Cluster #25 w/Marina Poleukhina – Experimental Films and Concert
Labor Neunzehn is pleased to invite you to the first event of this year’s Cluster Series. In addition to the exhibition and workshop that will take place at our space, we are pleased to consolidate our collaboration with KM28 by combining six concerts and six experimental film screenings between 14 June and 6 December. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, June 14, 2023
Cluster #25 Experimental Films and Concert w/ Marina Poleukhina
20:00 DOORS 20:30 EVENT STARTS Location: KM28 (www.km28.de) Karl-Marx Str. 28, Berlin
One pulsating surface (2023). Solo performance for expressive objects by Marina Poleukhina.
One pulsating surface is a solo performance for expressive objects, where each object communicates, moves and transforms in relation to a musical gesture. It is the energy, which as gesture and sound shapes the instrument. Together they become weightless, yet tangible, full of sensibility. It is a sculpture, which you observe and to which you listen. And while it is happening, the moment of intimacy unexpectedly finds you and connects with you from the inside.
Marina Poleukhina is composer and improviser. The focus of her artistical attention lies in an interdisciplinary work. Her music unite a creation of a world that goes beyond only sounds. It connects movement, light, video projections on unusual surfaces, manipulation of ordinary devices that make them become instruments, objects that create their own space. This evolves into new and unexplored acoustical situations of an intense complexity. A territory made of crossroads of genres. Her music is played on festivals: Ultima (Oslo), Wien Modern (Vienna), Path Festival (Verona), MATA (New York) and others. She works with ensembles such as Nadar, MCME, Nostri Temporis,Looptail, Zwerm, Platypus, Airborne Extended, Curious chamber; with musicians such as Jennifer Torrence, Alexander Chernyshkov, Alessandro Baticci, Stefan Voglsinger, Tomomi Adachi, Vladimir Gorlinsky, Didi Kern, Franz Hautzinger, Kirill Shirokov; with choreographers such as Johanna Nielsen, Paul Wenninger, Agnes Schneidewind. She works and walks in Vienna.
Cluster is a new-music series devoted to the investigation of sound and notation, which provides musicians and composers with an exchange area in Berlin, at the crossroad of compositional and performance practices.
Labor Neunzehn is an artist-run project engaged in a cross-disciplinary discourse on time-based-art that involves expanded cinema, modern music, publishing, and the critical reflection in media art, with a specific focus on the migration of these languages between the online and offline domains. As an independent curatorial platform and a non-profit initiative for the production of research projects, exhibitions, performances, workshops, we are committed to the presentation of collaborative outcomes and hybrid formats.
This concert for Cluster Series is generously supported by inm Berlin e.V and the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa
She Carries the Holiday in Her Eyes (2023) 4 min., silent
Performers: Barbara Friedman and Laetitia Mikles
A picture of parallels and swirls, two women touch with eyes closed, use cameras in motion, discover a holiday of optics. “I have seen an individual, whose manners, though wholly within the conventions of elegant society, were never learned there, but were original and commanding, and held out protection and prosperity; one who did not need the aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his eye.” – from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Manners”
THE SILENCE OF THE BANANA TREES Director: Eneos Carka 2022 / 24′ / English, Hungarian; English, Turkish subtitles Seventy-something Hungarian Mihály Fekete has filled his house in a leafy suburb of Budapest with art works made by his daughter Réka. It’s clear from the way he talks about her that she’s an important part of his life; however, they have not spoken for years. Her decision to keep distance from her father is painful for him, especially since she is ill. Despite his sorrow, he has resigned himself to do as she wishes. At his home, where this film is being shot, and where he and his family grew up, he is able to draw from a reservoir of tangible memories: vacation slides, letters, videos and children’s drawings. The film eventually becomes a go-between in an attempt to restore a lost connection. Using abstract imagery and patient observations, documentary maker Eneos Çarka evokes a sense of transience, carrying the viewer off in a maelstrom of recollections and feelings that lead to the gripping finale.
FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO Director: Lynne Sachs 2020 / 103′ / Russian; English, Turkish subtitles Over a period of thirty-five years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16 mm film, videotape, and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings. Like a cubist rendering of a face, Sachs’s cinematic exploration of her father offers multiple, sometimes contradictory, views of a seemingly unknowable man who is publicly the uninhibited center of the frame yet privately shrouded in mystery. With this meditation on fatherhood and masculinity, Sachs allows herself and her audience to see beneath the surface of the skin, beyond the projected reality. As the startling facts mount, she discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal. This exclusive streaming premiere is accompanied by a selection of experimental short films by Sachs, many of which also reflect her probing exploration of family relationships.
