westerners who crash their airplane into Shangri-La, Tibet.

Local inhabitants save them. The place they have crashed into appears to be a paradise in which people have eternal lives. The story became a big hit and the term ‘Shangri-La’ started to have a life of its own, being mentioned in dozens of songs and used for many resorts and hotel chains.

What is authenticity in a tourist town?

What is reality in such a place?

Authenticity Authentic: ‘real or genuine: not copied or false’; ‘true and accurate’; ‘made to be or look just like the original’. That’s what the dictionary says. I am the kind of tourist that is always seeking for authenticity, but it seems I am never able to fully grasp ‘it’ when visiting tourist towns… Would this be at the base of my uncomfortable feeling?

Paradise (under construction) will be a film about discrepancy or tension between the tourist’s quest for authenticity and the host catering for this quest, using their local culture as a commodity. What is authenticity in a tourist town? What is reality in such a place? Is a tourist attraction less real than a local’s home? Does it matter?

I also dived into the other side of the story, the side of the hosts, or locals, the ones ‘selling their culture’. What’s the impact of the presence of the tourist on the lives and identities of people who allow tourists to gaze at them?

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

What got me interested in Zhongdian’s renaming was that the town could only be renamed on the basis of scientific proof that it was really Shangri-La. Since James Hilton’s novel was a fiction book, this seemed quite hard to prove. However: they did it. In 1996 the municipality of Zhongdian set up a search party of almost forty scientists, who wrote a rapport in which they presented official prove that Zhongdian was Shangri-La, mainly based on the sources of inspiration James Hilton used when writing his novel. Thus: Zhongdian was renamed and consequently remodelled after the image of the book. After Mirka Duijn

Mirka Duijn (the Nether­lands, 1980) is a DutchFinnish director working and living in Amsterdam.

She started her career at the public broadcasting station VPRO, experimenting with interactive broadcasting and story­telling for television, the web and radio. The kick-start to her career as a director came in 2009, when her short fiction film ‘Manitoba’ premiered at the IFFR and was screened at the Cannes Film Festival (SFC). Since then she has been working on a wide range of fiction and documentary films, music videos and experimental projects. The last project she has been working on as an interactive director, ‘Last Hijack Interactive’, won a Digital Emmy Award this year. In 2012, Mirka enrolled in the Master’s Degree Programme in Film, focusing on improving her research and development process when working in the grey area between fiction and documentary film. Mirka’s projects usually start with a fasci­nation for a place, rather than a person. In this context she has developed her last project ‘Paradise (Under Construction)’ about superimposed reality in a Chinese tourist town called Shangri-La.

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Shangri-La, paradise under construction

that the tourist industry flourished. Now, almost 20 years later, the renaming has left a significant mark on the local cultural identity.

The Lost Horizon story became a part of it, to the extent that some locals even believe it is a historic event, in which an airplane actually crashed into their village.

Authentic Fake or Made Real The interaction between the tourist seeking ‘authenticity’ and the host creating a stage to serve the needs of the customer, seems to create a reconstruction of culture and the blurring of the boundary between reality and fiction. When I tell this story about Shangri-La people often think of Baudrillard’s notion of ‘hyperreality’ or Umberto Eco’s ‘authentic fake’. I like the latter, but I would rather like to say the story is ‘made real’. A new myth became a true part of the local culture since it was adapted, reinforced and finally truly believed by the locals.

Different truths - mythical, scientific and literal - together became a new ‘superimposed reality’.

proposal for a feature length documentary (essayistic road movie)

In Southwest China a little Tibetan tourist town renamed itself Shangri-La (‘paradise’) after allegedly proving it was the real thing. The filmmaker travels to the town to find out the truth behind the story and discovers that the reality of the town is more complex than just fake versus real.

Tourism is one of the biggest industries in the world, having huge effects on the environment and cultures worldwide.

Filmmaker Mirka Duijn has been interested in the dynamics between the tourists’ quest for authenticity and ‘hosts’ catering to this quest using local culture as a commodity.

These dynamics seem to cause the blurring of boundaries between reality and fiction – making towns feel like ‘dreamscapes of visual consumption’. Mirka asked: are tourist places indeed fake dreamscapes? What is ‘reality’ in a tourist town? Asking these questions a little town in Southwest China called Shangri-La caught her eye. That town, Zhongdian, was renamed Shangri-La in 2002, after the local government had scientifically proven it was indeed Shangri-La. Shangri-La being: a mythical valley invented by

The tourist and the filmmaker When working on this topic I more and more started to see similarities between the dynamics between the tourist and the host and my own practice as a documentary filmmaker filming people. Aren’t we, tourists and filmmakers, just the same? Trying to dig up and communicate or replicate ‘the truth’? Just as authenticity in a tourist town is not very clear cut, reality in documentary film isn’t either.

The dynamics that are at stake are similar. I decided to start shaping the story from that perspective: me, the tourist and the filmmaker looking for answers about authenticity and reality in Shangri-La. mirka@kimmofilms.com www.mirkaduijn.com

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Country of production The Netherlands, China

Ten years after the renaming filmmaker Mirka Duijn travelled to the ‘new’ Shangri-La to find out more about this ‘scientific proof’ and the influence it has had on the town and its community. Travelling around the place, both following the streams of tourists, and interviewing locals and government officials, Mirka finds out that the reality of the new Shangri-La is more complex than fake versus real or fact versus fiction. She even finds locals in the villages around Shangri-La who seem to believe the story of Lost Horizon is a historical fact that has played out in their own town… Mirka decides to follow up on these stories, patching together versions of Shangri-La’s new myth, thus becoming a co-creator of a new reality…

Writer Mirka Duijn Camera Mirka Duijn Marc de Meijer Editor Alexander Goeckjian Music composer Rutger Zuydervelt Machinefabriek

Director Mirka Duijn

www.mirka.nl/shangri-la www.vimeo.com/kimmofilms/shangrila

Selfportrait

Tatashi Sitting

British writer James Hilton in his novel ‘Lost Horizon’ in 1933. Since the book was fiction the ‘scientific proof’ that was proposed in order to rename Zhongdian had been very controversial, being clearly inauthentic and fake.

