Directors Lounge: Flexfest 2011
Selected works from the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival 2011
presented by Roger W. Beebe, artistic director of Flexfest
Thursday, 26 May 2011, 21h
Z-Bar, Bergstraße 2, 10115 Berlin-Mitte

FLEX: the Florida Experimental Film and Video Festival presents a program of highlights from their 2011 biennial competitive festival.  FLEX is interested in an expansive notion of experimental media. “Work may draw on documentary, animation, avant-garde, underground, or other traditions—-or no traditions at all.“ As such the programming comprises a variety of mediums from 16mm direct animation to found video and from laconic place studies to experimental love poems.
Since its start in 2004, Flexfest has become one of the most important festivals for experimental media in USA, challenging us to rethink what 'experimental' means. Roger Beebe, who is the artistic director of Flexfest and who is currently teaching a 5 week workshop at LaborBerlin, will present the program. He was already a guest at Directors Lounge in 2009. Roger W. Beebe will be available for Q&A.

The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival presents both year-round programming and an annual festival (FLEXfest) in Gainesville, Florida.  Showcasing a broad range of experimental media, FLEXfest alternates a biennial competitive festival with a biennial curated event. Past FLEX guests have included Craig Baldwin, Jim Trainor, Helga Fanderl, Deborah Stratman, Ben Russell, Robert Todd, Leighton Pierce, Naomi Uman, Bill Brown, Scott Stark, Jacqueline Goss, Johan Grimonprez, Vanessa Renwick, and many others.

Experimental Film Club: Landscapes on film
Thursday May 19th, 19h
Irish Film Institute, 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Landscapes on Film is a selection of films that explore diverse investigations of landscape on film and video. This programme includes works by Eve Heller, Chris Kennedy, Miriam de Burca, Ariane Michel, Matthew Buckingham & Joachim Koester. These works alternate between lyrical exploration, particularly apparent in Heller's abstract landscape poem shot on residency in Ontario, and the more overtly political. Kennedy's film deconstructs idealised landscapes with reference to classical landscape painting paradigms. The works of De Búrca and the Koester & Buckingham collaboration hover between fiction and fact, disclosing hidden subtexts in Belfast and Christiania, Denmark. Ariane Michel explores an uninhabited landscape abandoning a human viewpoint for that of an animal protagonist. Each of these filmmakers adopts a strong individual position in order to articulate contested and appropriated landscapes.