Category Archives: SECTIONS

“The Washing Society” Screening at Kinesthesia Moving Image Festival

Kinesthesia Moving Image Festival
16 – 18 July 2021
Middlesex University, London
https://kinesthesiafestival.org/

Program

Screening 1
Friday, 16 July, 6.30pm

Falling
Mary Trunk, United States, 2020, 05:19
Intertidal. Barene
Collettivo Confluenze Paloma Leyton & Lucrezia Stenico, Italy, 2019, 14:50 
We Are Ready Now
Jack Thomson, United Kingdom, 2020, 01:39
Unfurling
Alexa Velez, United States, 2019, 02:18

Screening 2
Saturday, 17 July, 12p

Reasonable Adjustments
Anna Macdonald, United Kingdom, 2020, 05:21
LAND/SCAPE
Michal Krawczyk, Italy, 2020, 07:10
Jam upload download upload jam
Sumedha Bhattacharyya, India, 2020, 06:00
notes on symptoms
Alice Gale-Feeny, United Kingdom, 2020, 12:51
This dance has no end
Fenia Kotsopoulou, Greece, 2018, 10:58

Screening 3
Saturday, 17 July, 4pm

WHITE CANE
Bo Lee Germany / Republic of Korea / Kenya, 2017, 08:16
the moon rises in four parts
Michaela Gerussi and Tracy Valcarcel, Canada, 2019, 10:00
Canis Major
Charli Brissey, United States, 2019, 10:00
Chickadee
Chan Sze-Wei, Singapore, 2018, 03:22
LIQUID PATH
Filomena Rusciano, Italy, 2013, 04:00

Screening 4
Saturday, 17 July, 7.45pm

The Washing Society
Lynne Sachs, Lizzie Olesker, United States, 2018, 44:00

Screening 5
Sunday, 18 July, 12pm

Far Flung Dances – II (The Wood)
Mary Wycherley, Ireland, 2020, 06:00
Water,logged
Sandra Alland, United Kingdom, 2020, 08:07
That’s how I remember her 
Naomi Midgelow, United Kingdom, 2020, 04:38
My Days
Katsura Isobe, United Kingdom, 2020, 05:18
Dirt
Helanius J. Wilkins, Roma Flowers, United States, 2020, 12:00

Screening 6
 Sunday, 18 July, 3.30pm

Chapter 2: A Wet Bio Coder
Better Lovers, Hsin-Yu Chen, United States, 2020, 8:28
SUNLESS
Corina Andrian (Red-Cor), Romania, 2020, 07:27
Observations
Davide Belotti, Belgium, 2020, 04:08
Lorelei – Persona
Gustavo Gomes, Germany, 2020, 07:03
Custard Is This (Custard at Dawn)
Emma Lindsay, United Kingdom, 2019, 03:15

About

Kinesthesia is a new moving image festival taking place at Middlesex University and online 16 – 18 July 2021.

Kinesthesia puts focus on the body as the agent of seeing rather than as an object of display, inviting audiences to experience film and moving image work from an embodied perspective.  

Initiated by artists Dominique Rivoal and Claire Loussouarn, this new festival has been curated and produced collectively by them, freelance film curator Gitta Wigro and co-directors of Independent Dance Heni Hale and Nikki Tomlinson. The contributing artists were found via an international open call, and selected by the festival team with guest panellist Adesola Akinleye.  

As a team we are exploring how film can be made and viewed kinaesthetically. Bringing together wide interests in dance, somatic practices, experimental film and sensory ethnography, Kinesthesia focuses on movement beyond visual impact and narrative, to consider the whole range of sensory experiences, including visceral, proprioceptive and haptic awareness.   This edition of the festival combines screenings, short workshops, installation and discursive sessions that attend to the subtler felt sense of the body. We are delighted that it will be framed by keynote speaker Karen Wood, author of Kinesthetic Empathy : Conditions for Viewing, who will speak about meeting points between screen-based practices, eco-somatics and empathy.  

We are excited to present a distinctive and truly international programme. We thank all the contributing artists, and and all those who submitted work through the call-out. We acknowledge that as a new festival with micro-funding, work is being contributed on a voluntary basis; this not-for-profit festival is also made possible through in-kind work by the whole festival team, and through partnership support from Middlesex University.  