— 17:00 —
NELLY & NADINE Director: Magnus Gertten 2022 / 92’ / French, English, Swedish, Spanish; English, Turkish subtitles The voice of opera singer Nelly resonates in the middle of Ravensbrück concentration camp. Nelly and Nadine met for the first time at Christmas in 1944. They found each other again after liberation and were to stay together for the rest of their lives. Today, Nelly’s granddaughter Sylvie is about to be confronted with her grandmother’s legacy, locked in a box. The photographs, Super 8 footage and audio recordings as well as the poetic and harrowing diary entries that she comes across describe not only her grandmother’s memories of the camp, but also tell the story of her life with Nadine – a relationship that was never referred to as such by the family. “Nothing is real until it’s socially expressed”, says historian Joan Schenkar in conversation with Sylvie. Over a period of one year, Magnus Gertten accompanies granddaughter Sylvie on her cautious search, following the traces of the untold stories that are found in the various sources. A moving film about a deep and loving lesbian relationship and the necessity of individual and collective remembrance.
Proceeds from the tickets sold in “LOVE, REBELLION, FREEDOM” screenings will be donated to earthquake relief efforts.
About Beykoz Kundura
With its history that spans over two hundred years, Beykoz Kundura is one of the most significant historical and cultural values of Turkey and operates as a professional venue letting business in addition to hosting innovative, interdisciplinary cultural artworks.
This industrial space which had been active from the Ottoman era to the Republic is a cultural heritage with undisputed value due to its contribution to the Turkish economy. Acting as a melting pot where creative ideas are formed while being inspired by the nostalgia of the former factory space set up in a land of 183 decare, Beykoz Kundura maintains its majestic existence on the Bosporus by expanding its historical cultural values with new ones thanks to its team that is driven with the idea to preserve this heritage.
Le Petit Versailles & XY Chromosome Project present:
FLUTTER an evening of film, painting, performance, cyanotype photos, and poetry Saturday, June 3, 2023 • 8 – 10 pm Le Petit Versailles 247 East Second Street Join us. It’s free rain or shine! Reservations encouraged: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/flutter-film-painting-performance-cyanotype-photos-and-poetry-tickets-639831381887
Join us at Le Petit Versailles, a public community garden in the East Village, where fragments and minor moments will converge in film, painting, performance, cyanotype photos and poetry. Together, poet Lee Ann Brown, painter Mable Ting, performer Tony Torn, photographer Accra Shepp, and filmmakers Mark Street and Lynne Sachs interpret the word flutter in an attempt to live in the space between the tangible and the ineffable. A paean to the possibly overlooked and the definitively forgotten.
Lee Ann Brown and Tony Torn – The Green Play: a poets play written for John Ashbery by Lee Ann Brown, performed by Lee Ann Brown and Tony Torn
Mable Ting– Motion Picture (with Nelson Kim) a time-lapse video record of a painting being created.
Accra Shepp – Dreaming with One Eye open in Case of Attack by Wolves or Other Dangers – cyanotype photos
Mark Street – Flutter – a testament to the ethos of always carrying a camera even when you don’t know why – film
Lynne Sachs – She Carries the Holiday in Her Eyes & A 16mm film 100th Birthday Party Gift – film
Le Petit Versailles is a public community garden in the East Village that presents a season of events, including art exhibitions, music, film/video, performance, theater, workshops and community projects from May to October. LPV is a project of Allied Productions, Inc., a non profit arts organization. Supported by New York States Council for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, National Endowment for the Arts.
In 2010, Mark Street and Lynne Sachs created The XY Chromosome Project, an umbrella for their collaborative ventures. Together they have produced an array of collaborative installations, performances, and two-dimensional art works.
Poster design by Mable Ting.
