directors lounge special screening
Petra Lottje + Curtis Burz
auf der spur — on track
video works
Thursday, 29 September 2011, 21h
Z-Bar, Bergstraße 2, 10115 Berlin-Mitte

Directors Lounge presents a programme with Petra Lottje and Curtis Burz. The artists have the differing backgrounds of Fine Art practice, and the documentary tradition of European Cinema consecutively, and they both address the problems of social relations. These relations may be seen as "on track" or "off track". It is ambivalent as the specific uses of media and recordings open the work for different interpretations. In both bodies of work we may find a very personal take on their subject and a strong artificiality in the produced media images.

In “Jedes Zimmer Hinter Einer Tür" (Every Room Behind A Door) Petra Lottje stages the female part of dialogues in diverse films, using the German dubbing voices and borrowing her lips to the sound like it is practice with the "playback mime singers" on TV. However, the lip-sync is not perfect in some parts, the settings seems not to fit correctly but still, and over time, the viewer gets the impression of honest enacting instead of parody. One reason for that impression may be the very understated acting of Petra Lottje. Her minimal gestures and mimic, reminding of Buster Keaton, leave ample space for projections by the viewer. (Buster Keaton's "poker face" was a novelty in cinema at that time. Some film critics see him as the starting point of modern cinema, where the actor on close-up shows only minimal expressions in order to become the mirror for emotional projections by the viewers). Thus over time of watching the film "Jedes Zimmer Hinter Einer Tür" and the programme as a whole, the acting of Lottje seems to become more and more "real".

The Ann Arbor Film Festival launches its 50th season in September with a five-part Retrospective Screening Series, which  presents influential and rare films from its five decades of ground breaking exhibition.

• September 22 - The first retrospective screening includes films by Alice Anne Parker (a.k.a. Anne Severson), including her 1971 film Near the Big Chakra, an influential feminist film that provoked a riot during its screening at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1972. Severson will be in attendance and will be interviewed by artist and UM Art & Design professor Holly Hughes following the screening.

• October 20 – The AAFF 50th: Retrospective Screening Series continues with a program of short archival films selected and presented by guest curator Mark Toscano, film preservationist for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

• November 30 - David Gatten selects and introduces influential films from AAFF’s exhibition history. Gatten’s been attending AAFF for more than two decades as a filmmaker, visiting professor and 2007 festival juror.

• January 25, 2012 - Toronto filmmaker and 37th AAFF juror, Mike Hoolboom, visits Ann Arbor to present a program of significant films curated from the AAFF’s rich history.