Pieces Tourists

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Monastery Yak

Mirka Duijn

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Nina Jan

The Museum of (un)sent emails is clearly not a film. Or, it is not a film yet. But with this online museum platform I wanted to research the multitude of individual voices hidden among mass e-communication. I was looking for a way to find inspiring stories and observe ways of interaction between people that could be useful for scriptwriting or writing and making in general. One of my aims was to use an email museum or archive as a research platform through which I could gain insight into how people communicate, what they convey to each other, how they deal with certain topics, how they (ab)use the email medium…

An email museum - a museum of thoughts’ next best option Archive in the spotlight The online email archive is the core of the Museum of (un) sent emails as well as a starting point for my content research. However, I believe it’s not necessarily relevant only to my research. Every part of the online museum is public and the email contents can be used by others as well. I find it nice that something private can be shared publicly based on a mutual agreement: emails are donated to public use but on the email author’s terms.

And what am I personally looking for in the email archive?

I think I’m intrigued by the intimate character of emails.

They are revealing parts of their author’s private sphere of life - each of them in a completely unique way. This particular sincerity of “the private” captivates me. Looking into the email archive for me is a bit similar to peeping through a window of someone else’s flat. Not in order to control or spy, but to see and understand how other people live or organize their lives. I have always been drawn to this.

Museum as a playground Apart from the project offering space for research, I also set to play around with the framework of a museum. So the title of the project is not there just to sound good. I wanted to look into the concept of an institution that conserves certain artifacts for posterity. I am of course aware that this topic has been discussed many times throughout history. But I was not looking for something new. I wanted to re-assess the institution of the museum through my art practice. In this project, museum parameters determine the rules of the play – they limit and direct my artistic playground. But to me limitations are not dead ends but rather incentives for creative solutions.

Museum as a mediator, collaborator and host I’ve noticed that online museums and galleries find it very difficult to compete with physical institutions because they lack the immediate presence and experience of the exhibited works. But can an online museum use its shortcomings and turn them into its benefits?

I’m slowly realizing how flexible my email museum platform actually is. Its only limitation is the medium of collected and exhibited items, but from that point on it can cover any imaginable theme. A liberating moment for the museum was also upgrading the museum’s audio guide to a radio podcast that is attached to individual emails in the exhibition space. By means of a radio program you can leave the framework of the museum and create a much more engaging space for the visitors.

I’m intrigued by the intimate character of emails.

What do words tell us?

In an email conversation, I’m really fascinated by the relationship between person a and person b. When I look at a random email in the museum archive, I can start asking so many questions. Who are these people involved in email conversations?

How much does an email say to an outside observer, and how much do the writers keep for themselves? If I imagine these two characters, the email author and the addressee, how close am I to who they really are? Is the character of the addressee really absent because he or she doesn’t have a voice, or does he or she become visible through the words of the email author? How do the email authors think, what do they consider important, how do they formulate their communication? For me these are essential questions for character analysis. At a later stage, I would like to incorporate my findings from the character analysis into my (script) writing or making. However, at the Master of Film I won’t graduate with a text or film script – but with the online email museum - a machine for generating many authentic character voices and storylines.

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

BIOGRAPHY Nina Jan (Slovenia, 1986) is a conceptual artist, performer, writer and director. Her work covers the fields of performance art, installation, film and internet art and often investigates audiencefriendly ways of inter­activity as well as questioning the default settings of artistic media, artistic processes and the creative position of the artist herself. Lately she has also been more and more drawn to collectivemaking, a concept that tiptoes into her work in various ways. In recent years, while setting up one of her online projects (www.a-la-cart.com), Nina has become increasingly interested in developing alternative marketing strategies for performance art practices and exposing the effects of Post-Fordist production on the artistic realities. During her studies at the Master of Film, she initiated another online platform called the Museum of (un)sent emails. Nina is also one of the artistic directors of KUD NUM artistic collective.

During the graduation show I will present a curatorial proposal in which the Museum of (un)sent emails leaves its virtual walls and becomes a host and a collaborative curator of a bigger event – the graduation. niwa.nina@gmail.com www.nina-mpom.org www.museumofunsentemails.org

Nina Jan

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À la Cart Performance Webshop online project and video installation

Country of production Slovenia Year of production 2014 Authors Nina Jan Urša Sekirnik Writer, Camera & Editor Nina Jan Urša Sekirnik Production company Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ljubljana Co-production company KUD NUM CUK Kino Šiška Cast Nina Jan Urša Sekirnik

Museum of (un)sent emails / Radio MUSE online project and curatorial proposal with live radio performance and radio installation

This provocative project by Slovenian artists Nina Jan and Urša Sekirnik, set up as a fully functioning performance webshop, critically and in many layers assesses the conditions of contemporary artistic production, the realities of contemporary artists and questions the value of artistic work, artistic romantic euphoria and a search for artistic autonomy.

The Private Peep Machine video installation is an addition to the À la Cart Performance Webshop project and investigates ways of exhibiting a creative process.

For the Master and the Giant exhibition Jan and Sekirnik prepared two different video loops which are installed in the Private Peep Machines - The Making Of and A Chapter About A Chapter That is Only On Paper. The peep machines were inspired by a visit to the Amsterdam Sex Palace and Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés. The authors prepared an audio-visual archive containing traces of of their creative process which the audience can peep in one by one.

Recording session, Radio MUSE

An online archive of sent, drafted and never written emails, accompanied by an online email exhibition, live radio shows and a radio installation.