Kinesthesia will take place in hybrid form; in person and online. In keeping with Covid-19 safety protocols, there is a limited capacity for in-person festival tickets. If circumstances allow, further tickets will be released in the coming weeks.   We look forward to welcoming you to Kinesthesia and to experiencing it with you, virtually or in person!

Kinesthesia team

Dominique Rivoal – dance and dance film maker and scholar
Claire Loussouarn – movement artist, filmmaker and anthropologist
Gitta Wigro – freelance dance film programmer and lecturer
Henrietta Hale – dance artist and co-director of Independent Dance
Nikki Tomlinson – co-director of Independent Dance

“A Month of Single Frames” Reviewed in Echinox– Romanian Cultural Magazine

“I am overwhelmed by simplicity”
By. Georgiana Bozîntan
JUNE 18, 2021
https://revistaechinox.ro/2021/06/i-am-overwhelmed-by-simplicity/

Echinox is a Romanian Cultural Magazine published by the students from “Babeş-Bolyai” University. It has been published since December 1968.

A Month of Single Frames is a short film by Lynne Sachs, released in 2019. The filming belongs to the director Barbara Hammer, who made it in 1998, during an artistic residency in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, when she lived for a month in a shack in the Duneshacks, without electricity and running water. The short film is a collage of the shots filmed there.

In voice-over , Barbara Hammer reads from the diary she wrote during her residency, describing how she feels, what she sees, recounts dreams or explains the process and filming techniques she uses, for example, to capture the light of sunrise, “This forever wonder of sunshine”, or to superimpose colored lights over the filmed landscapes.

In her speech there are also phrases that remain in your head like a poem: “I am overwhelmed by simplicity. There is so much to see ”. Nothing happens in the movie. Barbara Hammer just shows us what she sees in her time spent alone: a dragonfly, shadows, landscapes, blades of grass in the wind, clouds and planes crossing the sky, the sea, dunes, raindrops, lichens, insects, tree trunks, leaves, flowers , plastic toys.

Text also appears on the screen, as a dialogue between Lynne Sachs and Barbara Hammer, through which the intimacy between the two occupies the space of the film: “You are here. I am here with you ”,“ You are alone. I am here with you in this film. ”

Experimenting with filming techniques, the short film then increasingly turns into a meditation on the artistic view of nature, mediated by the camera and which Barbara Hammer questions, asking “Why is it I can’t see nature whole?” and pure, without artifice? ”

The film finally flows towards a discussion about time, about the process of aging and death, “the sadness of departure, the inevitable ending breath, […] the complete and thorough blankness”. As explained at the end of the short film, “in 2018, Barbara began her own process of dying by revisiting her personal archive”, and the film made by her friend is part of this process.

A Month of Single Frames is a short film about many simple and emotional things, but especially about how we perceive, through different artistic or emotional filters, the places where we live and how they are always changing.

“A Month of Single Frames” at Short Waves Festival (Poland)

Short Waves Festival – Online Program Guide
06/02/2021
https://shortwaves.pl/en/13-short-waves-festival-online-program-guide/

A Month of Single Frames will be featured in the program “The Art of Looking (Sztuka Patrzenia)” on June 16, 2021

There are a lot of quotes and comments about art being a mirror that reflects society. However, as cliche as that might sound, there is a grain of truth in this statement. The five films presented in this program are a proof that art does not only serve the masses but also individuals. From a very personal video diary of a queer artist, an insane journey through the history of mankind, to the AI humanoid that questions the state of gender equality – all of them thoroughly analyze the Self through many different creative forms. Subtle and intimate stories mix with broad perspectives on the art industry driven by the same phenomenon: passion for observing the human beings.

01. Shānzhai Screens, France 2020. Documentary. 23′. Director: Paul Heintz

02. AIVA, Germany, Bulgaria 2020. Animation/Experimental. 13′. Director: Veneta Androva

03. La Chute (The Fall), France 2018. Animation. 14′. Director: Boris Labb 

04. Ella i jo, Spain 2020. Fiction. 20′. Director: Jaume Claret Muxart

05. A Month of Single Frames, United States 2019. Documentary. 14′. Director: Lynne Sachs

13. Short Waves Festival – Online Program Guide

Short Waves Festival is being presented in a hybrid format again, and we would like to invite all our audience members who cannot join us locally in Poznań to discover our carefully selected program via the Filmchief Hub platform. The online program allows our viewers to choose from over 120 films divided into multiple sections.

