DL Blog

News, notes, screenings and ramblings from Directors Lounge, the mothership of media art.

CROSS YOUR ART AND THOU SCHOLL NOT DIE

Tonight: strange creatures and things that go bump (to a beat) in the night. Up front, four DL film blocks to enjoy: DL Plus: Deconstruction at 6:00pm is followed by DL Selection X at 7:00pm. Then DL Selection XI vies for attention in Space A with the concurrently running film program DL Plus: Comme une image (four World Premieres!) presented in Space B, both at 8:30pm. Room upon room of short film treats! Then it’s time for Chambre Cross Art to strut out its stuff at 9:30pm in Space B, with a mélange of otherworldliness including guest Thomas Bröse, screening his film “Seelig,” a black-and-white surrealistic trip with non-traditional gender casting. Meet the actors and shake to the wickedly wild man called Petra Flurr, acting as DJ. Then DL brings you Kai Stänicke’s award-winning short “Cold Star” starring Dieter Rita Scholl to precede the highlight of the evening: a live performance by the man (or sometimes woman) Scholl him-/herself. Called “the most incredible man in the world” by Glenn Close, you may well think so yourself afterwards. Scholl’s program of music swings between pop and chanson, and Italy’s Martina Colli will accompany him on the piano. Members of Queer Riot Club will also show their colours. We promise you birds of paradise of every shape, size and gender. See you there!

(Due to illness, the singer Nicole Yazolino was unfortunately forced to cancel tonight’s appearance. Sorry to her fans… get well soon, Nicole!)

Day 7 program

the complete program, 6 – 16 Feb

Win 3×2 tickets with Pilsner Urquell for The 10th Berlin International Directors Lounge, Day 7, 12 Feb 2014

pictured: Thomas Bröse “Seelig”, Cross Art Gallery, Dieter Rita Scholl, Nikita Lavretski “The End of December”, Alexandru Ponoran “Isac Inca Doarme”

WATCHING EYES AND CREATIVE NATIVES

They might be near the end in a dictionary, but starting at 6pm, Zagreb shows how it can pull out front in the docu “New Tendencies Zagreb, 1961-1973,” with the bcd cybernetic art team in attendance to take us through an important phase in the Euro-capital’s artistic push forward. Miro A. Cimerman (bcd) will satisfy all curiosities in a talk on “Zagreb Avant-garde in the Shadow of Yalta” (Space B). Then Medienwerkstatt Berlin turns the tables, putting our eyes on the watchers in “Surveillance” in Space A – short films that may feed your fear that, run as you will, there may well be nowhere left to hide (6:30pm). A DL Plus event takes the stage at 8pm in Space B: Kroatien Kreativ (curated and presented by Ingeborg Fülepp), those manipulators of video and light, show a 75-minute series of video art in a class all its own, culled from highlights of the media facade at Collegium Hungaricum and new works by young artists from the seaport Rijeka. Over in Space A at 9pm, DL Selection VI sets sail, screening a transatlantic mix of short film refreshments, including four never before seen on German shores. All in all, a varied selection of overlapping programs straddling two spaces at the Naherholung Sternchen… the question is, how to decide what of which to take in?

Day 5 program

the complete program, 6 – 16 Feb

berlinlounge:
Tues 11 | 8pm | space B

WORLD PREMIERE

In attendance of Adrián Onco Orduna

Somewhere in Hong Kong, today. “A long journey, a reflection, a fragrance…” the sighs of someone plunged in nostalgia, of someone who observes life from the distance of having the end of the road before his eyes. Certain images and sounds blend bringing about the reminiscence of memories that seek to disentangle the meaning of a longed for life, and prolong as an example for posterity. The simplicity of the composition, like our destiny in this world, gives room to some small verses that overlap with revived feelings of a present that escapes, a present, the last one, which finally emerges with the clarity of what has passed, leaving, however, a slight shade of ambiguity.

Adrián Onco Orduna’s “Vestigios” (Vestiges) will be shown  at the 10th Berlin International Directors Lounge

Tues 11 | 8pm | space B

the complete DL X program

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The Hopper by Alex Brüel Flagstad

Clay-Motion, Stash House Stick-Ups, West Baltimore, and fluffy pancakes.