Imagine a giant online archive of sent, drafted and never written emails from all over the world. A database of characters. A pool of inspiring stories. The Museum of (un)sent emails offers us a publicly accessible database for story and character analysis. A possible starting point for new texts, scripts and other projects... But there is more hidden in its many layers. Traveling as it does from online to reality, from a museum to a live radio programme, from a database to a curatorial project, from the artistic work of the artist to your personal project, Museum of (un)sent emails is in constant flux to engage you, the spectator, and invite you on board.

www.a-la-cart.com À la Cart Performance Webshop, memory of a photo session Museum of (un)sent emails, working session in Croatia

www.museumofunsentemails.org www.facebook.com/musemuseum.org

Year of production 2013-2015, ongoing Author Nina Jan Web programming Bram Loogman Web design Brigiet van den Berg Consulting Etienne van Hezewijk Writer Nina Jan Etienne van Hezewijk Radio MUSE hosts Nina Jan Etienne van Hezewijk Producer KUD NUM, collected.individual.

Sound / Geluid Sergio González Cuervo Funds Obc̆ina Škofja Loka

Museum of (un)sent emails, Archive

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Nina Jan

25

Signe Tørå Karsrud

I’m curious about the relation between man and what we call nature. The way we position ourselves as something other, or place what we categorize as nature as something other than and alien to us. And still many experience a strong attraction to this foreign and distant nature, and a longing to be closer to it, be fused with it.

The only way to grasp it is by experiencing it Man and Nature?

The idea of living in harmony with nature is a widely exhibited notion, and equally widely ridiculed and often dismissed as a romanticized, starry-eyed and silly one.

And it does indeed appear silly when it becomes a ­construct, and turns into an escape from reality, and a renunciation of responsibility, which it admittedly does pretty easily. But still, to dismiss the notion of the longing for reconciliation with nature as altogether escapist would be absurd. In myself I take it as an indication ­toward some very essential contradictions in my mind and my worldview, and then I go from there, searching for the truth.

Which is of course just as silly as any other absolutism. Can’t seem to help myself though. I’m just as psychotic as the society I’m part of, and that is where ‘nature’ b ­ ecomes relevant and to me ­crucially important. The forest and the mountains and the lakes and the oceans are sane, and when I’m there I become more so too.

That’s the attraction of nature, it’s anti-psychotic effect.

This aspect is essential to my relation with it. My brain constantly creates all kinds of wanted and unwanted ­barriers between me and my environment, and I collect endless quantities of stimuli. Interpreting these stimuli and responding more or less adequately to them requires the making of innumerable connections and a lot of ­reasoning. The effects of the abstract notions I produce can be very forceful. Sometimes I have to struggle against getting carried away by particular sets of purposes and ambitions and by my self-consciousness. This gets more intense when I live in busy places with massive stimuli.

In social networks, there´s interaction in order to ­establish a certain dynamic relationship beween people and their social environment. In nature, it’s different. My reasoning, my concepts, my arguments are not answered.

The quiet of nature doesn’t have to do with sound or movement, but with the lack of mind-noise. When I’m in

the presence of this presence long enough I become more like it, I become more present. I become increasingly able to distinguish myself out from the homogeneous mass of everything else, and identify myself as something ­defined and entitled to a perspective on everything external to me. I am that, that is me, but still I can differentiate.

What about God? God and nature are to me, if not entirely interchangeable notions, at least very closely related to one another. I see nature as an aspect of God on the same level as I am myself, I can access God within myself and in the world around me, but most easily in places that are not so affected by human intention and ambition, and that’s the reason for the importance this subject holds for me.

Searching for God’s presence has in my experience two main aspects.

One is to determine the nature of the wholly other in the external world, in order to determine whether the external world exists beyond the mind. The other aspect is the inherent search for one’s own relation to this wholly other, through which the possibility for the self to connect to the external world can be determined.

Still A tree that falls in the forest

BIOGRAPHY Signe Tørå Karsrud (Norway, 1984) is an artist and experimental filmmaker.

Educated at the Bergen Art Academy in Norway, she makes narrative and performative films, essayistic documentaries, and film installations.

The quiet of nature doesn’t have to do with sound or movement, but with the lack of mind-noise

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Why do you work with art?

My art practice has the function of allowing me to express things that I can’t grasp intellectually and express in written or spoken language. This inability to formulate what I’m concerned with is the pressure that drives me to do art. My linguistic vocabulary is insufficient as a tool for dissecting and unfolding what I’m after, the only way to grasp it is by experiencing it What is your work process like?

My methodological structure is dialectic and loopy, entailing a continuous questioning, invalidation and re-evaluation, both on the concrete, personal and the meta-physical level.

Signe Tørå Karsrud

▶ 27

▶

Oppdrift - as I walk along the bottom of the sea I remember how to breathe

Its prerequisite assumption is that the concrete (the works I make), my mental/emotional state (the personal) and my world-view (the meta-physical) are inseparable, which is to say that if one is stuck, the two others can’t move forward. So if the goal is to develop my work, the personal and the meta-physical fields need to have equal attention.

One of the projects that comes out of my research at the Master and the one I am graduating with is an installation of performance films.

In this work I aim to depict primarily my own paradoxical relation to society, nature, God, and myself which is full of absurdity, contradictions, determination, nonsensicality, sensitivity, seriousness, misunderstandings, ambition, doubt, beauty and desperation. And revelations, illusions, trust, suspicion, attempts, disappointments, faith, love, hope, damage, repair, judgement, devotion, self-absorption, objectification, emancipation, alienation, emotion, abstraction, denial, confrontation, compassion. And so on. In an endless loopy relay. This naive seriousness, the determination and conviction with which we perform the most absurd acts every day, it horrifies me and at the same time it can be so incredibly wonderful and touching.

That’s what we do isn’t it, it’s a miracle that we still exist. I suppose we are easy to love. Thank God we don’t know what we’re doing.

performance film / installation 1.

By each step I take gravity pushes me upwards The weight at the end of the rope is you the pulley the sky

2.

I am the axis I am Spinning, floating, slightly tilted Reluctantly drawn in Bashed about by my own hand

3.

I part the world in two interchangable polarities It seems uninterrupted But I can’t decide whether it’s autumn or spring

Country of production Norway Year of production 2015 Duration 38’ Director Signe Tørå Karsrud Writer & Producer Signe Tørå Karsrud Camera Thor Lønning Aarrestad, Signe Tørå Karsrud

What will you do in the future?