We are going to welcome you with a unique program section: Mirror Mirror: Look at me. The protagonists of selected short films are going to help us explore online reality, take a closer look at human ways and consequences of social media immersion present in our everyday life. The festival motto is also going to be examined in the Polish Experimental Film Competition section – 15 films that fit perfectly into the online context, exploring the relationship between a human being, their physical presence and the Internet – the world that is elusive, strange and familiar at the same time.

So you’d like to learn more about Austrian cinema? We’re on it! We will be presenting a program of 17 films for an entire week, curated by Peter Schernhuber – the director of Diagonale, an Austrian short film festival. Take in the essence of cinematography delivered by our neighbors who are a bit further away – placed at the intersection of various film styles, smoothly engaging both analog and digital structures, presenting a spectrum of subjects associated with historical and interpersonal relationships.

We must mention our four special programs – Spotlight contains four film sets presenting the works of local and international artists. We are going to watch animated films created by Piotr Bosacki – experimental artist whose strength lies in his ability to analyze familiar objects in an unconventional way. We are also going to have a close encounter with Lithuanian cinema while watching a retrospective of films created by Laurynas Bareiša – editor, director, and cinematographer who meticulously examines our complicated morality. For dance fans – a set of French films produced by an institution that supports dance cinematographers – DAN.CIN.LAB, productions that analyze global social processes through physical expression. We are also going to familiarize ourselves with subtle and intimate cinema of Kino Rebelde – a film agency from Spain that combines the beauty of film poetic and deep social engagement with a particular skill that is going to leave you in awe!

To cool off a bit and give in to sweet, chill vibes, try out our entertainment section that is going to be touching, hilarious and full of ironic commentaries on the contemporary world. Every two days, we are going to present a new film set: Comedy Shorts with its dark humor, Horror Shorts with its delirious journey into the depths of human psyche, Queer Shorts that scream: we’re proud of who we are!, and Kinky Shorts taking a closer look at our sexual needs. And on top of that – Awesome Shorts: Here and Now – a set of the most colorful and fresh music videos prepared by our programmer Anna Golon!

Together with Cinema in Sneakers, a film festival for children and youth, we have prepared a program dedicated to our younger audience – SWF for Kids, consisting of film journeys that are going to allow us to take a closer look at important subjects such as otherness, independence and equality.

After our Award Ceremony that is going to be streamed live on the platform, the winning titles are going to be available in the SWF Awarded section, presented online in three sets – find out which films have been selected, not only by our international jury, but also the audience in Poznań – and rate them yourselves!

If you have purchased access to This is Short platform, you’re also going to have access to Four Perspectives on Solidarity: Women’s Rights are Human Rights, a program that explores the concept of solidarity by presenting films touching upon the subjects of gender equality and fight for women’s rights. In addition to that, we are going to host two industry meetings inspired by the idea of solidarity: a case study of gender inequality in the film industry and a discussion panel on the future of film festivals.

Most films are going to be available without geoblocks, with Polish and English subtitles, SWF for Kids films will be presented with a Polish dubbing speaker and subtitles in English.

In Poznań or ONLINE – let’s meet at Short Waves Festival!

About Short Waves

Short Waves Festival is one of the most significant Polish festivals presenting exclusively short films.

It’s a constellation of cinematic events scattered around Poznań’s urban landscape. Competition screenings are its core – sets of short films encompassing five categories: International Competition, Polish Competition, Dances with Camera, Urban View and Polish Experimental Short Film Competition.

Short Waves Festival additionally presents unconventional screening selections such as Comedy, Horror and Kinky Shorts, focus program (including geographic focus – we will be presenting the cinematography of Austria during the 2021 edition), industry segment, audiovisual events, music events. It also reaches beyond the screening room: open airs, clubs, art galleries, theatres and Poznanians’ private gardens known as Random Garden Cinema series. Thanks to the continuation of the new hybrid form introduced in 2020, those seven days of June are going to consist of events and screenings taking place both offline in Poznań as well as online.

