With his experimental films, the Berlin based filmmaker Björn Speidel explores the relationship between image and imaging surface. For several years, he has investigated the image’s depth by the use of stereo 3D.
The screening will include the first presentation of the „Video-Harp“ as a world premiere. … read more
Gabriele Stellbaum creates art films that are performance and story-based at the same time. It is the second time, the artist presents her work at Directors Lounge. Coming from sculpture, she turned to light projections and time-based multi-channel slide projects and finally to video. The program presents a number of very new and more recent works that she created in Berlin. … read more
Directors Lounge Screening Johnny Welch Arcane Rhythms
Thursday, 25 October 2018 21:00 Z-Bar Bergstraße 2 10115 Berlin-Mitte
Johnny Welch, filmmaker and photographer from Sydney, Australia lives in Berlin for more than 3 years and is an active member of Labor Berlin. Since coming to Berlin, his work has become more strongly connected with the aesthetic of analog film, with the possibilities of optical printing. Even if edited and projected digitally, analog compositing seems to allow him to create a richer image of high density and depth.
Based on black and white techniques (mostly), the films seem to explore sheer blackness, instead of a black and white aesthetic. Strongly connected with punk music, dark wave and electronic noise, the filmmaker achieves a stunning quality of deep black color with his films. Experimental techniques of emulsion lifts and cracks, combined with black ink, sometimes with an additional tint of red or toning with blue, are combined with dark images of male and female characters. The driving rhythm of the sound track enhances the impression of blackness. Another connection is Aleister Crowley, a controversial figure, and a British occultist from the beginning of the 20th century who inspired a number of important artists and filmmakers like Kenneth Anger and even Fernando Pessoa. Welch’s film Aurum (super8 / digital) from 2018 is a contribution to Crowley’s Liber 777, a book related to occult or cabalistic games with numbers. For Johnny Welch, the occupation and meditation with occult theory may be a search for liberating ideas, or it may even be used as a release from the haunting personal messages once ago sent by peers. (Discharge Working I and II, 2017/18).
For the viewer, the work has an attracting, maybe haunting quality, tinted with a stunning black color. The black sun (in Aurum) for example is an amazing symbol without the need of occult references, and it is a beautiful image interwoven with blackness of painted film material that may stay in the mind of the viewer as a striking image on its own account.
The artist will be present and available for Q&A after the screening. Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr
Directors Lounge Screening Laurence Favre Digging the Archive Thursday, 27 September 2018 21:00 Z-Bar Bergstraße 2 10115 Berlin-Mitte
Laurence Favre from Switzerland and living in Berlin, works with photography, film and video on projects. She creates narratives concerned with collective and individual memories, and how they relate to archives or individuals. Found material, 8mm found footage, was a reason for her to visit places, talk to and interview people. In the case of a hospital in South-Africa, a Swiss mission during the time of racial segregation, the construction of a collective memory become problematic, however, the collection of different stories and divert personal memories may become even more important. The box with films from a missionary working at the hospital, a personal archive in itself, for Favre became a starting point to visit the former hospital in Shiluvane, to find people who were working in the mission or share memories.
Favre’s background in sociology informs her research, her art project shifts towards contemporary ethnographic research with experimental forms that do not attempt to construct an “objective reality”. And she is a member of Labor Berlin. On a first step, she converted the original 8mm films to digital, and created a narrative from it, by repeating images, inverting them, by mixing letters found in real archives with personal comments she writes, in a way her subjective version of the archive. During her first visit, she also collected interviews with local people who used to work at the mission.
And she shoots 16mm (non-sync, in color and in b/w) for her new project: A series of portraits mixed with passages of landscape and combined with fictive letters to the late doctor of the mission by former members of the mission who live in South Afrika. At this screening, Laurence will present “Nwa-Mankamana” the film from 2013, an edited reel called “Shiluvane Talks” and excerpts of “Lettres au Docteur L” as work-in-progress.
The artist will talk about the different facets of working with archives that she became engaged in, and she is looking forward to discuss her work.