I’m working preliminarily on a feature film, a kind of hybrid between documentary and lyrical art film, where the performance films of the Master’s project will be incorporated as an element. It is again about the relation between man and nature, but departing from the more pragmatic and utilitarian attitude of people who work with food gathering in uncultivated nature. My main inquiry in this project is in which way this kind of instrumental and unsentimental attitude affects one’s relation to nature and oneself. Directly after graduation I will give my undivided attention to this project. And as to what comes after that I haven’t decided yet. There are a handful of impatient projects banging at the door, trying to use me to come into existence. Bloody bastards, why can’t they just take it easy?

Cast Signe Tørå Karsrud

signe.karsrud@gmail.com Still A tree that falls in the forest

A tree that falls in the forest

Still Oppdrift

Still Oppdrift

Still Oppdrift

Et tre som faller i skogen Stills A tree that falls in the forest

documentary project proposal Country of production Norway Director Signe Tora Karsrud Production company Signe Tørå Karsrud Producer Signe Tørå Karsrud Halwest Agha Camera Thor Lønning Aarrestad Szigethy Marton Music composer Snorre Sjønøst Henriksen

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‘If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?’

How do humans relate to nature? And how come that is even a relevant question?

It ought to be the most simple and obvious thing to answer. After all, we are also nature. Or do we really believe that? Don’t we in fact believe that we are set apart?

That we are something other? That nature is just the context in which we act out our humanity. And that if we were not there to observe, assess and use it, it wouldn’t exist.

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Signe Tørå Karsrud

29

Bram Loogman

Soon I’m supposed to be graduated from the Master of Film. But what does it mean to be ‘a master of film’?

It sounds almost pompous if you start thinking about it, and I was wondering how I could live up to that title.

What I realized is that it’s not so much about being a master in relation to others, but that’s it’s rather about the ‘mastering of film’. I entered this program with a research plan to develop a system for subjective film analysis, which could be used as a tool for filmmaking. What I discovered was that I could turn it around as well: using filmmaking as a tool for the analysis of film. I worked on it together with art critic Paul Groot, with whom, over the years, I have developed a close collaboration, based on our shared reflections on film.

Reverse-engineering film Avant-garde approach The project resulted in three feature films about Quinten, a boy with a memory like a movie karaoke machine. It is an attempt to re-invent, once again, the mode of production of feature films, and the creative process behind it, inspired by the avant-garde approach to filmmaking.

We started off by rejecting the idea that filmmaking is a bothersome, expensive, time consuming business. It wasn’t meant as a deconstruction, it’s more practical, that’s why I prefer to use the term ‘reverse-engineering’. We reversed the creation of a narrative, using a certain given situation and transforming that into fiction during the process of filming, and even more so afterwards in the editing – and doing so by using associations and the imagination and especially cinematic references. Through appropriation we are integrating film analysis as an artistic tool.

Of course, this creates a much more dynamic process than when you work from a certain preconceived fictional world which requires lots of resources in order for it to be molded out of reality. We don’t intent to capture reality neither.

Reality is only used as source material and turned into a narrative structure. The scenario is created afterwards, which we call the post-scriptum script, and brought into the film using titles and voiceover.

he sees great danger around him and he’s gradually drawn into a psychosis. Sylvie doesn’t recognize the person she once loved anymore and decides to leave.

After five years of studying in Amsterdam, she moves back to her motherland, Thailand, to find herself a home and a simple life in seclusion. She tries to forget everything that happened, tries to erase her memory. She leaves Quinten behind.

In the last part Quinten follows Sylvie to Thailand. In an attempt to reconnect and to preserve their love he persuades her into making a film together.

Falling in love Every next film in the trilogy is a reflection on the previous one, not only in terms of content and form, but also in terms of working method. When we started there was no story, we only had the references to the films we love most, and of course, the two actors who shaped their own characters. But in the finished film a fictional world had emerged with the aid of a computer generated voice-over.

In the second part we had already lost our innocence and the filmmaking, and the film as a result, became more self-consciousness. A reflective layer was added through the voice-over of Sylvie, who has the same skeptical but curious attitude as the ideal spectator.

In the last film, referencing Sartre’s Huis Clos, those different perspectives become like a trap for the characters, they are literally captured in camera. Fiction and reality blend together when cameras step in front of each other.

This endless loop creates a sense of vertigo, or nausea reinforced by the usage of 3D technology. The film itself ends up in an existential crisis that the characters are trying to deal with. Losing grip on reality is confusing and it may even be dangerous. Yet it’s exactly what happens when two people fall in love.

Rejecting the idea that filmmaking is a bothersome, expensive, time consuming business

Quinten The first film is a study of Quinten, an exceptional psychological case. He suffers from aphasia and he has a memory problem. Or actually it’s a great gift: his memory is loaded with all the movies he ever saw, he’s a walking movie database. His aphasia is the result of a traumatic relation with his ambitious talkative brother. When his brother gets murdered Quinten is finally free.

In the sequel, after he has overcome his trauma, and thus his aphasia, a complicated situation arises. The trauma was intertwined with everything that made him who he is, his obsessions, his quirks, but also all his great features. His life, his identity, his relationship with his girlfriend Sylvie and the rest of the world… there is no certainty any longer. Quinten is plagued by anxiety attacks, 30

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

BIOGRAPHY After his graduation in Art and Technology at HKU, Bram Loogman (The Nether­lands, 1986) has been working in film, programming and design. He has made installations, performances, exhibitions and started a production company, creating short films, music videos and websites, usually combining those three. Many of these works, like ‘binnenste/buiten’ and ‘A Song of Praise’ have an extraordinary strong formal structure and display a love for cinema. In 2013, he enrolled in the Master’s Degree Programme and started reconfiguring this dogmatic approach through his research ‘reverse-­ engineering film’.

info@bramloogman.nl binnenste/buiten: www.shbx.nl/bb a song of praise: www.asongofpraise.nl portfolio: www.bramloogman.nl

Bram Loogman

31

Quinten I: A boy with a memory as a karaoke movie machine

Quinten II: Unlinked experimental fiction

experimental fiction

Country of production The Netherlands, Italy Year of production 2013 Duration 94’

Quinten Wall is an exceptional psychological case. He suffers from aphasia, and he has a memory problem. Or problem, it is a great opportunity: his memory is loaded with all the movies he ever saw, he is a walking movie

Country of production The Netherlands, Serbia Year of production 2014 Duration 86’

database. He is using his aphasia to fight his ambitious talkative brother. During a stay in Venice they will fulfil the last wish of their mother, but instead of showing brotherly love, their last encounter will end with a fatal incident.