Online Exhibition Presented by SFAA: “Labor and Immigration”

LABOR AND IMMIGRATION
Online Exhibition Presented by SFAA
June 2021
https://www.sfartistsalumni.org/2021-labor-and-immigration

SF Artists Alumni (SFAA)  is seeking submissions of image and video based works by SFAI alumni for the SF Artists Alumni’s exhibition project Labor and Immigration. This exhibition will take place over two months on the SFAA Instagram Exhibitions Platform @sfartistsalumni, starting in June and continuing through late July. Five of the participating artists will be invited to speak about their work in more depth in an open Zoom platform talk discussion on June 19th moderated by SFAA Exhibitions & Program Lead Beth Davila Waldman. All participating artists will be encouraged to attend and participate in a lively discussion surrounding this project.

Panel Discussion with Artists

On June 19th, 10 AM PDT, SFAA Exhibitions & Program Lead Beth Davila Waldman will lead a Zoom talk discussion with five of the participating artists, Lynne Sachs, Pablo D’Antoni, Rosario Sotelo, Irene Carvajal, Joshua Hashemzadeh, about their works. 

Register Here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkc-qvpjwpE9FSpry3r37DsZUO0hocBZ9l

Gallery

Featured Artists:
Ruth Chase, Orlando Lacro, Phil Pasquini, Margi Weir, Lynne Sachs, Sand Pitaru, Pablo D’Antoni, Martin Machado, Joshua Hashemzadeh, Wayne Levin, Eric Reyes-Lamothe, Rosario Sotelo, Eleni Exarchou, Chris Vena, Roberto Jackson Harrington, Judy (Zhu) Zhu, Mike Callaghan, Zimo Zhao, Guillermo Pulido, Gera Lozano, Rosario Sotelo, Oscar Lopez, Pamela Pitt, Irene Carvajal, Luba Zygarewicz, Cristina Velazquez, Nasim Moghadam.

Clint Roenisch Gallery presents “A Month of Single Frames” as a part of the exhibition “A Temple Most August”

10 June – 1 September
https://clintroenisch.com/

Clint Roenisch Gallery is pleased to present our summer group show, A Temple Most August. The exhibition brings together artists from London, Vienna, Moncton, Brussels, Toronto, Santa Fe, Montreal and Brooklyn, presenting paintings on silk and linen, glasswork, photography, an amphora, photocollage, textiles, embroideries, and a mesmerizing film. After a trying winter and reluctant spring the exhibition heralds the unfurling of more canicular days, verdant and open, the senses receptive. In 1672 a haiku master in Edo began to attract a steady following of disciples, who supplied him with a small hut in which he could write and teach. A banana tree, exotic to Japan, was planted in front of the hut, and pleased the poet so much that he took for his writing name “Bashō,” the Japanese word for “banana plant.” 

“Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!”

– Bashō, circa 1688

Featured Artists
Abdul Sharif Baruwa
Anna Torma
Emma Talbot
Heather Goodchild
Jennifer Murphy
Lorna Bauer
Lynne Sachs
Sarah Cale
Willard van Dyke

#ATempleMostAugust

Cinema Parallels (Bosnia) Presents a Focus on Lynne Sachs

Cinema Parallels
June 10- 12, 2021
Curated by Adriana Trujillo
https://cinemaparallels.com/en/program/

Edition 2021

The most important question for us in a post-pandemic period was: Do we really need a film festival?

Even when we haven’t return to a total recover, we still need vaccination the total of our population, people are now suffering so many losts, and the virus is still out there.

But the answer to all of this is questions is yes! we need to make reality, the festival again here in Banja Luka. If we believe in images as a language of encounter, in the role of the independent voices and the power of the community, then a film festival is not a distraction or a non-essential activity. It’s actually a necessary coming together.

We want to make sense of our moment, and to try to re-imagine how important is the art in our past time of isolation, in our daily life and in our dreams of a common future.

See you in the cinema soon, and please:

Don’t forget your mask!

About selection

The selection of this year proposes a fluid cartography that explore our current situation as humans. It is more than evident that the pandemic changed the whole society and these dramatic changes and new scenarios also affect films, cinemas and the way “we see”. The current situation with Covid-19, will also be reflected in this year’s festival program, not only in terms of safety measures and limited audience, but also in the form we propose the narrative of this edition that we name it: Re-imagine audio-visions: The present as our future.