DIRECTORS LOUNGE AT MITTE MEDIA FESTIVAL 20 – 22 April, 2018
Join Fata Morgana/coGalleries, Z-Bar, Leo Kuelbs Collection, Benhad & Djilal, BRLO, Chased Magazine, Kunstleben Berlin and Directors Lounge for the second annual MITTE MEDIA FESTIVAL! Lots of performance, art talks and videos of all kinds in the heart of Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood.
Mitte Media Festival takes its creative cues from the neighborhood itself: a thriving international scene with its own deep German heart. Berlin-based artists are mixed with a variety of international creators to provide a cross-section of what’s going on in the world of video and media art.
DL at Mitte Media | Program I (88 min) “In the other side, by her side” curated by Elaine Tedesco (Brazil), 20 April, 5 – 7 pm at Z-Bar: Contemporary videos of women artists about the city, urban issues, the arts circuit, performance, social problems, speeches and their forms, feminism, audiovisual language, memory, selfimage, daydreaming… Read more…
DL at Mitte Media | Program II (110 min) curated by Kenton Turk and Klaus W. Eisenlohr, 20 April, 8 – 10 pm at Fata Morgana Gallery: Here, DL will be doing a double-dig into its box of flickering tricks, with a program of shorts from both the Berlin International Directors Lounge Festival as well as the Urban Research side of things. There will be new projections as well, including, rumour has it, a mad monkey and film art that literally leaps into the room. Saying more would be telling…. Performers of the night include Tristan Honsinger (cello), Izumi Ose (melodion), Moeko Yamazaki (taiko drum) and the very odd Woody Hoofer (indescribable). Read more…
DL at Mitte Media | “Was vom Kino übrig blieb” (What remains from cinema), André Werner, 2018, 21 April, 6:30 – 8 pm at Z-Bar: The first in a series of Interactive video installations capturing glimpses of cinematica. See more…
DIRECTORS LOUNGE AT MITTE MEDIA FESTIVAL
IN THE OTHER SIDE, BY HER SIDE
Program I: Friday, April 20, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm at Z-Bar
Ao lado dela, do lado de lá (In the other side, by her side) curated by Elaine Tedesco is a proposal coming from Brazil, that presents contemporary videos of women artists.
The program shows a whole of interests: the city, urban issues, the arts circuit, performance, social problems, speeches and their forms, feminism, audiovisual language, memory, selfimage, daydreaming, etc. For these artists the video is, each with its poetics, one of the media adopted to create their artwork, but not the only one.
The urban space that seems to be the background to most of the videos presented is much more than that, it is the Vortex of these artists’ productions – here as the spinning movement between the urban experience and the personal imaginary space that creates “other places”. In the routine of large metropolises, public spaces become, increasingly, places of passage, and the borders between public and private gradually become more blurred. It should not be forgotten, however, that these spaces of passage have long since become, in a special way, private spaces, among many others, for the homeless, the street sellers, or the performers.
In the other side, by her side is organized in four interpenetrating axes: videos that are vectors of other works; daily records; videoperformances; and fictions.
DL at Mitte Media Festival: In the other side, by her side
Tula Anagnostopoulos – The red carpet, 2017 Rochelle Costi “Negócios à parte”, 2017 Lucia Koch – Yamanaka-san, 2010 Marina Camargo – Brasil, extrativismo (Brazil. Extractivism), 2017 Sandra Becker– Roundtrip , 2017 Marion Velasco– INSTANT BAND, pero esto no es Música. Espanha, 2015/Brasil, 2016 Andressa Cantergiani– Como matar um artista (How to kill one artist), 2017 Viviane Gueller– Camburi (Série Interlúdio) (Interlude series), 2016 Deni Corsino– Faixacorpo, 2017 Lu Rabello – Selfie, 2017 Amanda Teixeira – Changing Rooms, 2017 Dani Amorim – Através (Over), 2017 Natalia Schul – Em pedaços (In slices), 2017 Camila Leichter – Ensaio a pedra (The stone essay), 06 December 2015 – 16 August 2016 Ananda Aliardi – O que tocamos, o que nos toca (What we touch, what touches us), 2017 Daniela Távora and Itapa Rodrigues – Quem vai ser o rato do século XXI (Who will be the mouse of the 21st century), 2017 Ana Paula Pollock – Crise (Crisis), 2017 Samy Sfoggia – Aféfé Ikú, 2017
About the videos:
AMANDA TEIXEIRA Changing Rooms, 4’45" (2017) Looking for a place to live in Munich I wrote for more than 100 landlords, I received eight answers, and I visited 3 apartments. How can a house become a home?