Accra ShepMM Serra & Lucia Maria MinerviniTony Torn & Lee Ann BrownMable Ting & Nelson KimPeter Cramer & Jack WatersMark Street
STAATLICHE AKADEMIE DER BILDENDEN KÜNSTE KARLSRUHE Karlsruhe, Allemagne May 22, 2023
FILMS – MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON by Maya DEREN & Alexander HAMMID – THÈMES ET VARIATIONS by Germaine DULAC – ÉTUDE CINÉGRAPHIQUE SUR UNE ARABESQUE by Germaine DULAC – OPTIC NERVE by Barbara HAMMER – MY NAME IS OONA by Gunvor NELSON – LIGHT YEARS EXPANDING by Gunvor NELSON – PSEUDOSPHYNX by Ana VAZ – EL NIDO DEL SOL by COLECTIVO LOS INGRÁVIDOS – A MONTH OF SINGLE FRAMES by Lynne SACHS
Spend the weekend with Tender Non-Fictions, a program of films by experimental feminist filmmaker Lynne Sachs, who has been prolifically creating works for cinema for four decades. Her non-fiction films, represented here in 11 works of varying lengths, powerfully evoke the curiosity and richness of a life lived through art.
Based in Brooklyn, New York, Sachs defies easy classification. Instead, her work is best understood collectively as a sprawling adventure playground, stretching across continents and blending influences across the borders of distinct art forms.
From 1984 to 2019, Lynne Sachs shot film of her father, a bon vivant and pioneering businessman. This documentary is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings.
In 1998, filmmaker Barbara Hammer had an artist residency in a shack without running water or electricity. While there, she shot film, recorded sounds and kept a journal. In 2018, she gave all of her images, sounds and writing from the residency to Sachs and invited her to make a film with the material.
In Medieval Europe, a criminal could be “drawn and quartered”, ripped into our four parts by heavy ropes pulled by horses. Here, Sachs appropriates this violent conceit for her own artistic purposes.
In 1994, two American sisters – a filmmaker and a writer – travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. Together, they attempt to make a candid cinema portrait of the country they witness. Their conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history.
Delving into the religious and political conflicts of the Middle East is never going to be easy, but Lynne Sachs spends three years making an effort. She attempts to make a portrait of Israeli filmmaker Revital Ohayon, a mother and peace activist who was killed near the West Bank.
Film programme Travelogues: Thinking Through Landscape
From 3 to 24 May in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Media Education and Research Centre “Meno avilys” invites you to a programme of travel and landscape films Travelogues: Thinking Through Landscape.
The screenings will take place in the Meno Avilys’ Cinematheque (A. Goštauto str. 2, Vilnius) and start at 7 pm.
In 2023, “Meno avilys” turns to the topic of travelogues and travel films, which has so far been underrepresented and rarely explored in Lithuania. Following the migration of people caused by various geopolitical factors, it is important to consider how this changes identity and the notion of home.
The six-film programme looks at the different transformations of travelogues, from the early amateur approach to the now widely recognised classic essay films. The programme features films by acclaimed artists, experimental and non-fiction filmmakers Courtney Stephens, Deborah Stratman, Lynne Sachs, Helke Misselwitz, John Smith and Chris Marker.
These films include the cinematic diaries of women who had the unique opportunity to travel to distant places in the first half of 20th century: romantic, exotic and political at the same time; sensitive portraits of the women of East Germany on the verge of the fall of the Berlin Wall; London changing with the rhythm of urbanisation; the mythologised landscape of Iceland; an essayistic account from Vietnam by two sisters; and a travelogue of a journey from Africa to Japan that has been voted as one of the best documentaries ever.
Travelogues, or travel films (not to be confused with road films), emerged almost at the same time as the film cameras themselves. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was only the privileged who could afford to travel, and the majority of society could not enjoy the freedom to explore, unlike today. Ethnographers and anthropologists used film cameras to research and record foreign cultures in order to achieve maximum objectivity. Uncharted lands interested people, and travel lectures, featuring footage from foreign places with live commentary by the travellers themselves, became very popular during the period of early cinema.
Travelogue lectures presented an unconventional way of life, created an image of the adventurous, and were the only way for a large number of people to experience the world. During the early cinema period, it was travel films that established and sustained documentary cinema as relevant and interesting, and at the same time popularised travel.
With the arrival of portable analogue film cameras, the development of leisure culture and travel infrastructure, amateurs began to film their own travels. They filmed what could be regarded as accidental ethnography: the curious and often exoticising gaze of the tourist observed foreign cultures, while superimposing a personal perspective and a grid of subjectivity on the images they saw.
