The 4th edition of (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico, to be held next June 5-8 in A Coruña, Spain, focuses this year on Argentinian experimental cinema: several programmes, curated by Pablo Marín and Magdalena Arau, will center on the history of Argentinian experimental film (Phanton Anthology, featuring the works of Narcisa Hirsch, Horacio Vallereggio, Jorge Honik & Laura Abel or Gabriel Romano); the work of Super8 filmmakers Pablo Mazzolo, Sergio Subero and Pablo Marín; and a selection of amateur and domestic cinema. Claudio Caldini, the legendary S8 filmmaker will be present to introduce a retrospective of his films both in single channel and expanded versions, including his latest works H R Z N T (2011), Fantasmas Cromáticos (2012) and Tamil Nadu View (2010); and also to conduct a workshop on multiple projection and expanded cinema. Fernando Martín Peña and Fabio Manes, directors of the TV programme “Filmoteca, Temas de Cine” will present a selection of rarely-seen films, from early silent movies to the work of the recently deceased filmmaker Leonardo Favio. Last but not least, the section Sinais will focus on the work of Galician artists Lois Patiño and Miguel Mariño.
The 19th edition of veteran film festival Media City begins next week (May 21-25, Windsor, Ontario) with an opening night featuring performances by CCMC (Michael Snow, John Oswald and Al Mattes) and avant-noise band Wolf Eyes. A selection of Super 8 and 16mm films by Saul Levine, who will also be part of the jury, and the Canadian premiere of James Benning's new film Stemple Pass are among its many highlights.
The core of the festival is its competition programme, that in this edition features nearly fifty films and videos by artists such as Bruce McClure, David Gatten, Jeannette Muñoz, Kevin Jerome Everson, Mary Helena Clark, Stephen Connolly, Johann Lurf, Robert Todd and Nick Collins, to name just a few.
Courtisane Festival reaches its 12th edition (April 17-21, Ghent), 12 years of "proposing a counter-geography" of cinema and creating one of the most interesting and devoted festivals in Europe. For this edition the 'Artists in Focus' are documentarian Marcel Ophüls and experimental filmmaker Leslie Thornton, whose Peggy And Fred In Hell (1985-) serves as the main image for the festival. Both artists will be the subject of talks, a workshop and a partial retrospective of their work, together with the recently deceased Stom Sogo.
'Once was Fire' is one of the main events in the festival, offering a selection of films by António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro, Straub & Huillet and specially Greek filmmaker Stavros Tornes. The section 'Artistic research' curated by Alejandro Bachmann & Alexander Horwath presents a 'somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach to the term' through three programmes including films by Dušan Makavejev, Forough Farrokkhzad, Lisl Ponger or Ricky Leacock. Though Courtisane doesn't have a competitive section this year, it continues to offer a selection of recent film and video works grouped in ten programmes with works by Mary Helena Clark, Luke Fowler, Kevin Jerome Everson, Ursula Mayer, Laida Letxundi, Rose Lowder and Peter Todd to name just a few. You can access the festival's catalogue here.
Sonic Acts: The Dark Universe
February 21-24, Amsterdam
The 2013 edition of Sonic Acts, the festival that explores the 'developments at the intersection of art, music and science', begins tomorrow (February 21-24) in Amsterdam. Titled The Dark Universe, this fifteenth edition comes filled with music and expanded cinema performances, including Makino Takashi's latest [2012]3D, William Raban's 1977 performance Wave Formations or Rose Kallal's 16mm abstract work Apeiron. Several screenings and installations include showings of works by Bruce Conner, Peter Tscherkassky, Aldo Tambellini, Joost Rekveld, Jürgen Reble and Nenad Popov & Klara Ravat, among others.
For further details, you can browse the full programme in the Sonic Acts website.