Director Paul Groot Bram Loogman Writer & Editor Paul Groot Bram Loogman Producer & Camera Bram Loogman

Director Paul Groot Bram Loogman Writer & Editor Paul Groot Producer & Camera Bram Loogman

Cast Joaquin Wall Namfon Udomlertlak

Cast Joaquin Wall Namfon Udomlertlak

After Quinten has overcome his aphasia, a new complicated situation arises. His traumas were interwoven with his obsessions, his idiosyn­cra­ sies, and all other features that made him who he is. He looses grip on his identity and his relation with his girlfriend Syvlie and the rest of the world. He is suffering from anxiety and sees great danger in the almighty Apple empire which also seems to be after him. The question is to what extent his fear is grounded, but also, how long Sylvie can endure it.

Still Quinten II

Quinten III: The last movie experimental fiction Sylvie has moved back to Thailand, her mother­ land, to find herself a home, but Quinten follows her. In an attempt to reconnect, and to preserve their love he persuades her into making a film together.

Still Quinten I

Still Quinten III

www.quintenwall.com

Country of production The Netherlands, Thailand Year of production 2015 Duration 86’ Director Bram Loogman Paul Groot Writer Bram Loogman Paul Groot Producer & Camera Bram Loogman Editor Bram Loogman Paul Groot Jelena Rosic̆ Vladimir Simic̆ Cast Joaquin Wall Namfon Udomlertlak Vladimir Simic̆ Dontree Siribunjongsak

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Bram Loogman

33

Pablo Núñez Palma

Right after I arrived to Amsterdam in 2011, I developed the habit of taking long walks through the city. I’ve always liked to get lost in new places. When you have few references of where you are geographically, you can end up more than once on the same spot and still discover more of the extraordinary features that make that location unique. That way to connect to a space is so much better than having someone telling you where to go and what to see. You make the city yours.

Children direct the traffic. Still One City Ago

Balancing reflection and action Strolling Apart from starting to know Amsterdam a little better, some other things happened during these walks. First, I noticed a gap between my image of Amsterdam, dominated by underground life and anti-establishment movements, and the Amsterdam before my eyes, filled with tourists and trendy appearances. This gap triggered my curiosity.

Where were the people of the Amsterdam I imagined?

Did I just make it up in my head? I decided to start a stroll through the virtual city of Amsterdam’s audiovisual news archives and see who was living there. I chose to present my findings in an interactive software environment where users are invited to stroll through an audiovisual archive curated by me. This is part of a project proposal for a web documentary that has resulted from my interest in figuring out what could be a cinematic experience in a digital medium such as the Web.

cinema can be transferred to the Web, while dealing with its fragmented structure, its operative interactivity and its promise to connect the user to its social reality. I had worked on this before in my web documentary ‘MAFI. tv’. Strolling online in an audiovisual archive seemed an interesting new way to continue these investigations.

One City Ago In the audiovisual archives of news shows, I found the people that I had expected in the streets, but that I couldn’t discover in the present. It turned out that they had been living in the eighties: squatters, students, and working class strikers. They were idealistic and desperate, energetic and chaotic, and quite often they were standing up together in strong solidarity. I saw them in some thousand fragments from the eighties alone, collected in press pools without audio commentary.

I decided to present a selection of these fragments on a website, inviting users to recombine the fragments interactively and to build a unique path: ‘One City Ago’.

By presenting these fragments in a clear and simple structure, they work as points of access to the landscape of social relations in the eighties. The user can navigate to any fragment at any moment, based upon his spatial sense of location within a grid of images. If the user keeps viewing fragments ‘passively’, without operating any of the very simple interaction facilities, the site simply starts a new sequence. In this way, a continuous flow of images may create an effect of deep attention, while the site offers the basic controls every user is familiar with. I call it slow interaction: operational interaction doesn’t have to be too demanding in order to provide the user with the power to decide into which direction a story may unfold.

Where were the people of the Amsterdam I imagined?

Cinema and the Web Cinema has been designed to reproduce the experience of a fictional reality. Its physical infrastructure, the narrative conventions and the expectations of the audience all contribute to this immersive experience. In contrast, the Web combines quick access to information with active or operative interaction (clicking, swiping) and the promise of a direct connection with a surrounding physical and social reality. The quick access to interconnected bits of information results in short spans of attention, thus inducing a process of constant dissociation. In addition, the responsibility for their behavior and navigation takes users constantly in and out of experiences.

This is completely different in cinema, where a constant flow of mental interaction reinforces the continuous and deep attention of viewers who are not distracted by any other stimuli.

As a filmmaker I want to investigate how the qualities of 34

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

BIOGRAPHY Pablo Núñez Palma (Chile, 1984) is a filmmaker and media researcher. He studied Film Direction at the Catholic University of Chile, where he also conducted studies in Aesthetics and Social Communication. In 2010 his feature film Manuel de Ribera, co-directed with Christopher Murray, premiered at the Rotter­dam International film Festival. In 2011 he moved to the Netherlands and received an M.A. in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam, where he wrote a thesis about the use of symbolic gestures for the re-enactment of historical trauma in the work of Michael Haneke.