Later on, there was a shift away from the scientific-reportorial and touristic perspectives towards the more essayistic and reflective view of personal experience. This coincided with the rise of essay cinema and the processes of decolonisation in the mid-20th century. Filmmakers began to reflect on the intrusion of the camera; their own gaze as a ‘visitor’; the shifting identities and inner transformations brought about by the process of travel.
The films examined not only the personal relationship with the landscape, but also the political, historical and social contexts it conveys. Thus, thinking about the visible and otherwise experienced landscape became thinking about oneself, and vice versa: inner reflections became an analytical way of looking at the landscape. In this way, the travelogues combine the unplanned (and unplannable) recording of the environment while travelling and the personal, subjective gaze that shapes the documentary footage into a narrative.
PROGRAMME
I. 3 May, 7 pm.
TERRA FEMME | dir. Courtney Stephens | 2021 | 62 min | Post-screening QnA with the director
Filmmaker Courtney Stephens presents a selection of “home travelogues” – amateur films shot by women in the 1920s-40s. Intended to be screened for the friends and family of their makers, these films occupy a space between home movies and accidental ethnography. They present a new type of traveler: no longer a (typically male) seeker of conquests, she might be a divorcee on a tour of biblical gardens, or a widow on a chartered cruise to the North Pole. These optical autobiographies present the world through early female filmmaker’s eyes, while raising thorny questions about the politics of the gaze.
Courtney Stephens is a filmmaker whose non-fiction and experimental films explore the contours of language, historical geography, and women’s lives. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as MoMA, the National Gallery of Art, Barbican Centre, Exploratorium, BAMPFA, and multiple film festivals including the Berlinale, New York Film Festival, South by Southwest, IDFA etc. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, the MacDowell Fellowship, and was one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. A graduate of the American Film Institute, she co-founded the Los Angeles microcinema Veggie Cloud and has curated film programs for The Getty, Museum of the Moving Image, Union Docs, and Flaherty NYC.
II. 10 May, 7 pm.
AFTER WINTER COMES SPRING | Winter Ade | dir. Helke Misselwitz | 1988 |117 min
A journey from the North to the South during the last year of the GDR. Everyone’s wish for changes can be felt everywhere. Punk girls, female workers, intellectuals, mothers, young and old women – Helke Misselwitz talks to women about humanity in their country. In every meeting you feel mutual sympathy. Sympathy for the strong and self-confident women who point out the dubieties with confidence and for those who are looking for their place in life, struggle with it and work hard. The film is full of humour, proximity and warmth. Despite all the criticism, the hope for a future more human remains.
Helke Misselwitz is one of Germany’s most important documentary filmmakers. Born in Planitz in 1947, she held apprenticeships as a carpenter and a physiotherapist after graduating from high school, then worked for nine years as an assistant director and director with East German television. Misselwitz made her mark early in her career as a documentary filmmaker, chronicling with great sensitivity and artfulness the citizens and society of East Germany in the years leading up to and following the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification. After Winter Comes Spring immediately established Misselwitz as one of the most gifted non-fiction filmmakers of her generation.
III. 18 May, 7 pm.
SHORT FILM PROGRAMME | 91 min.
Which Way Is East: Notebooks from Vietnam | dir. Lynne Sachs | 1994 | 33 min
When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history. The film starts as a road trip and flowers into a political discourse. Lynne and Dana’s travel diary revels in the sounds, proverbs, and images of daily life. Their film becomes a warm landscape that weaves together stories of people they met with their own childhood memories of the war on TV.
From Hetty To Nancy | dir. Deborah Stratman | 1997 | 44 min
The stoic beauty of the Icelandic landscape forms a backdrop for a series of witty and caustic letters written at the turn of the century by a woman named Hetty as she treks with her companion Masie, four school girls and their school marm. The film juxtaposes Hetty’s ironic cataloguing of the petty social interactions of her companions as they endure discomfort and boredom with historic accounts of catastrophes that reveal the Icelandic people subject to the awesome forces of nature.
Artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman makes work that investigates issues of power, control and belief, exploring how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. She regards sound as the ultimate multi-tool and time to be supernatural. Recent projects have addressed freedom, surveillance, public speech, sinkholes, levitation, orthoptera, raptors, comets, evolution, extinction, exodus, sisterhood and faith. Stratman’s films have been featured widely at festivals and conferences including Sundance, Viennale, Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Oberhausen etc.