ANDRESSA CANTERGIANI Como matar um artista (How to kill one artist), 8′ (2017) From the questions how to kill one artist, how to kill the public and how to kill the work, I perform one action in the middle of the traffic in Porto Alegre, Brazil and Berlin. The video intent a urban analogy about the differences and connections involving the two cities and the artist attitude in relation to authorship and participation in the art system.
ANA PAULA CUNHA CRISE (CRISIS), 3’13" (2017) Living a crisis and experiencing a pulsion that creates new signs from a encounter. Crisis is the chaos of the becoming-world: it paints pink upon pink in order to become itself imperceptible in constant contemporary vigilance.
ANANDA ALIARDI O que tocamos, o que nos toca (What we touch, what touches us), 3’57″ (2017) Ineluctable, but it is the split that separates within us what we feel from what touches us: insult is also impulse. The video brings reproductions and reactions to what women instrumentalists hear from men about their competences.
CAMILA LEICHTER Ensaio a pedra (The stone essay), 8’17″ (06 December 2015 – 16 August 2016) Synopsis: I found in Samuel Beckett’s Molloy (1947) one language proposition about a image thought to be transformed into action: before the unspeakable of experience, suck the same four stones in succession.
DANI AMORIM Através (Over), 4’7″ (2017) Over it is a reflection about the self-identity and how we offer ourselves be seen by the other. A visual metaphor of resisting and allowing look through our surface, into the real self, without shields.
DANIELA TÁVORA and ITAPA RODRIGUES Quem vai ser o rato do século XXI (Who will be the mouse of the 21st century), 2’53″ (2017) “A white horse, without ensiles and without reins, graze in the middle of a road, whoever who rides the animal will be taken to a garden of paradise, and when he comes down, his feet will be crossed by thorns hidden in the grass”; The record was held at Vila Cruzeiro in Porto Alegre, Brazil, a neighborhood that has become a endless construction site, since the city hall began to open a new avenue where the houses of the first residents remained.
DENI CORSINO Faixacorpo, 1’45″ (2017) Faixacorpo associetes urban space issues and the performance attitude in order to raise a critical view about the contemporary city, full of buildings and big avenues that doesn’t have restores spaces for the citzens. Moving with my own security strip, I can choose my path, to stay, to live, to be present and to occupy the urban space.
LU RABELLO Selfie, 3’19 ‘’ (2017) Selfie in cross point and comments about the work.
LUCIA KOCH Yamanaka-san, 5’45″ (2010) Synopsis: In a kimonos fabric store, a saleswoman displays some fabrics, demonstrating their qualities, their weight, trim, color and luster, volumes and folds. But in these fabrics there are no figures of birds or flowers, no pattern printed. They seems too simple, except for the colors bending over each other. The continuous gradient transition “breaks” as the saleswoman moves the fabrics. She also seems to be exploring this material, trying to discover her possibilities to sensitize the customer. The video was made for the Wave project (Choja Machi, Aichi Trienale, 2010, Nagoya, Japan).
MARINA CAMARGO Brasil, extrativismo (Brazil. Extractivism), 10’14" (2017) The action of erase a Brazil school map is recorded on video. The title of the map gives the name to the work, while, at the same time, along with the gesture of erasing these regions of the map it refers to one important ecological issue related to the current public policies of the country.