For the image of this edition (the poster) we selected the portrait the now famous cover of the Italian magazine La Domenica del Corrier (16, December of 1962), by Walter Molino, where we can see a saturated street of New York, with people in their individual transportation, in a kind of an “individual-personal bubble”, that is actually a “singoletta” (personal bicycle), imagined by Molino as a solution for traffic, but with the pandemic and the social isolation in context, we cannot avoided to connected his retro-futuristic creative projection of our surreal present, here is why we re-call the edition; The present as our future. With this premise in mind, our selection departs precisely from the future. The first day of Cinema Parallels, we will open with: Space Dogs režija: Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, followed by Lúa vermella režija: Lois Patiño, both films projecting contexts in resemble mirror format, we will see realities from an equidistant visualities.

With this premise in mind, our selection departs precisely from the future. The first day of Cinema Parallels, we will open with: Space Dogs režija: Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, followed by Lúa vermella režija: Lois Patiño, both films projecting contexts in resemble mirror format, we will see realities from an equidistant visualities.

The second day of the festival we will have Srećan Božić, Yiwu (Merry Christmas, Yiwu) režija: Mladen Kovačević, followed by LYNNE SACHS TRIBUTE with the Washing Society, Tornado, The Small Ones and E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo. The second day we are focused on a retro-visor mirror, about our social and geo-political contexts, and the last day of festival is dedicated to the personal, to our bodies, to our house and intimate spaces, this day we take “our dressing mirror”, we will project Things We Dare Not Do, režija: Bruno Santamaría.

We will close with a regional documentary selection of shorts that we name PARALLELS JOY: Sunce, vrati se (Sunshine, Come Back) režija: Milica Jokić, Korijeni režija: Stefan Tomić, Osamdeset dinara (Eighty Serbian Dinars) režija: Inma de Reyes, University of Disaster and Dreaming of Prey to Grasp Shadow režija: Radenko Milak and Zašto mama vazda plače? (Why is Mom Always Crying?) režija: Karmen Obrdalj.

The pandemic has severely hit the entire audiovisual sector and the situation remains critical in many places, therefore, it is important to organize a film festival, but also, is important to support international and local filmmakers and films. We think in the cinema as a place of resistance; we believe that seeing a movie with other people in a theatre is a powerful and irreplaceable experience, and also is a key place for the encounter with other visions and expand our points of view, at the end, is all about to be exposed to different contexts, realities and images, and from there try to understand us more and more as society, as humans.

See you at the cinema!

Adriana Trujillo

Program

Thursday, June 10

18.00 Festival Opening

18.15 Space Dogs / Dir. Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter / 91 min. / 2019 /Austria – Germany

(Q&A: with Simon Peter, Sound Designer of the film)

20.30 Red Moon Tide Dir. Lois Patiño / 84 min. / 2020 / Spain

Friday, June 11

18.00 Merry Christmas, Yiwu / Dir. Mladen Kovacevic / 94 min. / Serbia
(panel discussion with representatives of the Confucius Institute, University of Banja Luka)
20.30  FOCUS ON LYNNE SACHS
 The Washing Society / 44 min. / 2018 / United States
 Tornado / 4 min. / 2002 / United States
 The Small Ones / 3 min. / 2006 / United States
 E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo / 5 min. / 2021 / United States

Saturday, June 12

18.00 Things We Dare Not Do / Dir. Bruno Santamaría / 75 min. / 2020 / México
20.00 PARALLELS JOY: DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM SELECTION

 Sunshine, Come Back/ Dir. Milica Jokic / 12:23 / 2017 / Serbia
 The Roots / Dir. Stefan Tomic / 15:40 / 2020 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Eighty Serbian Dinars / Dir. Inma de Reyes / 10 min. / 2019 / Serbia
 University of Disaster / Dir. Radenko Milak / 13:21 / 2017 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Dreaming of Prey to Grasp Shadow / Dir. Radenko Milak / 6:45 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Why is Mom Always Crying? / Dir. Karmen Obrdalj / 15:38 / 2019 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
(Q&A: Panel with short film directors, producers, artist and filmmakers)

About Cinema Parallels

Cinema Parallels is devoted to supporting independent and innovative films, screening cinema of the real in all it’s forms and diversity, through a special curatorial selection of international and regional contemporary films in the heart of the Balkans.


