Experiments in Cinema v6.3!

Directors Lounge visits Experiments in Cinema:

On April 15th DL will hit the screen in Albuquerque with some of our favourite films by Keith Sanborn, Eric Dyer, Jean-Gabriel Périot, André Werner, Max Hattler and Ken Paul Rosenthal (Ken will be there in person!).

So if you are in New Mexico drop in to see what we’ve compiled. And don’t forget to watch the other programs (curated by our mate Bryan Konefsky, pictured here) that include the works by Gerard Freixes Ribera, Jodie Mack, Jeanne Liotta, Kerry Laitala, Wago Kreider, Marie Losier, Scott Stark and Martha Colburn.

Experiments in Cinema – Albuquerque’s annual celebration of international cinematic experimentation!

Witness cinema like you’ve never it seen before! Experiments in Cinema is an annual, Albuquerque-based festival that celebrates recent trends in international, cinematic experimentation and offers a variety of ways in which attendees might think about the history of media representation and participate in shaping future trends in cultural representation. To this end we are deeply invested in year-long outreach efforts where we travel our festival to schools around New Mexico to inspire a new generation of home grown filmmakers to create movies in ways we might never have imagined possible.

This 5 day event consists of film screenings, lectures, workshops and thoughtful dialogue, always.

www.experimentsincinema.com

Directors Lounge hits LA

We are screening assorted highlights at the prestigious Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA) as part of  NOT A CAR, a special all-media, cross-cultural exhibition featuring the highlights from our partners, the C.A.R. art fair in Essen, Germany, alongside original contemporary artworks by Los Angeles artists debuting at Gallery 825 on April 9, 2011. Exhibit runs through April 29, 2011.

program I

Alexei Dmitriev Dubus 4 min
Coleman Miller US Uso Justo 22 min 2005 
Thorsten Fleisch DE Dromosphäre 10 min 2010
Nicolas Ramel FR A/V Sketch#3 40s 2010
Octavian Fedorovici RO Casablanca 1PM 1min 2008
Julia Smith  US  Grand Teton 4 min 1s 2010
Gunter Deller DE Riverrun and Touchdown     7 min 40s 2009
Ryley O´Byrne CA Maenad  2 min 45s 2010
Ron Diorio US Winter Wind  3 min 1s 2009
Maria Niro  US  Glitch Telemetry  ca 3 min  2010
Kika Nicolela FR/BR  Passenger 5min 2007
Bruce Knox DE Danger Global Warming 7min 3s 201
Sergio Cruz UK    Hannah    5 min30s 2010
Ofir Feldman Poetic Account 1 min
Chema Garcia Ibarra ES The Attack Of The Robots From Nebula-5 6min 20s 2008
KRONCK (aka Maximilian Gerlach & Jessica Benzing) Thank You Third World
Max Hattler DE Spin 4 min 2010
Julia Murakami/Alan Smithee  lost masterpieces #1 ((red) 2010
 
………..

program II

Chiara Ambrosio The Crossing    3min 31s
Chiara Ambrosio Whale 4 min 52s
Eric Dyer US Copenhagen Cycles 6 min 37s
Mark Maxwell Naturaleza Muerta   29 min 2011
Chiara Ambrosio    Charon 12 min 16s Musical score Michael Nyman
Jean-Gabriel Périot 200-000 phantoms 10 min

in cooperation with Myriam Blundell Projects

……….

program III

A Journey Through The Symbols – selected video works by André Werner
The weary traveler must clear his own path through the thicket, must find the passages in this labyrinth of symbols. Here the glimpse of a distant female beauty, there a delightful garden; a gold-glittering speck of color draws the traveler and he finds himself entranced… The viewing of a shape, somehow familiar, sets the mind running at full force, tracing distant memories. Expectations crystalize into clear formulations; the eye strives to match the moving pieces into a distinct wholeness. But the process of pasting together the individual tiles, of trying to derive one whole unified object from this melting pot of images, fails. The arrayed bits of meaning waver and… dissolve.
All that remains are the pictures and colors, the shapes and our traveler’s imaginations – The journey carries on in the mind of the beholder. Anja Osswald

A Journey Through The Symbols combines videos from the last twenty years, many of them will be screened in US premiere

Sun 20th 10:30pm

NYman With A Movie Camera 

Tonight: The Farewell Special of the 7th Berlin International Directors Lounge

Nyman With A Movie Camera is a 64-minute, shot-for-shot remake of Dziga Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera with a live score played by the Michael Nyman Band. Nyman has been heavily involved in cinema for most of his working life, creating the Oscar-winning score for Jane Campion’s The Piano and numerous other features including Peter Greenaway’s Drowning By Numbers and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover.