MARION VELASCO INSTANT BAND, pero esto no es Música. Espanha, 2015/Brasil, 9´36″, 2016. Performance by Marion Velasco (BRA) in collaboration with Seth Rossano (MEX) on bass and Carlos Llavata (ESP) on clarinet. Images by Marion Velasco and Verónica Hernández Menchara (MEX), sound capture by Miguel Molina Alarcón (ESP).
INSTANT BAND deals with the snapshot, the immediate, the transient, the passing. The format refers to the street music, to the instant bands that, in general, are configured and present themselves in the urban space for an audience, also, dynamic. Throwing glass bottles at the collector for recycling is a noisy and everyday action on the streets of Spanish cities, but by mixing it live, with an amplified electric bass and a clarinet, the action has become a sound performance and a transgression. INSTANT BAND, but this is not Music is a sound performance, collaborative, remote and therefore oriented to audio and video
NATALIA SCHUL Em pedaços (In slices), 2’48" (2017) She moves broken mirrors that show fragments of her face and the front of her body to the fixed camera that only captures the back and the vision provided by the mirror’s reflexes.
ROCHELLE COSTI “Negócios à parte” , 10’03" (2017) The video “Negócios à parte” was held for the recent exhibition Avenida Paulista no Masp, São Paulo. In a survey of about 8 months, the artist traveled the avenue dozens of times, recording invisibility through characters detached from the corporatist profile of the region and small incidental and ephemeral events. Renato Firmino, painter, scavenger and resident of the avenue participate as a conductor of the video and make a partnership with the artist. In the exhibition, his car serves as space for the projection of the video. Soundtrack: Sara Não Tem Nome.
SAMY SFOGGIA Aféfé Ikú, 01′38″, p&b (2017) Video Art pos Dadaist, tupi or not tupi.
SANDRA BECKER Roundtrip, 2’53″ (2017) The Video is a search of life. Where do we go to and what are we looking for?It is shot in New York and in Berlin using both cities as reference in the art world where artists are searching their way to got to. The elevator is used to show the up and downs artists are facing trying to finance their projects.
TULA ANAGNOSTOPOULOS The red carpet, 2" (2017) The video “The Red Carpet"; problematizes the relationship between audience and artist during a walk through the red carpet. During a walk through the red carpet, the red carpet stretched out to the ground indicates a way forward. It is a remarkable path to walk, with slow or rapid steps, to walk under the eyes of a public desirous to see the stars – mainly actors and actresses. (When you are part of the convenient group of anonymous people who for one reason or another are out of focus, the trajectory is a moment of suspension: neither reality nor illusion.) Look at all sides at once: when you are inside and / or when you’re out? This video was made in collaboration with Tecna PUC / RS, Kolor360º during the 45th Gramado Film Festival, Brazil.
VIVIANE GUELLER Camburi (Série Interlúdio) (Interlude series), 01’54″ (2016) The Interlude series is constitutes from situations of suspension in daily life. In a interference of the sound over the image, the Camburi video traces the experience from the displacement and the waiting as poetic exercise.
Directors Lounge Screening RETURN TO FLUXUS Remigijus Venckus
Joining us from Lithuania, Remigijus Venckus will present his work at Directors Lounge Screening at Z-Bar. The artist presents his videos on occasion of an exhibition at the gallery ‘World in A Room’ in Berlin. The films are mostly short captured impressions from daily life, recorded and edited in the style of experimental film with references to films from early 60s and 70s, however, in a much more playful manner and stance.
In reference to the video program of R. Venckus, it may be interesting to remark that Jonas Mekas and George Maciunas, US artists, connected with ‘avant-garde film’ and Fluxus, are both originally from Lithuania and were first connected with the Lithuanian emigration community in the United States. Mekas talks about this in his film ‘Walden / Lost, Lost, Lost’ (1969 / 1976). In his opinion, he arrived in New York, and on the art scene, only after he left the group of expatriates gathering in N.YC. Later on in post-soviet era, after 1989, it seems that at least part of the art scene in Lithuania has embraced the two artists and somehow repatriated them, together with Fluxus.
