LOOK INTO THE HYPNOTIC (INTERNATIONAL) EYE

[DL8]’s penultimate tango gets going with big city stomp: Klaus W. Eisenlohr’s Urban Research series times two. First up, the 46-minute “Moscow Diary” (Adam Kosoff, UK) followed by the “Activismo Experimental: Artists Involved” section, short sojourns including “Ein kleines Stück Papier” (“A Little Piece of Paper”) in support of which Frank Behnke, Klaus Beyer, Brandstifter, Tanja Roolfs, Carsten Wagner will make a personal appearance. Then, at 20:00 (8pm), another special guest: Rosetta Messori shows “Primordial Breath” in World Premiere, a journey in photos from her Visioni Mediterranee. Still more, at 20:30 (8:30): film festival fixture Telemach Wiesinger screens his “Neue Filme” (that is, his new films, of course), experimental works that will demonstrate why so many cities from Toronto to Seoul have featured his works in their film events. At 22:00 (10pm), another slice of our own selection: “DL Selection VIII” brings us a German, a European and two World Premieres. These last two are from one and the same filmmaker, Spain’s Santiago Parres (EZO), who will reveal “Dove” and “Sinecdoquanon”, and attend the screening as well. Johanna Wagner, maker of “Submerged” and “Danaus Gilippus”, the last films of this section, will also be in attendance. Again at the 8th Berlin International Directors Lounge – a full evening, with filmmakers galore to rub shoulders with… or just chat with in the inviting environment of Naherholung Sternchen, Berolinastr. 7 (U-Schillingstr., two buildings behind Kino International). KT/Team DL

Feb. 18, the program

find us here

pictured: Dove by Santiago Parres (EZO)

Sat 18 | 6pm

URBAN RESEARCH – III SPECIAL

Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr

Adam Kossoff’s Moscow Diary (pictured) and some surprise from the Urban Research Program

Sat 18 | 6:45pm

URBAN RESEARCH – III Activismo Experimental: Artists Involved!

Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr

Cesy Leonard, Eduardo Srur, Russell J. Chartier, Daniel Künzler, Diane Nerwen, Vladimir Turner, Sheldon Brown, Matt Grau, Brandstifter

With special guests: Frank Behnke, Klaus Beyer, Brandstifter, Tanja Roolfs, Carsten Wagner

OPENING OF THE SPECIAL EXHIBITION IN THE SCREENING THEATRE:

Brandstifter DE Asphaltbibliotheque Berlin 2011
Exhibition with lost and found sheets of paper

Find more infos about the Urban Research Program and the films at richfilm

Feb 18, the program

Sat 18 | 8:00pm

PRIMORDIAL BREATH by ROSETTA MESSORI | World Premiere in attendance

Primordial Breath is a visual journey based on 18 photographs from her book Visioni Mediterranee (Skira 2010). In a continuous state of flux, photographer and filmmaker Rosetta Messori captures the essence of a movement to tell an imaginary story.

Music taken from the album: “Draw a line Egyptian contemporary music” by Khaled Shokry

Sat 18 | 8:30pm

TELEMACH WIESINGER PRESENTS HIS NEW FILMS

Sat 18 | 10pm

DL SELECTION VIII

Christina McPhee, Barbara Friedman and Gilivanka Kedzior, Allan Brown, Santiago Parres (EZO) (in attendance), Ron Toole, Maria Niro and Richard Broomhall, Derviches Associés, Johanna Wagner (in attendance)

pictured: The Secret by Barbara Friedman and Gilivanka Kedzior

Feb 18, the program

Fri 17 | 10:30pm

VLADIMIR HIRSCH | UNDERLYING SCAPES

live performance

Vladimír Hirsch is a Czech avantgarde composer and musician, integrating industrial and dark ambient music with modern classical composition. Besides creating solo works, he is the founding member and leader of Skrol, Aghiatrias and various other projects of alternative music. His compositional style is characterized by polymodality and the emphasis on new sonic properties of instrumentation, created by force of digital technique. The music is marked by a dark, tense and tempestuous atmosphere, crossings over from experimental manipulations to unambiguous strictness in composition which are marked by highly evocative atmosphere enriched by conceptual themes ranging from metaphysics, anxiety to spirituality.

Vladimír Hirsch has been creating a rich blend of music for over 2 decades. His extensive collection includes more than 40 albums. Vladimir Hirsch performs regularly in his native country and abroad.

pictured: Jákob’s Ladder by Robert Carrithers and Marianna Auster

Fri 17 | 8:15pm

JAKOB’S LADDER by ROBERT CARRITHERS and MARIANNA AUSTER German Premiere in attendance

And don’t miss “Jákob’s Ladder” (German Premiere) by Robert Carrithers and Marianne Auster at 8:15pm (part of “Two Short Stories”), a loose mystical portrayal of a biblical story inspired by Masonic lore and Prague mystic symbols, enhanced by the ethereal powerful music of Vladimír Hirsch.