In 2012 he co-founded the MAFI foundation, an organization dedicated to producing a film archive of contemporary life in Chile seen through the collective gaze of more than a dozen Chilean filmmakers. During the following years Núñez has been focused on developing research and finding ways to convey it to a general audience. The project One City Ago, to be presented in this graduation show, is the culmination of one of these pursuits.

nunezpalma@me.com

Pablo Núñez Palma

35

One City Ago proposal for a web documentary

Workers visit Amsterdam to demonstrate in front of Royal Palace. Still One City Ago

Bhagwan community burning books. Still One City Ago

One City Ago is a proposal for a web documentary about the people of Amsterdam in the decade of 1980. Using commentary-free news footage from that period, the site takes the user on a virtual stroll through the media imagery of the era. From massive demonstrations such as the one led by squatters during the inauguration of Queen Beatrix, to unsuccessful and almost forgotten attempts from the municipality to keep the city clean – such as the failed implementation of feces-cleaning motorcycles – these images draw the present of another city, one whose identity emerged from the voice of its citizens rather than the plans of authorities. A city that slowly vanished behind the advent of a new episode of Amsterdam, one of gentrification, tourism and the steady rise of its international community.

The Web interface that makes available the audiovisual archive of One City Ago simulates the principles of a city stroll, wherein a mixture of will and hazardness lead to new discoveries. While watching a scene, users can click on tags that connect to other scenes.

The website keeps track of the selections made by users and combines random tags with those which have been chosen the most. This is how, just as an actual stroll when visiting a new place, the platform offers a way to discover Amsterdam through its media imaginary in a casual way, where the path taken by each user is unique and combines personal interests with randomness. Either by actively engaging with the material or passively observing it, the website takes the user on an unguided stroll across passages of daily life in the city.

Country of production The Netherlands Director Pablo Núñez Palma Web developer and designer Bram Loogman Edit consultant and translations Christina Muller Sound engineer Harm van den Berg Post-production Marta Abad Blay

www.onecityago.nl

Squatters defend a barricade. Still One City Ago Local authorities introduce campaign to decrease canine waste on the street. Still One City Ago

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Special Forces evict a squatted building. Still One City Ago Squatters defend a barricade. Still One City Ago

Pablo Núñez Palma

37

Rosanne Pel

My research focuses on the question how sexual violence in film, specifically in fiction film, can be framed. Both literally and figuratively. The research relates to a feature film I’m developing: a black comedy about sexual abuse between youngsters, narrated from the point of view of the perpetrator. The relation between punishment and forgiveness is the key issue.

Framing sexual violence from a different perspective Hannah Arendt and forgiveness Most films represent sexual violence as a blind rage coming out of nowhere, leaving the spectator behind without any way to understand what has happened. This more or less conventional form of representation, often through the eyes of the victim, is connected to the notion of sexual abuse as an excessive and exceptional act of violence.

But unfortunately, sexual abuse is not exceptional. Instead, it’s a very common phenomenon, often taking place over longer periods of time and coming to the surface only later, if ever. It’s this ordinary character that makes it shocking.

In order to understand it better, this common sexual abuse, I’ve been studying the work of the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt (19061975). Arendt has written about democracy, freedom and plurality.

Her work about the relation between victims and perpetrators is the theoretical background for my research – and in particular her investigation into how this relation is affected by punishment and forgiveness.

According to Arendt, both punishment and forgiveness are common attempts to stop transgressive behavior that, without interference, could go on endlessly. But whereas punishment deals only with the event itself, forgiveness goes beyond that. Forgiveness isn’t so much a reaction to a human action, but an action in itself, a new and unexpected action. Forgiveness relates to, or presupposes, the ability to start over again, and more importantly to allow someone else to start over again. Forgiveness is a human thing, an occasion between human beings, not an act of God. It is also, according to Arendt, a necessary thing, because it allows life to go on.

circumstances of his life – he is the victim of the ignorance of his direct environment -, I want him to be responsible for his acts. I think it’s only possible to break a pattern of violence if and when people take responsibility for it. Only then – when the act is acknowledged and we see the normality and humanity behind that violent act – can we find a way to forgive.

Sexual abuse is deeply tragic. What makes is so tragic is that around it, life goes on as if nothing has happened.

And because of that, even the abusive situation becomes ‘normal’, ordinary. This discrepancy is alienating, strange, absurd and at times also comic. That’s why the film will be a dark comedy.

For me, humour is a way to embrace the vulnerability of people in all their imperfections and contradictions, many of which will be present in the film. Comedy isn’t interesting if it’s about situations in life that we love or feel good about, it’s only interesting when it’s about unbearable situations or people. Situations that we would rather not have to look at because we recognize something of ourselves in them. In that sense, comedy is about the confrontation with the unbearable in ourselves. That’s also what makes the films of Ulrich Seidl so good. You find this kind of humour only in the details. It is less in the story itself than in the way the story is told.

Unfortunately, sexual abuse is not exceptional

Black comedy The story is set in a non-idyllic rural village and follows two children, a boy of 15 and a younger girl of 12. The boy, who is the main character of the film, abuses the girl by manipulating her into sexual contact. He’s a normal boy, with an empathic ability that he uses in order to get what he wants. Although his behavior is trigged by the

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Fiction shot as documentary I intend to shoot the film with non-professional actors and a minimal crew. In April this year I’ve made a tryout to see if this method could work for the film. In my experiments I found that the authentic behaviour of non-actors results in the authentic emotions that I value.

I don’t believe that a dramatic performance by professional actors could provide a similar experience. For me acting is not about the psychology of the characters. I believe more in their concrete and inconsistent acts.

That is what fascinates me about human beings.

BIOGRAPHY Educated in audiovisual media (direction and scriptwriting) at the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht, Rosanne Pel (The Netherlands, 1987) wrote and directed different short films (‘Uit Zicht’, ‘Terug’, ‘Newroz’, ‘Heraut’).

