Screenings - Directors Lounge

Directors Lounge presents “Sammy-Gate” by Noel Lawrence

/ German version below / Directors Lounge presents: Preview: Sammy-Gate (engl. OV) Thursday, 2 November, 7:30 pm in presence of director Noel Lawrence Sammy-Gate, USA, 2020, 89 minutes Directed by Noel Lawrence Written by Darius James & Noel Lawrence Lichtblick-Kino Kastanienallee 77 10435 Berlin www.lichtblick-kino.org Directors Lounge is proud to present Noel Lawrence’s newest film, “Sammy-Gate”. …

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Björn Speidel | About the Depths of the Plateau

Directors Lounge Screening

Thursday, 28 February 2019 | 9pm 21:00 | Z-Bar

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 | My House Is On Fire

Directors Lounge Screening

Thursday, 29 November 2018 9pm | Z-Bar

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

Artist Link:
https://www.johnnywelchfilm.com/

Links:
Directors Lounge http://www.directorslounge.net
Richfilm http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/
Z-Bar http://www.z-bar.de

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.

Artist Link:
http://lrncfvr.net/
https://dafilms.com/director/9946-laurence-favre

Links:
Directors Lounge http://www.directorslounge.net
Richfilm http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/
Z-Bar http://www.z-bar.de

Directors Lounge Screening
RETURN TO FLUXUS
Remigijus Venckus

Thursday, 29 March 2018, 21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte, Germany

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.

Artist Link:
Ph.D. Remigijus Venckus
http://www.venckus.eu/
http://en.venckus.eu/video/

Links:
Directors Lounge http://www.directorslounge.net
Richfilm http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/
Z-Bar http://www.z-bar.de

Directors Lounge Screening
Txema Novelo
Double Feature
Thursday, 22 February 2018
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

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.

Artist Link:
http://www.txemanovelo.com/
https://issuu.com/txemanovelo

Links:
Directors Lounge http://www.directorslounge.net
Richfilm http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/
Z-Bar http://www.z-bar.de

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.

Artist Link:
http://www.clarabausch.de/

Links:
Directors Lounge http://www.directorslounge.net
Richfilm http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/
Z-Bar http://www.z-bar.de

Directors Lounge Screening
Marissa Rae Niederhauser
Unbinding Spell
Thursday, 30 November 2017
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Marissa Rae Niederhauser, dancer, artist and filmmaker from Seattle, United States, lives in Berlin for two years, now. Her films vary between radical body expressions, and transcending body-nature relations, the complications of desire, and the search for love while counteracting the (male) role expectations.

Her work as an artist is based on modern and contemporary dance. After learning ballet at an early age, she studied dance at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. Through documenting her early dance pieces, she learned how to edit video and moved from there to her own performances for the camera, while still frequently performing live dances. Though she does not have a formal training in visual arts, her process of working with video is surprisingly similar to visual artists working with performance and video. Like many artists, she often works alone or with only a small crew (camera/sound person) instead of big dance productions. Influences by artists like Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneeman and Charlotte Moorman are becoming obvious in the pieces which have performance quality, while others are structured as dance choreography.

Marissa Rae Niederhauser will present a program of video work, all conceived and edited by herself. And she will be available for Q&A after the screening.

Artist Link:
www.marissa-rae-n.com/
http://marissaniederhauser.blogspot.de/

Links:
Directors Lounge http://www.directorslounge.net
Richfilm http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/
Z-Bar http://www.z-bar.de

Directors Lounge Screening
Verena Kyselka
Nomadic Drift
Thursday, 26 October 2017
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

The Berlin artist Verena Kyselka presents her video works connected with art projects in different countries. Born in Erfurt, Thuringia and having studied at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, her video work is related with her earlier emphasis on performance. She further works with installations, collages and photography. Her interest in questions of identity let her investigate people’s connection with culture, tradition and ethnic differences. Her many projects in Asian, Arabic and Latin American countries started with invitations to Taiwan, where she has collaborated and exhibited many times with local and international artists. Her quest for identity, especially of women, gives her a distinct interest in how people live, how artists live, and how they connect contemporary life with tradition. It also brought her attention to ethnic minorities, people of indigenous background or to people whose families or peoples had to migrate in the past.

Artists who research on ethnographic themes often do not dwell much on cultural differences within the countries they are interested in. Traditions of other countries are often seen as singular, unicultural and seen as unchanging during generations. Cultural changes related to migration or ethnic domination however are rarely perceived.

In her projects, Verena Kyselka often collaborates with local artists. Performance artists, musicians or people unrelated to contemporary art appear in Verena’s films and express their issues through their art. In this way, the video artist transforms the documentary idea into a multi-layered cultural expression with many voices, instead of attempting to “objectively” record ethnographical sources.

The screening will present a large selection of her video work from different countries. The artist will be present for Q&A.

Artist Link:
http://verena-kyselka.de/

Links:
Directors Lounge http://www.directorslounge.net
Richfilm http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/
Z-Bar http://www.z-bar.de