The Hopper is not your average clay-animation story. 16 year old Dexter lives with his grandmother in west Baltimore, Maryland. One night Dexter and his friend Kevin rob local drug dealers, but things do not work out as planned and violence spins out of control.

“Most people regard clay animation movies as children’s movies. They take a certain cuteness and naivety for granted with animated characters acting in a funny story. I knew this from the very beginning of the project and thought this offered a great opportunity to catch the audience off guard. I wanted to tell a story in a clay-animated universe where the premise of the real world is somehow maintained – "realistic” violence and “real” people with “real” problems (i.e. “real” hallucinations from “real” drugs).
The Hopper aims at capturing the mood and feeling of West Baltimore, Maryland. In a way it is paying tribute to The Wire, a series which completely blew me away: so perfectly written and realistically told. I grew up with HipHop and rap music and have a deep rooted love for this music and culture. I think this kept me going, making every nerdy detail as real as possible. Normally I am very impatient person but stop-motion and clay-animation is unbeatable, you just can’t rush it.
I’d be very happy if people watching The Hopper would at some point forget that they are watching a clay-motion movie.“

Alex Brüel Flagstad

The Hopper will be shown at the 10th Berlin International Directors Lounge:

DL selection VII

Tues 11 | 8pm | space A

DIGITAL CRYSTAL BALL: THE FUTURE, NEAR AND FAR FROM PARIS

At 7pm, the first of three Urban Research curations by DL’s Klaus W. Eisenlohr hits town… or rather, city. “The Future, The City” explores future and futuristic redfinitions of urban space, in terms of both loss and gain. Then at 8pm, Argentinian filmmaker Gustavo Postiglione takes a single city and digs to its depths with an eye for humour: Rosario, Argentine crossroads metropolis and birthplace of Che Guevara, is dissected for irony in “Lejos de Paris” (“Far From Paris”). At 9pm, another heady brew of shorts, DL Selection V, takes Space A with six premieres, including German first screenings of the black humour “5 Ways to Die” from Cyprus and “The Big Leap” (PL/SE), with its director Kristoffer Rus in attendance. Rounding all this up, Directors Lounge fittingly presents Deep House Lounge from the spinners of DJ Jense, who embraces deep/deeper/deepest sounds in Nu Disco and more, as he has done in travels across Finland and Germany. Be there, Sunday doesn’t get better!

Day 4 program

the complete program, 6 – 16 Feb

pictured: Gustavo Postiglione “Lejos De Paris” (Far From Paris); Urban Research curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr

WILDLIFE AND… WILD LIFE (ANIMATED & HUMAN ANIMALS)

Directors Lounge boomerang contributor Kim Collmer carts a jungle of joys to the Naherholung Sternchen tonight. Kicking off at 6pm, her self-curated “Wild at Heart: Animations about Animals and ‘Nature” includes dragons and a minotaur in the zoo.The filmmaker will be on hand to administer first aid in the form of illumination. At 8pm, DL Selection III tumbles love and home around like a badger in a spin-dryer, with a couple of World Premieres in the lot, and more than a couple of thought-provokers. Four shorts take over the screen at 9pm with DL Selection IV, including Max Sacker ’s eye-seducing take on Bunuel’s (and others’) film language, “Belle de Lyon,” with the director in personal attendance to hear your reactions to this sliced serving of b/w and colour pain and pleasure. Kate Maveau is also on hand to present her “Shimi”. At the shank of the evening, Herr Blum (neither man nor flower, but a son-and-father frontal attack on the senses) bring their visual/acoustic “music and action painting” performance assault to the boiling point. Their aim is “provocation and ecstasy,” and you can never get enough of either. After that, anything can happen… and probably will. Open end, the best end there is (!)… tonight at Directors Lounge.

Day 3 program

the complete program, 6 – 16 Feb

pictured: Max Sacker “Belle De Lyon”, Steven Subotnick “Hairyman”, “Chaingang of Love” by Nicolas Maidana