Robert Carrithers is a Prague based filmmaker, photographer and script
writer. He has been documenting the musical and art underground scene
since the 1980s, exhibiting around the world with his most recent, NYC
80s’ underground Club 57/Mudd Club series, receiving critical acclaim.
He is presently completing a documentary about the legendary Berlin
based band Fatal Shore and is in pre-production on a humorous erotic horror
feature film set in Prague. He has lived and worked in New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin and Prague.

Marianna O (Auster) is a Prague based (originally from Brooklyn, NYC) photographer and montage video maker, whose narrative collage films accompany Vladimír Hirsch’s and Skrol’s live music sets. Extracts from films, documentary footage, commercials and other lost relics are given new disturbing plots and spiritual dimensions. She has also worked on CD album cover designs for Hirsch’s releases.

Feb. 17, the complete program

pictured: Dr Valentyn Machines A Heart by Stephen Dirkes

DAY 8, Feb. 16

THE END CAME QUIETLY: BUT ONLY TODAY’S

After the noisy festivities of last night’s FESTIWELT party at [DL8] (the 8th Berlin International Directors Lounge, of course), the program swings consequently in the opposite direction. But not right away. First, at 19:00 (7pm), we bring you an extra-special DL Selection: our sixth in sequence also presents six back-to-back Premieres (two German, European and World each), so get ready to see what you’ve likely seen nowhere else, ranging from one to 14 minutes. There’s even more at 21:00 (9pm), DL Selection VII, featuring two shorts from the mysterious J.X. Williams, 1967’s “Credit Sequences From ‘Space Vixens’” and 1961’s “The 400 Blow Jobs”, for a nifty twist on Truffault’s title. This line-up also has its share of Premieres, four in all. Then comes the hush, but only somewhat: “Moving Silence” at 23:00 (11pm) unites modern silent films with live musical accompaniment, reminding us that “silence is not silent”. Indeed. At Naherholung Sternchen, Berolinastr. 7 (U-Schillingstr., behind Kino International).

KT/Team DL

Feb. 16, the program

find us here

Thurs 16 | 9pm

MISS CANDACE HILLIGOSS’ FLICKERING HALO by Fabio Scacchioli and Vincenzo Core | German Premiere

The beginning is another movie, an American noir of the early 60s: gutted and disemboweled, tortured and “detourned” images organize themselves into precarious and evolving structures, intertwined in multiples and twisted plots in a state of permanent collapse. The aim is to incite the explosion of a closed system through a dispositive of audiovisual implosions. Forget what you see while you are actually watching it, and soak in a vibrating, optical ancestry. A scream without a reason.

The human eye can see the world through photoreceptive cells on the retina, a membrane sensitive to light emitted or reflected by objects. Light travels through time and space at a certain speed. For example, sunlight takes 8 minutes to get to our eyes, while from other stars it takes several lightyears.
Also the light generated or reflected by an object or a person on Earth takes a certain time, even if short and infinitesimal. There is a distance (short, eternal) between us and our image of reality. Even between thought and action, between thought and language, there is a similar lapse, necessary to transmit the signal via electrical impulses from the brain to different parts of the body.

“Miss Candace Hilligoss’ flickering halo” is a film about this distance, about the interval simultaneously separating and uniting, the silence between words, the black between pictures. It ’s a film against the dialectical opposites in cinema, assembled according to the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the use of the phenomenon of retinal persistence as an expressive tool. Vincenzo Core, sound director, believes the audio element is not just a naturalistic comment of pictures, but rather a counterpoint between sound and images able to turn the experience into a real “audiovision ”.

Fabio Scacchioli (Direction and editing) was born in Teramo in 1979. He studied in Perugia and Madrid, graduating with a thesis on the semiotics of experimental cinema. In 2006, he met Gianfranco Baruchello and attended his Foundation, taking part in meetings on artistic practice, participating in exhibitions and seminars, and collaborating on his latest film Another day, another day, another day. His research focuses on the relationship between memory, perception and thought. He works with film, video and installations.

Vincenzo Core (Music direction) was born in Giulianova in 1982. He studied electronic music with Alessandro Cipriani, at the “L. Refice” conservatory of Frosinone. Since 2008 composes for video, dance, installations and performances. His expressive research concentrates on the relationships between various compositional materials to trace paths of meaning, and to express the complexity and vitality of Self.