Cinema Parallels will celebrate its second edition during spring in Banja. Cinema Parallels is organized by Video Kabinet developed with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Srpska Republic and in partnership with Gradsko Pozorište Jazavac.

Background

The art should ask questions, for which there are often no answers, that it is the basis for the exchange of ideas. Films encourages critical thinking, freedom of expression and creativity, and only then ceases to be goods and entertainment and become culture and art. A culture makes the identity of a city, state, or country. In this context, a festival of contemporary cinema is absolutely necessary for Banja Luka as a epicenter of the Republic of Srpska.

Cinema Parallels born in 2019, with the main idea to develop a place to share, an encounter of unique points of views that are been able to question our world. We are dedicated to program and support moving-image works with singular voices in productions from all around the world in different formats, capturing reality from a different perfective and a wide range of contemporary non-fiction, and bring this productions to the city.

Last year, our festival, like all other cultural projects was postpone.

We explored the possibility of a virtual encounter, buy finally we decide to continue in 2021. We wait until now to recover experiences, audience and images, with the firm and original purpose to keep confronting our world. Believing that films are a point of encounter and a universal language, keeping the idea that in our unprecedent time, conversations and encounters are now act of resistance.

Cine-File on Onion City Experimental Film Festival & “Maya at 24”

Cine-File
Friday, June 4 – Thursday, June 10 2021
by Marilyn Ferdinand
https://www.cinefile.info/

ONION CITY EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL

The Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival, presented by Chicago Filmmakers, opens on Wednesday and runs through June 13 with a mix of online screenings and in-person events. While all of the online group screenings are available for the full length of the festival, we are splitting our reviews over this week’s list and next week’s, based on when the Q&A sessions are scheduled; check next week’s list for additional reviews. The full schedule and more info are here.

Program 1: Family Time Changes

Available to view between June 9 – 13; purchase tickets here

The vagaries of memory and assumptions made in the absence of real information are the subjects of director Paige Taul’s TOO SMALL TO BE A BEAR (2020, 5 min). Taul interviews her sister Jessie about their father, a short man nicknamed Cub who lost his chance to play professional baseball because he missed the bus going to the Negro League tryout. As Jessie theorizes that this unrealized ambition made him give up on his life, we see archival footage that focuses on No. 15 of the Indianapolis Clowns, a team that played in the style of the Harlem Globetrotters. His clowning seems to stand for the hopeless man who became a drunk over his missed opportunity. When Taul turns to her mother for reminiscences about her husband, the film cuts in and out as Dorothy tries to remember who played which positions. All that remains for her is the enjoyment baseball brought to the community. Luis Arnías’ MALEMBE (2020, 12 min), filmed in both Venezuela and the United States, is a memory film of a South American immigrant to the U.S. In Venezuela, we see a young boy in a soldier’s uniform in front of a bronze bust of some long-ago hero; is he a stand-in for Arnías? A parade, some elderly women sitting in a sunbaked courtyard, an abandoned ballpark with the sound of voices and crowds of years past—all give way to a winter scene, and a white woman and a young girl shoveling snow, and Arnías’ beloved tropical fruit frozen and unpalatable. As he chokes on some seeds, he spits out his tongue, his native language no longer acceptable in a country where his people clash with the police. With AVANTI! (2020, 8 min), EJ Nussbaum takes a short dive into the world of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist founder of the Italian Communist Party who was imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascists in 1926 and died a few days after his release in 1937. In three vignettes, Nussbaum dramatizes Gramsci’s poetry and philosophical writing. Most touching are his letters to his son, Giuliano, whom he never met, and his meditation on whether loving the masses is really possible if one doesn’t love someone personally. Amusingly, he criticizes the quality of the photos his wife sends him, but admits they are still of interest to him. Amber Bemak and Angelo Madsen Minax’s video TWO SONS & A RIVER OF BLOOD (2021, 11 min) considers containers—pyramids, empty rooms, wombs—and how they are filled. The sexy beginning celebrating procreation and the anticipation of new life gives way to a sad, matter-of-fact consideration of emptiness. In the final scene, the filmmakers affirm that life goes on. In MAYA AT 24 (2021, 4 min), Lynne Sachs turned a fanciful gaze on her daughter, Maya Street-Sachs, through images she filmed in 2001, 2013, and 2019 running and spinning. The black-and-white images are overlaid with created film dust and pops, as well as intricate, animated designs that suggest the increasing complexity of the person Maya has become. Loving and beautiful, Sachs’ short is mesmerizing. In BORDER (2020, 5 min), Bryan Angarita recalls the day his brother was denied entry into the United States and how their mother visits him in the border town where he lives. The opening image of a tree-lined river viewed through what appears to be a screen window becomes obscured as the lines of the screen shift and reconfigure themselves as a border fence, a gun sight, a target, and other forms. The plain, black-and-white title cards seem devoid of emotion, but the Google Earth logo in the corner of many of the images speaks to the constant surveillance Angarita senses. LETTER FROM YOUR FAR-OFF COUNTRY (2020, 18 min) puts director Suneil Sanzgiri and his father together through Zoom and text messaging to discuss their family history, specifically, Prabhakar Sanzgiri, a writer, activist, and Communist Party leader in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Inspired by a prose poem written in the form of a letter, the director writes to his long-dead relative with news and questions, particularly about the 1989 rebellion in Kashmir that led to the death of Safdar Hashmi, a communist playwright and director, and the disappearance and murder of thousands of people. History, Sanzgiri says, runs through the personal lives of those who live it. His mission is to discover some kind of truthful continuity through art. [Marilyn Ferdinand]
—
Artist Q&A for Program 1 is on Wednesday, June 9 at 7pm; register here.