Conceived and directed by Michael Nyman, Nyman With A Movie Camera painstakingly reconstructs Vertov’s iconic silent picture of 1929 using footage from Nyman’s own film archives shot over the last two decades. A press release offers some further explanation:

“Deeply rooted in Vertov’s original ideas concerned with ‘the perception of truth’, the documentation of ‘life as it is’ and that of ‘life caught unawares’, Nyman’s film attempts to capture the essence of ‘what is there’, and reflects on what he calls ‘the persistence of glance’ a multi-sensorial experience of time as it occurs, of life as it happens and as recorded by the human memory. The film is a modern-day take on experimental documentary film making through the bias of cinematographic collage and proposes to renew a discourse with the ideological and aesthetic precepts once defended by Vertov in his pursuit of the ultimate ‘cleaning up’ of film language from the ‘corrupting influence’ of drama.”

“Nyman’s previous engagement with Vertov’s film dates back to 2003 when he composed the original musical score for Man With a Movie Camera. The encounter with the Russian master was instrumental in defining Nyman’s own aesthetic phraseology and experimentation with the medium of film and documentary. In Man With a Movie Camera, the shot sequence follows a systematic and paced visual pattern in an attempt to mimic the language of the visible, the raw and the unscripted.

“Vertov’s driving vision was to capture ‘film truth’ — that is, fragments of reality, which when organized together have a deeper truth that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Whilst Vertov’s rhythmic patterning unifies the aesthetic surface of his film, Nyman’s choice of footage for Nyman With a Movie Camera, is a random punctuation of a visual text drawn from his own film and sound repertoires and from his photographic archives. The result is a patchwork of imagery embroidered in Vertov’s threads of the newsreel and of the dogmatic values of the film truth.”

via

screening made possible in cooperation with Myriam Blundell Projects

also tonight:

6pm ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2010  selected and presented by Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel ; supporting film by Ofir Feldmann

8:30pm Stories (film program)

at midnight  PRESLAV LITERARY SCHOOL (live music) 

1am Farewell Mix 
afterwards various DJ’s

Sunday, 20th – the complete program:
https://directorslounge.net/tag/20th%20Feb%202011

Fri 18th: The Premieres


Mark Maxwell Naturaleza Muerta – (Still – Life) 29 min 2011 world premiere

The story of a soldier of the International Brigades fighting in Spain against Fascism.

A common theme in Mark Maxwell’s work is the transformation of materials and their intrinsic physical qualities and characteristics, which are hidden to the human eye. His practice encompasses several mediums including mixed-media installations, videoworks and paintings.
Mark Maxwell has been creating video works since the mid nineties. He has produced many abstract pieces including works inspired by the microscopic electroplating of metals and, more recently, he has made forays into video direction producing the creative content at live events for bands such as Feeder and Roger Waters (Pink Floyd). In 2009 Maxwell was invited to create a video installation in a museum in Andalucia, Spain. The installation consisted of a large wooden construction, with an attic like interior which housed two video projections portraying dying fields of mournful sunflowers. The videos were projected directly on to the timber clad roofing. An assortment of mementoes and memorabilia lay scattered on the floor and on shelves, immersed in the gently moving video content, which was accompanied by the soft but incessant sound of flies and crickets. In 2010, Maxwell was presented with the opportunity to direct a short 30 minute film in Andalucia which focused on a story of a soldier from the International Brigades fighting against the fascism of Franco during the Spanish Civil War (1936).
The political tensions within Spanish society are still pertinent even today, and although Naturaleza Muerta (Still-Life) is an art film …it does, contain a narrative and also has a certain resonance which is relevant to all wars past and present.
With innovative timelapse photography and striking underwater scenes, the film depicts the spectacular and varied Spanish landscape and the plight of the injured soldier within it. (source: Myriam Blundell Projects)