“Miss Candace Hilligoss’ Flickering Halo” will be screened in German Premiere on Feb 16 as part of the DL Selection VII

Thurs 16 | 9pm

The 400 Blow Jobs

While banished to the Hollywood blacklist, Williams wrote and directed over 200 stag films over a period of fifteen years. Decades before Pulp Friction and Forrest Hump, Williams perfected the art of the porn parody with films such as A Streetwalker Named Desire and High Poon. Only a few of these films still exist today, often in nearly unwatchable condition. This wickedly funny take-off of Truffaut’ 400 Coups is one the few remaining artifacts from this period in Williams’ filmography.

Noel Lawrence, curator of the J. X. Williams Archive

The 400 Blow Jobs
1960 | 8mm | 5:00

J.X. Williams “The 400 Blow Jobs” as well as the “Credit Sequence from Space Vixens” will be screened on Feb 16 as part of the DL Selection VII

DAY 7, Feb. 15

Line up Festivals:

The Festiwelt Party is hosted by the following festivals:

11mm Fußballfilmfestival Achtung Berlin – New Berlin Film Award Alfilm – Arabisches Filmfestival Berlin Asian Hot Shots Baltic Film Festival British Shorts Contravision Down Under Berlin – Australian Film Festival Französische Filmwoche Going Underground interfilm Internationales Kurzfilmfestival Berlin Kiezkieken KUKI Internationales Kinder und Jugendkurzfilmfestival Berlin Kurzfilmfestival Oberschöneweide Northzone One World Berlin Russische Filmwoche Trash Filmfestival Unknown Pleasures – American Independent Film Festival Webcuts – internationales Internet Film Fest Xposed Queer Film Festival Zebra Poetry Film Festival

Location:Directors Lounge

@Naherholung Sternchen

Directors Lounge [DL8]at Naherholung Sternchen behind the Kino International /Rathaus Mitte

Screenings upfront the party:

6pm: URBAN RESEARCH – II The Future is Now, the City Imagination
8pm: One Minute Volume 5

9pm – Party

10pm – Festivals on Stage
After 10pm: 3,- Euro (admission fee)

Line up Party:

Acoustic Lab-Top Mobile – Jürg Bariletti

JAZZ aus BERLIN – Piano: Sebastian Kommerell Gesang: Marbo Becker

The Foxy Boxers – Indie, Electro, Rock’n’Roll

DJ Starfish – Electro, Indie, Hiphop

The Berlin Dustbusters: DJ Cup of Jazz & Stephie Strumpet & The Henrik Maneuver
– Swing vs. Electro

The incredible YipYips – Electro

VJ Chuuu – Turntable Animation

www.festiwelt-berlin.de

DAY 6,Feb. 14

FROM UNDERWEAR TO OVERKILL, OR B-CUP TO B-GRADE

Dessous take front and centre stage at 18:00 (6pm) at the 8th Berlin International Directors Lounge, a.k.a. [DL8] tonight, with the so-named program of short “Bra-Fitting” (World Premiere) and feature “Buy Me!” bringing a girl’s boldest obsession together with the world’s oldest profession. Then at 20:00 (8pm) we switch from street-walkers to street walking, literally, courtesy of Ivan Garcia (ES), whose “The Hard Art Of Strolling” takes us sauntering through Shanghai, Paris, the USSR, Japan and Barcelona at key junctures in their histories. A rare sort of documentary, 48 minutes of wayward wandering, in its German Premiere. And still more comes when the DL Selection V rolls through ten little gems, with Stephan Kaempf on hand with his 5-minute “Chaos”, plus one World and four German Premieres and more. (Almost) finally, at 23:00 (11pm), don’t miss guest curator Shaun Wilson’s “Creatures Of The Night” horror shorts special – films so bad (in taste, acting, technical quality, just about everything) they’re good, and deliciously so. All capped off with live music at midnight from the really good Susanna Berivan, a young singer/songwriter/guitarist whose repertoire defies categorization, spanning dirty country to Lady-Day-jazz to personal punk, stopping at all stations between with a voice of myriad shades. Wow. Another night with a bang at Naherholung Sternchen (behind Kino International).

KT/Team DL

pictured: Susanna Berivan by Jon Clay

Feb. 14, the program

find us here

Tues 14 | 6pm

BUY ME! – CATALINA FLOREZ

Vivan designs dessous for prostitutes. With her partner Michel she sells her
creations to the girls in the red-light districts in the Netherlands which seduce their costumers with the bikinis.

Vivian’s longtime relationship with the prostitutes allow filmmaker Catalina Flórez an exceptionally intimate view into the minds of the girls behind the glass windows. Very personal Interviews show the human side of the girls, often judged as immoral and pitiful.

Buy me! tells about the search for easy money, freedom, fun and love. In a live between show window and relationship, between moral and necessity,
between beauty and age.

Catalina Flórez COLUMBIA Buy me! 59min 2011

BUY ME! will be shown as part of “DESSOUS” together with Cristina Zabalaga’s BRA-FITTING on Tues 14 | 6pm