“The letters that were not are also are” at Zumzeig Cine (Barcelona)

The letters that were not are also are
Zumzeig Cine
https://zumzeigcine.coop/cinema/films/las-cartas-que-no-fueron-tambien-son/

Collective audiovisual project that leads to a set of letters filmed for the love of cinema.

Synopsis

Garbiñe Ortega, artistic director of Punt de vista, conceived the creation of a collective audiovisual project in which several filmmakers made a filmed letter addressed to another filmmaker they did not know personally and which was as far away as possible from the his own cinema. Thus was born ‘The letters that were not also are’.

Ten short films that find a new dimension when shown together. The result is an exciting journey through their affinities, their admiration and their creative processes. These are the letters that make it up:

Deborah Stratman to Nancy Holt
Lynne Sachs to Jean Vigo
Alejo Moguillansky to Michelangelo Antonioni
Raya Martin to Wes Craven
Jessica Sarah Rinland to Chick Strand
Diana Toucedo to Danièle Huillet
Beatrice Gibson to Barbara Loden, Nina Menkes and Bette Gordon
Nicolás Pereda to Chantal Akerman

Zumzeig Cine is a cooperative and participatory cinema with programming and other cultural activities in Barcelona, Spain.

“Girl Is Presence” at Moscow International Experimental Film Festival

June 9, 2021
https://mieff.com/news/inter2021?fbclid=IwAR1VgzPVlT75tH0yq_nV6IDcpnT6g7-ZzbV3M5xsy7IF9lYz_Wi14SLAuiM

Girl is Presence

Screening dates are 14.08 (19:45) Garage Screen, 15.08 (00:30) and 15.08 (14:00) Illyuzion cinema.
https://mieff.com/events/girl
Country: USA
Year: 2021
Duration: 4 minutes
English language
Format: DCP
Age limit: 18+

Lynne Sachs and her daughter Noah co-created this film with poet Anne Leslie Selcer during the 2020 pandemic. In a shaky and unsettling homely atmosphere, Noah’s heroine tirelessly arranges and rearranges a collection of small mysterious objects that illustrate the poem that sounds off-screen. It was based on a disharmonious list of nouns borrowed by Selser from Georges Bataille’s essay “The Solar Anus.” The set of actions that the girl performs is reminiscent of a ritual and resonates with the tone of a poem devoted to the problems of representation, power and gender.

International Competition

We are happy to announce the International Competition programme of the 6th Moscow International Experimental Film Festival. It includes 29 works by filmmakers and artists from all over the world. Many among them try to look with new eyes at the places humans inhabit, while employing different methods of working with memory, history, and heritage. The others are focused on practices of care, survival, and accepting death, on new forms of human coexistence and resistance to colonial regimes, on various effects produced by the digital environment, as well as on relationships between humans, technologies, and nature. All these themes have become increasingly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Soon we will tell you more about these films, announce this year’s Russian competition and unveil special curatorial programs.