These were screened at various film festivals and ‘Uit Zicht’ won the NTR New Arrivals Audience Award (2011). Focussing before on characters unsuccessfully trying to get rid of their need for human contact, during her Master of Film course, Pel decided to try a radically different approach: to understand man as a political being. Her interest therefore lies with the relations between human beings who, despite the inconsistency of their behaviour, thoughts and actions need to make do with each other. Pel also gave up working with large fiction crews; instead, she now uses a much smaller, more flexible and intimate crew.

rosanne.pel@gmail.com www.rosannepel.com

Rosanne Pel

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Light as Feathers

black comedy feature film proposal

Still Light as Feathers

‘Light as Feathers’ takes place in a non- idyllic rural village and follows a boy of 15. In the film, the relationships within his family play a crucial role. The boy is raised by his young mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. All three dominant strong women. The relationship between the boy and his mother is characterized by a close but imbalanced connection, in which she uses him when she needs him. The boy’s father is out of the picture, and his mother’s new boyfriend plays a passive role in his life. The boy abuses his 13 year old female neighbour who is often at their house. He does this by manipulating her into sexual contact. When the girl becomes pregnant, and the abuse is noted, those involved want to take matters into their own hands. The situation escalates. The priest of the village gets involved, but he’s old and forgetful. No one benefits from his interference and the families are confronted with this abusive situation that took place in their community.

They have to deal with it.

Still Light as Feathers

Country of production Poland Director Rosanne Pel Producer & Assistent director Robert Wožniak Writer Rosanne Pel Camera Aafke Beernink Editor Berend van Eerde Sound Leleane Lindenaar Cast Eryk Walny Ewa Makuła Klaudia Przybylska Wanda Sobczak Maciej De,bowski

Still Light as Feathers Still Light as Feathers

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Still Light as Feathers

Stills Light as Feathers Still Light as Feathers

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Rosanne Pel

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Map of initial themes

Balint Mark Turi

I’m interested in developing and telling stories by interacting with the elements of its creation. My original research theme was inspired by the German writer W.G. Sebald (1944-2001). Typical for his stories is that they seem to be composed of mixtures of pictures, memories, apparent facts and fiction, filtered through a fictionalized version of the author. My interest was in telling a story from the main character’s point of view through digression into his cognitive processes (dreams, thoughts, memories, etc.).

Development by digression Interactive development process In order to define this main character and to develop the story I started writing, improvising and rehearsing with an actor, Ferenc Cservenka. This process resulted in a story about a young man, Nándi, who returns to his homeland after several years of abortive wandering across Europe.

He ends up in a situation where he has to come in terms with his life.

This idea grew into a plan for a large online project in which many story lines and the digressions from them were to be connected in a rhizomatic way. The interface and the interaction were supposed to unlock the content in a way similar to a game or a website, with a lot of control for the spectator.

In the process of creating the scenes with the actors, I realized that despite my appreciation of the material being developed, it did not have the fast-paced quality required by games and new media in order to prevent that a visitor instantly clicks away.

I came to a conclusion that interactivity and gaming have to do more with my process of making than with the project itself, and that both as a consumer and as a maker, I am much more attracted by cinema than by interactive 42

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

new media. Nevertheless, the interplay in both the development and production process was highly valuable for the end result.

Story development We continued to develop the story in collaboration with the main actor. But we decided to select only one clear story line with only one ending. Most of the sequences fell out before shooting, some others in the editing room.

We maintained one important digression, which is a stop-­ motion animation part about the puppet that Nándi used to play with as a boy: ‘The Travel of Captain Tom’.

After investigating interactivity as a feature of a final product, I am now looking into interactivity in the development and production process: how can the interplay between story, characters and the makers enrich the film and clarify its position? To me, this change is very important for my own artistic development. It has helped me find a new way to work with actors. In a later stage, it is my plan to find a way to involve crew members in this process.

BIOGRAPHY Balint Mark Turi (Hungary 1985) got interested in photography at the age of 14 and a few years later started making films with friends. He studied Psycho­ logy and Screenwriting in Budapest, Theatre, Film and Media Science in Vienna, and Film Directing in Paris. He made several short films and music videos that have been shown in prestigious festivals in Hungary and across Europe.

In his work he is interested in those in between situations where characters can cross from one state of being to another through understanding and accepting their own personal traumas and thus their place in the world. His aim is to make these transitions happen in the actors through games and other rituals and to translate it all to a new cinematic language.

balint.mark.turi@gmail.com www.balintmarkturi.com

Balint Mark Turi

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No Place Like On The Road Legjobb úton

fiction No matter where you go, to reach something you have to face yourself with honesty.

Nándi (30), a wannabe music composer returns to his home town in the Hungarian countryside after 7 years of abortive wandering across Europe. His stay is temporary, he’s waiting for a visa to New Zealand where an apparently stable but not music-related job is waiting for him. He meets his mother, his friends, old memories, new love and also his father, whom he has not seen for 20 years. All these encounters act as mirrors to Nándi, forcing him to come to terms with his life.

Still No Place Like On The Road Still No Place Like On The Road

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Crew Preparing to shoot scenes by the lake – Balint Mark Turi on set with Ferenc Cservenka, the main actor – Shooting a wide shot in the Hungarian countryside Working Method Flowchart

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Balint Mark Turi

Country of production Hungary Year of production 2015 Duration 75’ Director Balint Mark Turi Writer Balint Mark Turi Ferenc Cservenka Production company Film Reactor Producer Orsolya Böszörményi-Nagy Camera Dániel Kóródi Editor Szabolcs Kavári Sound Márk Hörömpöli Music composer Ferenc Cservenka Cast Ferenc Cservenka Lili Walters László Konter Asma Ambrus Norbert Varga Judit Tarr Nimród Lekly Miklós B. Székely Balázs Szitás Máté Szilágyi Bálint Turi István Gôz Tibor Boda Viktor Szivák-Tóth Gergely Szalay Bence Lajkó Máté Hegedûs Balázs Medve

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Namfon Udomlertlak

I became an artist to escape a world I really hated – the world of family life and its focus on financial security. Then I discovered that the art world is as much a system as the family world, so I gave up on it, until I realized that you can never be truly outside. That’s when I decided to use art to analyse the family system. In order to come to terms with it, I needed to understand what family means.