R. Venckus makes direct reference to Fluxus and the experimental films of the 60’s. In contrast to those artists, however, R. Venckus’ films play with forms and references in a much lighter way than those artists’ from the 60’s, whose humor was acidly addressed at the opposed notion of ‘high art’. Mekas, as director of the Anthology Film Archive, for example, tried hard to create a canon of avant-garde in order to establish the film as a serious art form. Those struggles seem to be far in the past, when looking at R. Venckus’ early films.
However, the landscapes appearing in the artist’s films mostly seem to be dark and grey, not happy. The struggles may be different, less about art concepts and the seriousness of a style, but a struggle with society and with a new kind of conservatism in art and in public discourse, nonetheless. His more recent films address those struggles differently, and in a more direct way. ‘My success story’ (2013), an autobiographical film essay, has never been shown in Lithuania yet. The film talks about the difficulties of fighting against prejudices and homophobia in the surroundings of conservative academia. His newest film ‘The Letter’ (2018), on the other hand, turns a love letter into a poetic sound and image piece of dance by a male dancer intermitted with urban landscapes, and during the winter time. The voice, reading, or better, reciting the words of the letter turn the movements of the dance into a song of praise and lament. The addressee stays unknown to the viewer, or the viewer may find himself being addressed as a possible sender or recipient of the letter.
Remigijus Venckus will be present for Q&A at the screening. Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr.
‘Return to Fluxus’ is a video art program of Remigijus Venckus created in a period of 2002 – 2018. The program will be presented at the ‘Directors Lounge Screening’ at Z-Bar 29 March 2018, 9pm.
Directors Lounge Screening Gabraz Sanna Interlude and Other Dreams Monday, 26 February 2018 21:00 Z-Bar Bergstraße 2 10115 Berlin-Mitte
Gabraz Sanna, joins us from Brazil for his film program „Interlude and Other Dreams“ at Z-Bar. The experimental film director creates calm contemplative images that are both seductive and involving the viewer. Gabraz is closely connected with the underground music scene of Rio de Janeiro, and some of his recent films have been portraits of musicians, while at the same time being meditations on their work. The main film in this program “Interlude” follows the creative couple Van Demichelis and Jiulian Gonçalves, both electronic musician, on their artistic process, during a residency. Gabraz and producer Anne Santos stay for several weeks, filming and editing.
How do you present a creative process, one could ask? The filmmaker creates images of the relation of the couple, and their personal interaction with only few words about concepts and (gender) politics. It seems Gabraz often opens his pictures by very slow and intense reflections oh his subject. With long arresting shots he takes the viewer into a world of its own, and only when he already established a deep connection between viewer and story, he brings in contrasting and dialectic views.
This is true also to “Sonho de Sara.” A car trip through the desert that shows incredible colors during the blue hour is followed by associative images of a woman, of cows and a donkey. Images the viewer would not connect, if the extended shot accompanied by dreamy music and a phone conversation on the sound track would not have put the viewer onto a third level of reception.
“Dreamers” on the other hand, does not have that turning point into the mood the filmmaker sets in the beginning of the movie, but it has the same slow pace which on the other hand is interwoven with the violent reality of destruction connected with mining. It is a short piece produced as a video clip, that has all the power to be shown in film festivals.
We are looking forward to have Gabraz Sanna present this engaging work in person and be available for Q&A. Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr
The audience at yesterday’s DL presentation of Gabraz Sanna’s films in the Z-inema of Z-Bar were treated to unannounced pop-up performance by the legendary Tantão of Rio de Janeiro’s club scene and Black Future “Eu Sou O Rio” fame (accompanied by Switzerland’s Delmore FX at the boards), who proved (in spades!) he is as wild as his reputation says – on and off stage! Photos: Kenton Turk more photos
Double Feature *Déjalo Ser* + *Tercer Ojo, Tercer Mente, Tercer Mundo*
Txema Novelo from Mexico City is joining us for a Berlinale special to present a double feature of his new film „Déjalo Ser“ together with compilation of music videos that he created for alternative rock musicians in Mexico. Since Novelo started creating super-8 films for a punk music label he has managed in Mexico City. In the following years, he expanded his creative production in an exponential curve, with making his own films, with exhibitions of drawings and installations. Novelo’s production at the same time stays faithful to his own spirit, and you could truthfully say, spiritual search for life, art, music and an alternative way to look at the world, which at the same time is mixed with irony and a good portion of humor.