Blight | dir. John Smith | 1996 | 14 min
Blight was made in collaboration with the composer Jocelyn Pook. This was her first work in film, after which she composed scores for many films, including Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. The film revolves around the building of the M11 Link Road in East London, which provoked a long and bitter campaign by local residents to protect their homes from demolition. Both the composer and the director of the film lived in the neighbourhood and their homes were eventually demolished. The images in the film record some of the changes which occurred in the area over a two-year period, from the demolition of houses through to the start of motorway building work. The soundtrack incorporates natural sounds associated with these events, together with speech fragments taken from recorded conversations with local people.
John Smith is one of the most important British avant-garde filmmakers noted for his use of humour in exploring various themes that often play upon the film spectator’s conditioned assumptions of the medium. Inspired in his formative years by conceptual art and structural film, but also fascinated by the immersive power of narrative and the spoken word, he has developed a diverse body of work that subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary, fiction, representation and abstraction. Often rooted in everyday life, his meticulously crafted films playfully explore and expose the language of cinema.
IV. 24 May, 7 pm.
SUNLESS | Sans Soleil | dir. Chris Marker | 1983 | 104 min
An unnamed woman narrates the letters and philosophical reflections of an invisible world traveler accompanied by footage of Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Iceland, Paris, San Francisco and, most significantly, Tokyo—a city whose people, streets, malls and temples inspire the traveler’s observations. Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil is cinema as stream-of-consciousness, following the journey of an unseen hero around the globe and into the mind. Today, it is considered a masterpiece, a film that breaks free of the documentary form and into a world of its own.
Chris Marker was a filmmaker, writer, illustrator, translator, photographer, editor, philosopher, essayist, critic, poet and producer. He pioneered the flexible hybrid form known as the essay film and was part of the Frenh New Wave movement along with such other filmmakers as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy. His best known films are La Jetée (1962), A Grin Without a Cat (1977) and Sans Soleil (1983). All along his career, Marker was extremely interested in observing history and its complexities, observing it with a discerning, ironic, amused and occasionally infuriated eye. The topics of memory and nostalgia of reinvented past times but forever lost are at the heart of his reflections.
// Free admission. Films are screened in original language with Lithuanian and English subtitles //
Organiser | “Meno avilys” Curator | Ona Kotryna Dikavičiūtė Head of Communication | Dovilė Raustytė-Mateikė Technical Coordinator | Karolis Žukas Designer | Linas Spurga Translators | Agnė Mackė, Eglė Maceinaitė Sponsors | Lithuanian Film Centre, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius City Municipality Partners | Goethe Institute in Lithuania, French Institute in Lithuania Informational partner | LRT This event is part of the www.700vilnius.lt programme.
The 5th Experimental Film Festival Process will take place from 17 to 21 May in Riga, Latvia.
Wednesday, 17 May 18:00, Vagonu Hall
Noise Spectrum Frequencies
Curators: Kristaps Epners, Rvīns Varde, Adriāna Roze, Mailo Štern, Rihards T. Endriksons, Marija Luīze Meļķe, Artis Svece
We approached seven people from different fields whose thoughts we resonate with. We asked them to choose one of the submitted films that they feel in some way connected to. This kaleidoscopic programme consists of works selected by this varied group of curators, celebrating the different perspectives, sensibilities and approaches on the side of filmmakers as well as spectators.
Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor. Lynne Sachs
US / 2018 / 8′ / sound / 16mm to digital
Skyscraper Film. Federica Foglia
Italy / 2023 / 8′ / sound / 16mm to digital
Sight Leak. Zuqiang Peng
China / 2022 / 12′ / sound / Super 8, 16mm to digital
Sky Room. Marianna Milhorat
US / 2017 / 6′ / sound / 16mm, 35mm to digital
Potemkin Piece. Justin Clifford Rhody
US / 2022 / 1′ / sound / 35mm to digital
Ashes by name is man / Popiół imieniem jest człowieka. Ewelina Rosińska
Poland, Germany / 2023 / 20′ / sound / 16mm to digital
The 5th Experimental Film Festival Process will take place from 17 to 21 May in Riga, Latvia.
