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

DORIS SCHMID.  PROJEKTIONEN
Book Presentation
Friday, 20 October, 19.00
Echo Bücher, Berlin
Grüntalerstrasse 9, 13357 Berlin

Introduction: Klaus W. Eisenlohr
Concert by Katharina Klement (Zither, Elektronic)

Doris Schmid is a Berlin artist who has contributed to Directors Lounge screenings and festivals for many years. The book is connected with a screening of Doris Schmid at Directors Lounge Screenings in September 2014. The discussion with curator Klaus W. Eisenlohr after the screening was recorded and resumed on another day. The edited version of the conversation gives a valuable insight of the ideas, background and process of filmmaking of Doris Schmid. The book altogether has become an art project interweaving filmstills, photographs, texts and responses of divers musicians and authors.

DORIS SCHMID.  PROJEKTIONEN
Artist book, 2017, Hardcover
Deutsch / Englisch, 192 Seiten
Schlebrügge.editor Verlag für zeitgenössische Kunst, Wien

With contributions by Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Katharina Klement, Klaus Merz,
Jürgen Palmtag and Thomas Peter

Grafik design: Petra Egg, Translation: Helen Adkins

Echo Bücher
Grüntalerstrasse 9, 13357 Berlin
www.echobuecher.com

Looking forward to see you at the book presentation!
Doris and everybody involved

www.schlebruegge.com/de/content/doris-schmid-projektionen
www.dorisschmid.net
www.echobuecher.com

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

Directors Lounge Screening
Sean Derrick Cooper-Marquardt and Cecilia Chapman
Drone Drama – Music for the Dead
Thursday, 29 June 2017
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Drone Drama – Music for the Dead
Film of 11 Episodes by  Sean Derrick Cooper-Marquardt (Chicago/Berlin) and Cecilia Chapman (San Francisco)
And two addiditional films “Déjà vu” and “fear don’t knock” by Sean Derrick Cooper-Marquardt and Cecilia Chapman

Live Music by accidental guitarist Sean Derrick Cooper-Marquardt and Elle Peril poetry & performance.
Readings by Miriam Glinker and Heike Klar will be from the stories that are published with the new album “Musik Für Die Toten”

Followed by the Album Release of:
Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt & Globoscuro – Musik Für Die Toten (2017)
by Hortus Conclusus Records with written stories by Anne Hahn, Miriam Glinka, Heike Klar and Odessa Selestina Marquardt & poem by Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt
Published June 9, 2017
https://www.archive.org/details/Musikfrdietoten_HCR2017

Drone Drama – Music for the Dead is a collaborative project of Sean Derrick Cooper-Marquardt and Cecilia Chapman. The project will be presented by Cooper-Marquardt as Berlin Premiere at Z-Bar together with live music and with a reading of texts that were inspired by episodes of the film. 

Cooper-Marquardt, originally from Chicago and living in Berlin for 34 years, is an artist who mainly works with music but who has been engaged in many projects, collaborations and festivals. It may be the influence of his earlier times of playing free jazz and early house music in Chicago that makes him seek many collaborations. He also likes to play with different versions of the same piece, created by himself or by collaborations. His preference for this kind of iterations, may be more related to the influences of fine arts in Germany than from music: Sean Derrick Cooper-Marquardt just released a record by the same title, Drone Drama – Music for the Dead, including the same chapters as the film, however with completely new compositions and adding two more chapters. He also asked writers, to contribute short stories to the project Drone Drama – Music for the Dead, some of which will be read while Sean will improvise music during the reading.

The film Drone Drama – Music for the Dead consists of 11 chapters. Each chapter has a rather poetic title, like “I Love Watching the Movement of your Limbs when they Tremble from the Wind’s Gentle Caress (chapter 1)” or, “When Eating the Fruit, Remember the one who Planted the Tree (chapter 9)”. And, it is rather exceptional to see films, which are based on music, where music is the inspiration for the images.

The film starts with a section of a woman in an orange dress lying on a branch of a massive tree on the edge of a valley. The images are clearly metaphorical, but the recording is a very clear high-definition image. The orange color of the dress will reappear periodically in the film. The music is dominated by a drone sound, a hum from electronic or radio noise and some reverberated music. This is intercepted with some tonal electronic sounds. Everything appears to be soft and dreamlike.

Chapter 2 starts with the orange colored dress as background and the title “Things that never die have never lived.” In opposite to the first chapter, the filmmaker now uses blurred and electronically distorted images, clouds in pink, patterns, a hairline cross view of a sky with a jet fighter passing, sparks of an explosion, color streaks in water and fume rising up in the sky. The sound on the other hand is quite similar, only not as smooth.

The differences between two chapters introduces the viewer into the variety of images created by Cecilia, and into the more subtle nuanced changes of the music by Sean. It also introduces the associative relation between title and content of the story in the film.

Thinking about the multi-faceted associations, the collaborative project of Cooper-Marquardt and Chapman evokes, it may also be interesting to know how their collaboration evolved further. The two artists exchanged ideas about the places in San Francisco to be used as locations over the internet, without him knowing those places before. Cecilia shared her experiences during the production with Sean, and everybody interested, in the diary of a Facebook Page, which can still be visited. https://www.facebook.com/ChapmanMarquardt/

The reading of texts about Drone Drama together with the music, and finally the films of Sean and Cecilia will create a very inspiring evening, which can be interpreted in many different ways, poetic and political, metaphorical and associative. And of course, it will be great to see the different collaborative pieces of Drone Drama come together in one evening.

Artists Links:
http://www.stadtsprachen.de/en/author/sean-derrick-cooper-marquard/
http://www.ceceliachapman.com/

Also check out:
https://seanderrickcoopermarquardt.bandcamp.com/
Music Album:
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/sean-derrick-cooper-marquardt-music-for-the-dead/
Elle Peril: http://www.feminanongrata.tumblr.com/

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