SHOTS IN THE LIGHT AND THE DARK II:

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.

Hope to see you!

Locations:
Z-Bar, Bergstr. 2, 10115 Berlin
Fata Morgana Gallery, Torstraße 170, 10115 Berlin

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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…

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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…

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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.

complete DL at Mitte Media Festival program here

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?

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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

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
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

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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


Artist Link:

Van Demichelis and Jiulian Gonçalves:
https://postduo.bandcamp.com/releases

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

Directors Lounge Screening:
Crooked Beauty
Films by
Ken Paul Rausenthal

Ken Paul Rosenthal, filmmaker from San Francisco will present his films at Lichtblick, Berlin

Lichtblick-Kino
Kastanienallee 77
10435 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg

Crooked Beauty (2010, 30 minutes)
This internationally acclaimed poetic documentary chronicles artist-activist Jacks McNamara’s transformative journey from psych ward inpatient to pioneering mental health advocacy. It is an intimate portrait of her intense personal quest to live with courage and dignity, and a powerful critique of standard psychiatric treatments. Poignant testimonials connect the fissures and fault lines of human nature to the unstable topography and mercurial weather patterns of the San Francisco Bay Area.

In Light, In! (2013, 12 minutes)
A haunting, visual essay about the awkward and angry junctures where our culture struggles to manage its emotional distress. Images recycled from 1950’s-era educational films are accompanied by original compositions by world-renowned cellist, Zoe Keating.

Director Bio
Ken Paul Rosenthal is a cinema artist and mental health advocate whose current work explores the geography of madness through the regenerative power of nature, urban landscapes, home movies, and archival footage from social hygiene films. His films are visually sensual, emotionally intelligent works of art that also function as tools for personal and societal transformation. His films, Crooked Beauty and In Light, In! have collectively won eighteen awards, screened in sixty film festivals, and been presented in person at dozens of peer support networks, universities, mental health symposium and community events worldwide.

http://www.lichtblick-kino.org/
http://directorslounge.net
http://www.kenpaulrosenthal.com

Directors Lounge Screening
Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat
The Other Side
Thursday, 27 Juli 2017

21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat, artist couple visiting from North Carolina, United States, will present their films.

Being a Flaneur, walking to explore the city and the society, exploring modernity and the anachronisms of life on foot does not really make sense in the United States. The equivalence in Northern America would be the road movie: comprising the change of media, change of speed, change of surmounted distances. Bill Brown is one of the filmmakers in the US who hit the road many times to make movies. Born in Lubbock, Texas, he has lived in many cities, Chicago being one of them. His movies, not what you would typically call road movies, have the quality of artistic ethnographic research, or one could also say psycho-geography.

“The Other Side 2005” started as a coast to coast trip from Texas to California similar to a trip Brown undertook some years earlier in the United States, along the Canadian border. In the South, the artist was soon confronted with border control, border activism (helping people in trouble trying to cross the border in the desert), abandoned migrant camps and personal stories, walls and fences. When finishing the film, the artist thought, this would be a film about a short term issue, not that it would rise to a political quarrel until now. Bill still narrates the film with the dry humor he used in his earlier film, but the film became intrinsically political, even more so when watching it now, more than 10 years later.

Sabine Gruffat on the other hand is an artist working with two kinds of artistic stance, a rather experimental, almost abstract point of view, and a documentary style, mixed with political demeanor.  “A Return to the Return to Reason” is an astonishing remake of Man Ray’s movie from 1923 with means of “art and tech”. Even though it almost looks like hand-knitted, it is made by laser-carving onto real film. A similar kind of hybrid quality between analog and digital also marks “Headlines” which uses animation software to layer and animate newspaper headlines and part of printed articles. Unlike David Gatten, well-known for animating letters on analogue film, the project has a less enigmatic, mysterious quality about the meaning of letters or words, but is a reaction to the discrepancies Sabine found reading the New York Times while living in a remote place in North Carolina.

The couple has been working together for several year. The most
recent and joint project, “Amarillo Ramp” will be a German/European
Premiere. It is connected with Land Art and specifically Robert
Smithson. The film is a tribute to Smithsons work at large, while
dwelling on an earthwork by Robert Smith situated in Texas, which is
less known than Spiral Jetty in Utah and his last work. It could only
be finished with the help of Richard Serra, Nancy Holt, and Tony
Shafrazi.

Thinking of an American Flaneurism, the Land Art by Smithson is not that far off. For Smithson, his land art was always connected with some kind of industrial use or man-made landscape. It creates a specific relation not only between landscape and earthwork, but between the work, local people, supporters, land owners, visitors and the art public. For the film project at Amarillo, the artist couple visited the site of Amarillo Ramp many times over 7 years, and at the same time, they undertook a close research to Smithsons ideas and writing. The film explores the surrounding of Amarillo, follows a team of local supporters for restoration on the ramp and finally undertakes a few interventions with the project. It could be seen as a documentary about Smithson, but at the same time also as an art project in tribute to Smithson and his ideas to connect the landscapes and rural areas with the city, ideas which become even more important today, in times of a deeply divided country.

Artists Links:
http://heybillbrown.com/
http://www.sabinegruffat.com/
http://www.incite-online.net/gruffat6.html

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