Fiction affects life Family life and film Against this background my research evolved from one experiment to the next. One of my first experiments was to film families over dinner. It was partly a personal choice – I like food and I like to watch people eat, like probably a lot of people do – but families having dinner together is also an excellent way to discover the ins and outs of their relationship, how they interact with each other or not, which issues are important, what problems there are and how they deal with them. This was very interesting, but what was equally interesting, if not more, was the influence of the camera on the situation. The presence of the camera affects everyday life and our perception of it. Our perception of reality is influenced by the use of cinematic means like camera, but also of course editing or dialogue. To make the transformative role of filmmaking on our perception of reality a more explicit element in my research, in my second experiment I filmed a family in three different settings. In the first setting, I asked a family member to film their daily gathering around dinner time. In the second, the camera was there like a fly on the wall. In the third, I was present myself, as a filmmaker.

cinematic means on our perception of reality by filming this investigation of myself.

Autonomy My conclusion from this second experiment and from a short essay film I made about my father’s attitude towards life, was that I‘d have to investigate myself: who am I, what do I want, which are my talents and where do I go from here? I decided to accept the consequences of my need for autonomy and independence and set out to leave my parents’ house.

Hyperreality What the journey of making the film, and the creative process has taught me is that just as there’s no outside of art, there’s no outside of the family system. Solitude isn’t the answer. But understanding how it works, allowed me to rediscover myself as family member. Filming the highly peculiar sequences with my family has made me reflect about the relation between film and reality. I tend to see the making process as a form of hyperreality, as articulated by Jean Baudrillard on the first page of Simulacra and Simulation: ‘…Simulation… is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality’. It’s a representation or sign without an original referent.

Being both actor and director blurred my concept of what’s real: I tried not to act in the fiction part and I lost myself sometimes in the documentary process. Using this notion of the hyperreal and finding the right point of view without delivering a judgement, will help me to optimize my personal creative process.

Fiction is important for everyday life ‘Free Falling’ is a film that consists of three parts: a documentary, a fiction and a hybrid or mixed part. In the documentary part you see me building my own little house on a piece of land that is managed by the art project The Land Foundation, which permitted me to create a temporary house.

In the fictional second part, I am travelling through the countryside, trying to figure out how to find a house of my own. I meet a fortune teller and I ask him to help me. He guides me to a holy well and I end up at a strange piece of land, which seems to be the land of many artists.

In the third part, my family and I discuss my future life. It’s real, because they are my folks and I invited them to have a serious conversation. I tell them how I want to live my life. At the same time, it’s not real because the presence of the camera definitively has an impact on their behaviour.

They try to act normally, but they don’t behave like in ordinary life.

It’s really different. We filmed a rehearsal and to my surprise, there was not the kind of conflict we used to end up in.

BIOGRAPHY Namfon Udomlertlak, (Thailand 1987), studied fine arts, worked as an actress and a graphic designer, and has grown into an experimental video maker who insists on working with duration. She has completed experimental projects that question the notion of reality in cinematic perception, often using duration and mundaneness to instigate her audience.

I had to find a house of my own.

I ended up building one - with my own hands

As a granddaughter of Chinese immigrants in Thailand, I grew up in a family particularly concerned about economic stability. Although they accept me as a person and respect my choices, in the end my parents would like to see me married and start a family. To them, knowing that their children will take care of them when they grow old is the most valuable certainty in life. In order to escape the increasing dominance of my parents’ financial perspective, which was casting a shadow over our relationship, I had to find a house of my own. I ended up building one with my own hands and a lot of help from my friends.

And I decided to continue my research into the impact of

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The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

namfonudomlertlak@gmail.com

Namfon Udomlertlak

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Free Falling (fon sud tai) docufiction Free Falling is a docu-fiction film that aims to explore the notion of reality and its ambiguities in both the real and the virtual world. It’s a story about self-discovery and traces the journey of a young woman who plays both the role of the film director and that of the youngest daughter in a Thai family. The daughter uses the making of the film to investigate the relationship between herself and her family and to understand the complexities involved, before telling her parents about her life’s decision.

Country of production Thailand, the Netherlands Year of production 2014-2015 Duration 50’ Director Namfon Udomlertlak Producer Namfon Udomlertlak Maenum Chagasik Co-production companies Pop-picture Production Offscene Film Electric eels Film Camera Peeranat Choodoung Wichanon Somumjarn Dontree Siribunjongsak Katatorn Suknin Namfon Udomlertlak Editor Namfon Udomlertlak Sound Nopawat Likitwong Music composer Chapavich Temnitikul

www.freefallingmovie.wordpress.com www.facebook.com/FonSudTai

Getting coconut Build the house

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Talking heads

Scarecrow scene

Holy well

The Master and the Giant – Master of Film Graduation Show

Namfon Udomlertlak

Cast Namfon Udomlertlak Nipapon Udomlertlak Somboon Udomlertlak Kanok Sa-ngimthong

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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

NEDERLANDSE FILMACADEMIE

The Master and the Giant (Master of Film Graduation Show) is part of the Keep an Eye Filmacademie Festival: 27 June - 3 July 2015.

Generously supported by festival partner Keep an Eye Foundation.

NETHERLANDS FILM ACADEMY

MASTER OF FILM, NETHERLANDS FILM ACADEMY Director Netherlands Film Academy Bart Römer Programme Director Master of Film Mieke Bernink Coordinator Master of Film Kris Dekkers Programme Coordinator Jan Sebening Production Alexandra Lodewijkx Technical Producer Martin Schrevelius © Nederlandse Filmacademie, Amsterdam juni 2015

LICHTING 2015 CLASS OF 2015

Design Ecco Fatto! / JP Commandeur Coverphoto Vladimir Simic, Bram Loogman Printer Flyerman

Markenplein 1, 1011 MV Amsterdam +31(0)20 52 773 33 info@filmacademie.nl www.filmacademie.nl www.masteroffilm.nl

Mirka Duijn, Shangri-La: paradise under construction Onderwerp

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