Xenia Open Air Film Festival is an international event that celebrates the concept and practice of Hospitality, which has been an integral part of many cultures since ancient times. Stories about Hospitality often revolve around a mutual exchange between hosts and guests, and globally, this tradition has connected culture and united humans, irrespective of social status, race, or religion. Today, Hospitality seems even more relevant, a beautiful and mutually beneficial exchange that fosters a ripple effect of sharing, support, and inclusion.
Festival ECRÃ is an Experimental Art and Cinema event that, through experiences that question the notion and production of the moving image, seeks to stimulate audiovisual culture. By showing Films, Games, Installations, Interactive Arts, Performances and Videoarts, ECRÃ encourages new formats for the production and exhibition of these works.
This project arose in 2016 from the desire to question the film industry and its “primordial elements” and to give space for filmmakers and artists to experiment freely in audiovisual production and thinking.
Cobalt as the midnight sky when day has gone without a trace and we lie in each other’s arms eyes shut and fingers open and all the colors of the world pass through our bodies like strings of fire. -Marge Piercy
This 1969 experimental film by Joyce Wieland consists primarily of degraded footage of landscapes shot from vehicles moving across the country; meanwhile, 537 computer-generated permutations of the film's title appear like subtitles—the letters are scrambled repeatedly, Wieland skillfully intertwines elements of cross-country travelogue, political satire, and modernist experiment.
At the heart of Naomi Uman’s handmade experimental portraits and ethnographies are the folk traditions of the rural women in her host communities. Maintaining her vulnerability by not hiding her face, biases, or active participation behind the camera, Uman explores the intimacy of these women’s lives and joins their day-to-day activities, her camera focused on repetitive manual practices, agrarian ways of living, women’s work, and the intersection of ethnography, portraiture, and self-portraiture. Growing out of her previous work in Ukraine and Mexico, three sparks depicts life in northern Albania where the customary laws of the Kanun rule society. A trilogy-in-one, it begins as a meditation on Uman’s relationship with the country and an unwanted personal sacrifice that imbues her film with mythic, metaphysical implications. three sparks unfolds as a portrayal of village life and women’s gender roles before concluding with a self-reflexive video piece made in collaboration with the villagers, in a final abrupt shift.