Organized by the artist-run film lab Baltic Analog Lab, the festival is dedicated to the diverse analog cinema practices employed by adventurous audiovisual artists from around the world. The programme comprises film screenings, live performances, installations, talks, and, of course, parties.
This year, Process will explore the subject of “noise spectrum”, looking at different forms of noise as a physical, mental and social phenomenon: a noise that’s capable of both disruption and connection.
In collaboration with the SPECTRAL project carried out by six European artist-run filmlabs, this year’s festival will pay special attention to the practice of expanded cinema, exhibiting performances in three curated programmes as well as at the opening night.
Beside focus programmes and events, Process will present three programmes of short films made by various international artists. This time the programmes were selected by guest-curators Aurélie Percevault (Mire, France), Ulrich Ziemons (Arsenal, Germany), as well as Lāsma Bērtule and Ieva Balode (Baltic Analog Lab, Latvia).
The Festival is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Ministry of Culture of Latvia, Riga City Council and Creative Europe.
In an interview with fellow filmmaker Jonas Mekas in 1957, the German Dadaist Hans Richter explains the characteristics of a film poem: unlike the entertainment film, which Richter labels as “film novel,” the film poem is an “exploration into the realm of mood [and] lyrical sensation.” These films may be regarded as a universal expression of human emotions and could thus be understood by anyone. Also, following Richter’s emphasis on universality, such films may evolve over time and could be read differently over the years.
The well-curated programs at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen are interested in both the immediate emotional response as well as the discursive, often political aggregation of making-sense. Following Richter once more, who saw a film poem in every experimental film, the festival catalogue may likely be an anthology of film poems. It represents an ambitious compilation of experimental films, short fiction films, and documentaries that explore various modes of expression from subjective introspection to political accusation.
Yet I only want to highlight two films that may give an insight into this year’s international competition. Considering that the nine competition programs were mostly stitched together in a careful manner, this almost feels like a violent act. At least, they were part of the same five-film program, even coupled together on position three and four. Both Lynne Sachs’ new film Swerve (2022) as well as Jonelle Twum’s I think of silence when I think of you (2022) address questions of community and alienation.
The oeuvre of filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs encompasses over 40 films. Besides her latest work, the Oberhausen festival showed a retrospective program with twelve of Sachs’ films. Like most of these, Swerve is concerned with the interlocking of (written and spoken) language and images. In this case, most of the words are borrowed from sonnets by Filipino-American poet Paolo Javier, “a poet who thinks like a filmmaker,” as Sachs puts it, with herself being a “filmmaker who thinks like a poet.”
The most visible sign of this interlocking of language and film are graphically highlighted words from Javier’s poems that appear on the screen. Together with five actors and only two locations, these words function as protagonists in their own right. As they float through an Asian food court and a playground in New York City with a liquid, shiny appearance, Javier’s words challenge Sachs’ documentary-style images. This productive tension is embodied by five actors who perform mundane tasks at mundane places – but as exactly that: a performance. Swerve lets us understand the fragility of even the mundane. We see queer bodies, bodies of colour navigating public spaces that are marked by the pandemic. For these people and in these times, swerving rather than walking in a straight line becomes the predominant mode of movement.
In Jonelle Twum’s poetic exploration of family history, we are confronted with very different spaces: I think of silence when I think of you unfolds the story of a woman who migrates from Ghana to Sweden. What becomes of private spaces when they are only inhabited by way of memory? Twum’s voice-over muses on this presence of absence as well as on female bodies that are thrown into such unfamiliar surroundings. The director finds powerful words for this experience of alienation. Yet some things can only be said in silence: her voice-over is discontinued for a few moments as the subtitles further explain what is now not being said.
By confronting the image of an empty leather chair with multiple archival images, the alienation becomes graspable. Their characteristic red tint allude to a distant feeling of comfort that no chair could provide – as long as it furnishes spaces of otherness. Though rather essayistic in its nature, I think of silence when I think of you is a veritable film poem. It is exactly the mood of the images and the lyrical quality of their montage (not to mention the brilliant voice-over) that fit well into Hans Richter’s above-mentioned definition.
And as vague as such definitions may be, it takes emotional clemency and smart curating to be able to really comprehend such films. While their impact always depends on each spectator for their own, it feels reassuring to know that there are steadfast places of curating film poems like these. In 2023, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen is still one of those places – 69 years and counting.