Black Sun Cinema presents
A Programme of Lithuanian Experimental Film
in association with Tinklai International Short Film Festival, Lithuania, and Solus Film Collective, Dublin
Saturday 20 October 2012, 20:45h
Triskel Christchurch Cinema, Tobin St., Cork

Black Sun Cinema, in partnership with Triskel Christchurch, is proud to present a retrospective programme of Lithuanian experimental shorts from the ‘90s. These films, very rarely screened in Ireland, provide an eye-opening snapshot of a distinctive independent film culture in the process of defining itself.

Much of the programme highlights a tendency towards personal, poetic and formally adventurous approaches to documentary reality. The wordless, powerfully bleak yet pictorially exquisite rural worlds evoked in The Window (Julius Ziz, 1989) and Earth of the Blind (Audrius Stonys, 1992) will appeal to admirers of Bela Tarr, while Ten Minutes Before the Flight of Icarus (Arunas Matelis, 1991) offers a charmingly quirky glimpse of an urban neighbourhood in upheaval. The Black Box (Algimantas Maceina, 1994) confronts personal and national history more directly, albeit in a visually radical fashion.

Contrasting with the rest of the programme, the selection of hand-painted, hand-scratched films by artist August Varkalis plunges into visual abstraction: ecstatic, fast-paced cascades of pure cinema that make for intoxicating viewing.

Black Sun is delighted to announce that renowned Lithuanian filmmaker Julius Ziz will be present to introduce the screening.

- The Window (Julius Ziz, 1989)
- The Black Box (Algimantas Maceina, 1994)
- Ten Minutes Before the Flight of Icarus (Arunas Matelis, 1991)
- Earth of the Blind (Audrius Stonys, 1992)
- Abstract films by August Varkalis (1995-2002)

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.