“Déjalo Ser” is the story of a Rock Mexican band, who’s lead singer is suffering from a lack of inspiration. After a mysterious meeting with a foreign singer, the band embarks with her on a journey to Oaxaca in search of a mysterious psychoactive medicine. A trip inspired by Antonin Artaud exile into Mexico, a search for a primitive, deeper and purer reality.
Shot on Super 8mm with sync dialogues, this guerrilla style road movie, plays homage to George Kuchar’s films and transgression cinema in a unique Mexican way. Produced by LE FRESNOY under the tutelage of invited artist and film legend Bela Tarr, ‘Let it be’ has accomplished in the first six months of its completion a special mention at the Morelia International Film Festival, and a selection for international competition at Clermont Ferrand 2018 in France.
“Tercer Ojo, Tercer Mente, Tercer Mundo” (Spanish for: Third Eye, Third Mind, Third Word) is a selection of recent videos for musician, Novelo has supported for many years. They are shot in different formats of super-8, 16mm, 35mm film and digital video and in one way or the other make reference to avant-garde films. The films, and the music, are inspired by a desire for life and identity in a world of media domination, capital and crime, without ever taking things too seriously. They are full of iconographical quotes to rock and pop of the era that rock music still had a promise, and if it was the three minute fame promoted by Velvet Underground (or Andy Warhol), or when music was “my religion”. On the other hand, to the German audience and between the lines, they also show, a great deal of Mexican life and urban culture from the perspective of contemporary youth. Their relation to nature and Mexican popular culture, and the reality of urban live become the backdraft for audiovisual imaginations.
Directors Lounge Screening Clara Bausch Momentum Thursday, 25 January 2018 21:00 Z-Bar Bergstraße 2 10115 Berlin-Mitte
Observations through the camera combined in different ways create new realities. Clara Bausch, who is born in Berlin and lives here as artist, strictly works with analogue images in her films, installations and photography. She studied Fine Arts at UdK Berlin and is co-founder of Labor Berlin. It is the ordinary, simple things in life that capture her attention. And it is the combinations of impressions, occurrences and images that create reality. The new realities that Clara Bausch creates in her art work are by no means out of this world. On the contrary, they are different, sometimes very personal views onto our reality. Cinema, or the images of newsletters are as much part of this reality as is ordinary life. Rhythm, the space between, or unexpected combinations of images, all create an intermission, an interval between images, which makes it possible to receive a new meaning – the opposite of information overflow in broadcast and so called social media.
In a number of films, Clara Bausch uses white space between the images, created by clear film. Fully overexposed film, which for example happens if you open the camera; becomes clear during development. In “Blitzen #1”, this is what Bausch does recurrently with her super-8 camera in between taking pictures. She takes a day for herself on the streets of Athens for the 3-minute film, edited in the camera. Glimpses of reflections of buildings and street life on glass, shopping windows, car lights and mirrors are thus being combined as associations of images.
Another series of films work with the overlay of images that happen if you illuminate a newsletter page from the back. “And the smile is red on red” takes this simple technique of image production onto the roofs of Kairo in order to communicate with people from Kairo. The film shows people who gather on the flat roof top of a house in the evening, and at night with flashlights illuminating the newsletter cutouts Clara Bausch had brought from Germany. While editing, Clara creates a rhythm of montage and of spaces between the images, giving the viewer the opportunity to create the story by “reading between the lines”.
“Wald” shows the camera travel-panning over pieces of shrubbery on the edge of the woods. The sound is very present and seems to be original atmosphere sound. Over time, the viewer realizes that the pan travels through different seasons and different weather conditions, and what started as a meditation on nature on a winter day becomes more a more complex story about the city and nature as the time unfolds.
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