Massimo Salvato GB Muse 19min 43s 2010 European Premiere

Maria Niro Torso 2 min 39s 2011 (pictured) World Premiere

Fri, Feb 18th – the complete program here

PRETTY TALK by MICHAEL NYMAN | A REVIEW by KENTON TURK

shown as part of Cine Opera

Insouciant goldfish slowed to supineness swim vacuously toward us and float languidly back out of the frame in this Nyman offering, at first reminiscent of countless relaxation videos. Underpinning the enchanting and warmly colourful scene, rich in tangerine and cyan, is placid piano and low string tones. A parakeet training record runs in the background, the stroking sounds of sofly murmured repetition, echoic phrases that our feathered companions will learn to in turn amuse and soothe us. “Pretty boy” is followed by “Clever little boy”, “Good morning”, “Mama’s little treasure” and a host of others. The gently swimming goldfish presented provide the counterpoint, and we are subtly made conscious of the role of these animals in our lives: the aural pleasure of the birds’ well-learned phrases counter-balances the visual pleasure provided by the fish. As the title suggests, we are presented with two enticements, the “pretty” and the “talk”. The viewer is left to bathe in sensual pleasures or perhaps resist the enticement to an all too pervasive (ab)use of pets. All comes to an increasingly disconcerting end as the melifluous female warblings are replaced by harsher, more insistent tones. The agreeable gradually gives way to the abrasive, and we are cordially escorted out of the scene…. Seductive and yet thought-provoking.

– Kenton Turk

Pretty Talk screened in cooperation with Myriam Blundell Projects

PROFANE | A REVIEW

shown at DL 2011

Psychedelic film as a genre is a slippery slope to walk across where making a bad decision can thrust a project helplessly into cliché. Often filmmakers fail under the decoy of video “Op-Art” which is easy and anyone who’s sat in front of an editing program with a bag of grass can tell you that it only takes five minutes to make. Good psychedelic film and video is sensual and has a narrative or a point or a purpose that fulfils a desire to the brink of madness. It’s not always pretty and often flirts with being uncomfortable. It’s about overwhelming the senses with spiritual and emotional subtext connecting dots between existentialism and essentialism through figurative micropsiac and macropsiac lenses simultaneously. If you can do that then it’s possible to make a good psychedelic film. Usama Alshaibi is one of those few capable people.

Profane is very smart and confident and honest. The film bounces between consonance and dissonance in an algorithm typically reserved for musical composition. The first melody is the camera work: at times annoying and at others intensely beautiful but always expertly edited. The second melody is the characterizations: The most notable actor being Dejan Mircea, I could have met him in real life. He keeps the film from falling into cliché with a convincing performance that makes one want to take him away from the mean messed-up girls and go have a nice conversation somewhere more calm. He’s an intelligent person who is interesting to listen to. One would feel instantly at ease in his presence. When this character speaks you forget that you are watching video and that this is a psychedelic film. Molly Plunk plays a character so erratic it would be worth seeing her play something totally opposite in another film to find the range of her colour. She has a brilliantly awkward moment toward the end sitting tied up naked in front of an Imam. Manal Kara plays a beautiful young woman with the daunting task of maintaining balance between the two aforementioned characters, her desires, and a character no one can see. Her final scene played the perfect chord to end this allegory. The third melody is the soundtrack: very rarely do I ever feel that independent film puts enough effort into the score but this was a strikingly poetic matchup. The three melodies would scatter apart into chaos for a good deal of the time and then coalesce into deeply beautiful moments of heightened reality. This is the kind of film I came out thankful for seeing and it belongs in the dvd collection of anyone who truly appreciates experimental and psychedelic filmmaking.

I saw this film at the Director’s Lounge on Christinenstraße 18 in Berlin Mitte. It’s a nice sized space for showing work. They also offer good wine instead of the typical cheap crap that turns the stomach sour after a glass offered in 99% of other artist spaces. Anyone who likes wine will happily pay the extra Euro for a glass of something drinkable! It’s also a very friendly environment where people smile at each other and speak freely. I must get to know these people better!

Ceven Knowles

 unbekanntessektorformat

DANGER GLOBAL WARMING | Bruce Knox

shown as part of kaleidoscope

Beautifully animated and edited, this piece is a sharp little gem that is the platinum standard for the short film genre. This visually striking work that miraculously manages not to overshadow the urgency of its subject matter is not to be missed. An effort that should generate a great deal of interest in environmental circles, as well as a solid place in the cinematic firmament.

-Angela Turk

Bruce Knox DE Danger Global Warming 7min 3s 2010 (world premiere)