or-bits.com is pleased to announce the launch of the new online exhibition Accordance, featuring works by
Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Renee Carmichael, Constant Dullaart, Lucy Pawlak, Ashok Sukumaran, Julia Tcharfas, Ben Vickers , and guest bloggers Sarah Jury and Le Petit Neant.

In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automated teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. The system hardware, the mainframe sitting in a locked room in some distant city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed. A deranged person was escorted from the bank by two armed guards. The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. But we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies. Don DeLillo, White Noise, 1985. New York: Viking Press; p.46 >

Accordance is part of the collaborative exhibition project (On) Accordancewith Grand Union project space in Birmingham.

At Grand Union a gallery exhibition features offline versions of five artworks presented in previous or-bits.com online programmes that have been selected by Grand Union curators in response to the Accordance editorial, featuring works by Irini Karayannopoulou / M+M /Rosa Menkman / Damien Roach / Richard Sides

Gallery exhibition launched on Friday 30 November and continues to 19 January 2013.

Very sad news. Through the Lighthouse blog we've learned of the passing today of British experimental filmmaker Jeff Keen, who had been battling with cancer for several years. This interview was shot at Keen's home in Brighton in 2008, for the BFI's DVD and blu-ray editions of his films.

The 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival is proud to announce this year's award winning films as chosen the jury: Michael Robinson, Kathy Geritz and Peter Rose.

Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival: Lack of Evidence (Manque de Preuves) by Hayoun Kwon

The Stan Brakhage Film at Wit's End Award: Voluptuous Sleep by Betzy Bromberg

Lawrence Kasdan Award for Best Narrative Film: Palaces of Pity by Daniel Schmidt & Gabriel Abrantes

Michael Moore Award for Best Documentary Film: Guañape Sur by János Richter

Award for Best International Film: Untitled by Neil Beloufa

Peter Wilde Award for Most Technically Innovative Film: Vexed by Telcosystems

FILM Award for Best LGBT Film: The Evil Eyes by Bobby Abate

Award for Best Sound Design: Remote by Jesse McLean

Kodak/Colorlab Award for Best Cinematography: Undergrowth by Robert Todd and  Within by Robert Todd

The No Violence Award: If the War Continues by Jonathan Schwartz

Gus Van Sant Award for Best Experimental Film: Sounding Glass by Sylvia Schedelbauer

Chris Frayne Award for Best Animated Film: It's such a beautiful day by Don Hertzfeldt and Traces by Scott Stark

The Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for Emerging Experimental Video Artist: Ceibas: The Epilogue - The Well of Representation by Evan Meaney

Prix DeVarti for Funniest Film: Walt Disney's 'Taxi Driver' by Bryan Boyce, Shadow Cuts by Martin Arnold and Pluto Declaration by Travis Wilkerson

Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker: The Strawberry Tree by Simone Rapisarda Casanova

George Manupelli Founder's Spirit Award: By Foot-Candle Light by Mary Helena Clark

Art & Science Award: 20Hz by Semiconductor

The Eileen Maitland Award: Irma by Charles Fairbanks

Award for Best Music Video: Go Outside by Cults by Isaiah Seret

Jury awards:

- As Above, So Below by Sarah J. Christman
- Tin Pressed by Dani Leventhal
- Curious Light by Charlotte Pryce
- Landfill 16 by Jennifer Reeves
- August Song by Jodie Mack, Emily Kuehn
- A Lax Riddle Unit by Laida Lertxundi
- Quest (Cautare) by Ionut Piturescu
- The House (Das Haus) by David Buob
- Envelop by Julianna Barwick by Cam Archer

The 11th edition of the Courtisane Festival for film, video and media art closed on Sunday 25 March 2012. 

At the award ceremony, the festival jury − Gabriel Abrantes (PT/US, filmmaker and artist), Marina Gioti (GR, filmmaker and artist) en Jeremy Rigsby (CA, programme director Media City Film Festival - Canada) − announced the winner of the film competition and two special mentions. Directly afterwards the winning works were shown again. 

The prize was awarded to filmmaker Nicolas Pereda for Entrevista con la Tierra (MEX, 2010). 

Ambivalently fiction and documentary, Entrevista con la Tierra traces the reverberant silhouette of absence: a child has died, leaving family, friends, and community to grasp at shadows, pursue solace through ritual, pretend nothing happened. Into this void, director Nicolas Pereda probes with questions and camera, enacting a search for reconciliation that speaks to a modern, autochthonous child. 

De jury over Entrevista con la Tierra 

We decided to choose this film for its proposal, which is prevalent in the entirety of the filmmakers work, which seeks to reinvigorate a social function in filmmaking, in art. It seeks to use fiction, documentary to build and support a small and geographically condensed group of people, exploring a mixture of their quotidian lives, their past myths and the fictions of their future, this is filmmaking that seeks out and manifests the need and actual use of culture, to link a group of people together in the pursuit of a future together. 

Special mentions: 

- Agatha by Beatrice Gibson (UK, 2012) 

Beatrice Gibson’s latest film Agatha is a psychosexual sci-fi about a planet without speech. Its narrator, ambiguous in gender and function, weaves us slowly through a mental and physical landscape, observing and chronicling a space beyond words. Based on a dream had by the radical British composer Cornelius Cardew.

- I Will Forget This Day by Alina Rudnitskaya (RU, 2011) 

“Filmed in Grisaille with a sober eye, Alina Rudnitskaya’s I Will Forget This Day is a wrenching portrait of waiting young women, whose decisions are not always willfully made”. (Andréa Picard)