Oporto apresenta #29: Voyage to the Center of the Phone Lines
Friday, October 4th 2012, 22:30h
Oporto, Salvador Correia de Sá, 42, 2 frente, 1200-399 Lisboa

"Voyage to the Center of the Phone Lines" by Michel Auder
Analog video, color, sound, 53', 1993

Voyage to the Centre of the Phone Lines borrows its title from Jules Verne’s science-fiction novel Voyage au centre de la terre from 1864, in which a German professor explores volcanic tubes that lead him to the earth’s core and to an 1860s understanding of our planet’s geological development. ‘Voyage’ usually denotes faraway travel by sea, and Auder uses ‘holiday’ images of beaches, sunsets and verandas, already stamped with that vintage VHS look, to illustrate a sound track entirely consisting of excerpts from cordless and wireless telephone conversations between unnamed, unknown people. We all know eavesdropping is supposed to be bad, but even if we put up some resistance at first we cannot help being sucked into this maelstrom (another word that Jules Verne liked) of religious and financial speculation, parental despair, gleeful psychobabble and frank erotic revelation. Auder is usually right about what captures our attention and what constitutes unadulterated human interest.

"floating words in an echo world" - Alexandre Estrela

Directors Lounge: Phlipp Hartmann | f.k.flumen
Von der Notwendigkeit dessen (Whereby according to necessity)
Thursday, 27 September 2012, 21h
Z-Bar, Bergstraße 2, 10115 Berlin-Mitte
With guest Jan Eichberg

Philipp Hartmann, whose short film comedies about Karlsruhe called "Der Anner" ("the other, there" in Southern Dialect) have been audience favorites on festivals, also works in very different styles with film, preferably with Super-8, and with much more subtle humor. Tracking the traces of Alexander Humboldt or his grandfather in Latin America, reflecting on the physical-poetical conditions of condensation trails in the sky, or recording the last remnants of an old lady who passed away, he always combines documentary with fictional approaches in such subversive, subtle ways that the viewer at the same time may be following the "movies of his own mind" or his own associations while watching these films. In addition, Philipp Hartmann will present Jan Eichberg as guest artist in the program, who creates short narratives in similar aesthetic ways. Both artists with be present and available for Q&A.

Experimental Film Club: Of Ruins and Light
Friday September 21st 2012, 21h
Coal Quay carpark Culture Night, Cork.

This programme of 16mm experimental film works is curated by Esperanza Collado and Aoife Desmond of the Experimental Film Club, Dublin. Their chosen films present expanded representations of time and space; from the earthly to the celestial, from the transience of man's structures on earth, to the vastness of the universe.

- Scotch Tape (Jack Smith, USA, 1959-1962, 3 minutes, B&W, Sound (optical), 16mm)
- The End (Patrick Keiller, 18 min, 16mm, B&W, sound (optical), 1986)
- Stellar (Stan Brakhage, 3 min, Colour, Silent, 16mm, 1993)
- Origin Of Species (Ben Rivers, 16 minutes, Colour, Sound (Optical), 16mm, UK, 2008)
- Redshift (Emily Richardson, 4 min, 16mm, colour, sound, 2001)
- The Cup And The Lip (Warren Sonbert, 20 mins., 16mm, colour, sound, 1986)
- Observando El Cielo (Jeanne Liotta, 19 mins, 16mm, colour, sound, 2007)
- Transit Of Venus (Nicky Hamlyn, 2 Min, 16Mm, B&W, Silent, 2005)