80,000 Years Old, Christelle Lheureux
All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes, Haig Aivazian
Autotrofia, Anton Vidokle
The Bearers of Memories, Miglė Križinauskaitė-Bernotienė
Before the Collapse of Mont Blanc, Jacques Perconte
Blastogenesis X, Conrad Veit and Charlotte Maria Kätzl
The City Bridges Are Open Again, Masha Godovannaya
earthearthearth, Daïchi Saïto
Failed Emptiness. Time, Mika Taanila
Girl Is Presence, Lynne Sachs and Anne Lesley Selcer
Glittering Barbieblood, Ulu Braun
Green Thoughts, William Hong-xiao Wei
The Home My Mother Never Found, Mehdi Jahan
In Ictu Oculi, Jorge Moneo Quintana
Letter to a Turtledove, Dana Kavelina
Letters about the End of the World, Dina Karaman
Maat Means Land, Fox Maxy
No One Cried, Daniel Jacoby
One Hundred Steps, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca
One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean, Wang Yuyan
Sensory Overload, Ganza Moise
Sol de Campinas, Jessica Sarah Rinland
Songs for Dying, Korakrit Arunanondchai
Tellurian Drama, Riar Rizaldi
Tonalli, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
Tracing Utopia, Nick Tyson and Catarina de Sousa 
Transparent, I am, Yuri Muraoka
A Very Long Exposure Time, Chloé Galibert-Laîné
We’ll Find You When the Sun Goes Black, Anouk De Clercq

Nathaniel Dorksy at MIEFF

https://mieff.com/program/dorsky

The works of American avant-gardist Nathaniel Dorsky will be shown for the first time as part of the annual Close-up section of the MIEFF Moscow International Experimental Film Festival in Russia

About

MIEFF is a platform for everyone who creates, takes interest in or otherwise engages with the moving images. Our main goal is to support Russian artists and introduce them to the international community, as well as help experimental cinema reach a wider audience.

We want to create spaces for dialogue and therefore we believe it important to enrich the intellectual context surrounding film and contemporary art instead of reducing it to univocal ideologies. This is achieved through a carefully curated program of screenings, public and educational events, where different viewpoints and voices are all welcome.

We also understand that if we want to be in tune with the ever-changing reality, we need to keep experimenting. Experiment for us is a method and not an empty label. We want to try different ways to organize horizontal teamwork, distribute responsibilities, and finance our whole endeavour. We want to find new opportunities for ethical partnerships and transparent communication with each other—and everyone who participates in the life of our festival.

At the moment, the festival structure includes international competition, Russian competition, retrospective section Close-Up, special screenings, curatorial multimedia block as well as an interdisciplinary educational programme called Extracurricular Practices.

MIEFF was founded in 2016 by Vladimir Nadein and Ekaterina Shitova. Now it operates as an independent non-commercial organization and is managed by the board, which includes (listed in the alphabetical order): Kristina Efremenko, Dmitry Frolov, Mariam Ismailova, Sophia Ismailova, Marianna Kruchinski, Anna Naumova, Kirill Rozhentsov, and Margarita Sokolovskaya.

You can reach us at info@mieff.com

“Year by Year” Featured in Sukhdev Sandhu’s Top 10 Books at Light Industry

Bookshop.org
Light Industry
https://bookshop.org/lists/top-10-sukhdev-sandhu

We invited a few friends to choose ten titles from Light Industry’s bookshop, a selection of their personal favorites.

Sukhdev Sandhu directs the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture at New York University and runs the Texte und Töne publishing imprint

A Postilion Struck by Lightening – Dirk Bogarde

The Art of Smallfilms: The Work of Olver Postgate and Peter Firmin – Richard Embray (Editor)  Jonny Truck (Editor)  Stewart Lee (Introduction by)

Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad

Cinema Eden: Essays from the Muslim Mediterranean – Juan Goytisolo (Author)

M/W: An Essay on Jean Eustache’s La Maman Et La Putain – Matt Longabucco

Year by Year Poems – Lynne Sachs

Montage: Life, Politics, and Cinema – Mrinal Sen

Scandinavian Blue: The Erotic Cinema of Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s – Jack Stevenson