FICXLAB, the Gijón International Film Festival section devoted to experimental film & video returns next November 20-28 with a programme that combines both the work of audiovisual artists and filmmakers. Organized by LABoral, with the collaboration of Lumière Magazine this edition includes screenings of seminal works by R.Bruce Elder and Robert Nelson, as well as programmes dedicated to the work of Nathaniel Dorsky, Helga Fanderl, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva or José Val del Omar, among others.
Dates:
Friday, November 20, 2015 (All day) to Saturday, November 28, 2015 (All day)
A Moment of Eternity in the Passage of Time is a black-and-white video projection with images by visual artist Nicolas Kozakis and text by philosopher and writer Raoul Vaneigem. The work was shot in Mount Athos, a remote mountain and peninsula in northern Greece, which is home to a number of Greek Orthodox monasteries. Access to the area is restricted to few visitors and women are not allowed. Apart from being a holy place, it is also one of escape and meditation for those who manage to gain access. The video unfolds in an undisclosed location, by the sea. A sad-faced, lone immigrant construction worker goes about the task of building a traditional stone house, at his own pace, stopping now and then to smoke a cigarette and contemplate the magnificent, totally still sea view. His task is facilitated by a few donkeys, ancient labourers which have now become all but obsolete from the modern workforce.
Of German origin, Björn Kämmerer lives and works in Vienna. Alongside Johann Lurf, they are part of the young Austrian guard that reinvents the cinematic language using brilliantly different media and mediums. Their films have been awarded many prizes at international festivals and this session will be a rare opportunity to compare their work and exchange views.
Microscope Gallery is very pleased to present an evening of moving image and sound performance works by Sarah Halpern in connection with her current solo exhibit "The Changing Room".
The artist's 35mm film strip and vocal performance pieces in "Film, Paper, Sound" reflect themes of transformation, dualism, and the differences in individual perception and are related to the works on view at the gallery. In the new 35mm film strip projection collage "Watch" Halpern correlates time to magic tricks combining images from clippings about Houdini's graphic notes explaining how certain tricks are performed, recent pocket watch collector's catalogues, and fragments of texts from books about early cinema technology. The second piece "Strip" is a projection through a complete molted snake skin, which the artist found in a garden, stretched across a film strip.
Utopia Parkway: It is from this fittingly poetic-sounding address in Queens, NY, that the art of Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) emerged. Although he scarcely left New York during his lifetime, Cornell's work was strongly influenced by his interest in the old continent, astronomy and eras long past. Cornell was intrigued with all things distant; but instead of starting to travel he created his own cosmos: "This is a man who would look at the stars and dream about the mechanics of the universe." (Walter Hopps)
VISIONS in collaboration with RIDM presents: Isiah Medina + Nicolas Boone"The Disposessed And The Unbinding Of The Space-Time Poverty-Rabble" (60mins)
"Medina's films seek to explore alternate ways of being in the world, resulting in one of the most unique representations of class and race in Canadian filmmaking and sounding the arrival of a fresh new voice." Andréa Picard - TIFF
"Nicolas Boone dissects the violent neighborhood of Hillbrow, in Johannesburg, through a series of episodes drawn from real life stories. A man stands in the ledge of a high building, looking down. Another man gets attacked on the streets. Violence is seen as a force of rupture on this urban panorama." - INDIE14
Iris Film Collective (in collaboration with Cineworks) are pleased to present FRENKEL DEFECTS, a traveling screening series of contemporary experimental 16mm films presented by Kevin Rice (in person) from the Colorado-based Process Reversal. This series aims to explore what it means to work in—and exhibit on—photochemical film today by examining works from artists operating specifically in this practice. Often, this involves getting their hands dirty at every stage of the process: from optical effects to photo-processing, editing and contact printing, optical sound recording, and even the creation of the photosensitive emulsion itself. As a result (and as suggested by the series' title), creative aberrations make their way into the standard photochemical process, giving birth to a new, textural aesthetic that plays out on the surface of the filmstrip. More than ever before, film reminds us of its physicality, giving a new sense to Andrei Tarkovsky’s idea of “sculpting in time.”
Dates:
Friday, November 27, 2015 - 19:30 to Monday, November 30, 2015 - 16:55
Live/Film/Sound/Tracks is the 10th annual Film-Makers' Cooperative (FMC) Benefit Concert - a singular celebration of avant-garde music and expanded cinema, featuring never-before-seen collaborations and performances by an incredible lineup of visionary artists.
Dates:
Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - 19:00 to Thursday, November 12, 2015 - 18:55
"With a delicate and unique clarity of focus, the serenely silent 16mm films of Bay Area treasure Nathaniel Dorsky embody a mindful concern for the epiphanies of each passing moment and a rare sensitivity to the ephemeralities of light. In celebration of the Bay Area premiere of four new films—each deeply concerned the delicacy and sorrow of being alive in the world—we present three silent evenings (and one afternoon) of this master filmmaker’s most recent works." — Steve Polta
For Remembrance Day, DIM Cinema presents Stella Polare, an immersive essay film on the nature of war, terror and resistance; loss, memory and forgetting. The soft voice of an anonymous narrator addresses us, the viewers, in the second person, situating us behind the camera as flâneurs casting our stranger’s gaze across an unnamed European city. There we encounter some of the town’s inhabitants strolling along a jetty in the fading evening light, peer into shop windows in half-deserted streets, and drift through the interiors of 19th-century apartments and museums, following the “dusted faded traces of a glorious imperial past.”