The 9th Berlin International Directors Lounge
the festival for contemporary media and film
February 7 - 17, Naherholung Sternchen, behind the Kino International
U-Schillingstraße, Berolinastr. 7, 10178 Berlin-Mitte
[DL9], the 9th Berlin International Directors Lounge, the annual festival for contemporary media and film, is heading at you, faster than a bullet and with more power to knock you off your feet. Flights of fancy without (more than occasional) flights from sanity - just what the doctor ordered, antidote and overdose rolled into one. Films have come in from all over the globe, all shapes and sizes, to be trussed up into the neatest of packages and their fuses lit for the explosion. And snaking around it all, live music and performance art and a whole lot more. These eleven days dare you to miss them.
The Naherholung Sternchen, in-spot with cult appeal, will once again provide the stage for this melding of flickering visions and formidable visionaries... just behind the near-legendary Kino International near Alexanderplatz, eleven days waiting to shake your world. A truly one-off Berliner film-and-more experience. No sides drawn up - filmmaker and film-goer thrown together. No red carpet, but a yellow brick road into Wonder City.
Nine years can't be wrong. Believing is indeed seeing.
Independent Film Show 2012
Thursday November 8th - Sunday November 11th 2012
Fondazione Morra (palazzo Ruffo di Bagnara, Piazza Dante, 89 - Napoli)
Thursday 8 november at 19:30h
- White film by Inal Sherip - les Frères Lumière Prize set up by European Academy of Arts
- Matthias Müller & Christoph Girardet curated by Matthias Müller
Friday 9 November at 19:30h
- Le premier cercle de Light Cone curated by Emmanuel Lefrant
- Ex-Machina expanded cinema performance by Les Nominoë
Saturday 10 November at 19:30h
- Collection Vivante curated by Emmanuel Lefrant
- Zoo[trope] expanded cinema performance by Les Nominoë
Sunday 11 November at 19:30h
- Cinema Inside Out curated by Karel Doing
- Darkloupe audio-visual performance by Karel Doing & Michal Osows
The inexhaustible passion for film frames and the compositional processes of these minute particles in significant structures unites artists, film/video-makers and musicians, represented in the Independent Film Show 12th edition involved in the materialization of visionary and poetic interactive sensory experiences to suggest and amplify new and unexpected relations.
The first program reveals the incredible creative potential achieved through the selective collecting of images and the brilliant assembly of these immobile and ethereal fragments in imaginative and introspective pathways into the macro cosmos. The films Alpsee (1994) and Phantom (2001), realized by Matthias Müller experimenting with various analogue techniques of filming and composition, illustrate through his distinctive visual vocabulary the transition into childhood, the tensions and moments of calm addressed, and painful educational development. Together with Christoph Girardet, chapters # 4 Why Don’t You Love Me? and # 5 Bedroom of Phoenix Tapes (1999) and the films Locomotive (2008) and Meteor (2011) explore a wide variety of cinematic representations in search of established codes and surprising digressions, reinforcing their creative energy, vitality and emotion.
The 3rd edition of (s8) Mostra de Cine Periférico (May 30-June 3, A Coruña, Spain) continues its annual celebration of 'peripheral cinema' and small gauges. Austrian filmmaker Peter Kubelka will be one of its main protagonists with a screening of his films, the masterclass 'The edible metaphor' and the screening of Martina Kudlácek's documentary film 'Fragments of Kubelka'. The section 'The second life of images' has as its main attraction the programme curated by Gloria Vilches and Elena Duque 'The new monster', dedicated to appropriation and collage film, with individual programmes dedicated to and the presence of Lewis Klahr and Janie Geiser; the manipulated found-footage films of Naomi Uman and the latest creation of Andrés Duque 'Dress rehearsal for Utopia' are the other protagonists of the section. (S8)'s full programme hasn't been disclosed yet.
SF Cinematheque announces Crossroads 2012 May 18–20 at San Francisco's Victoria Theatre. Founded by filmmaker Bruce Baillie in 1961, San Francisco Cinematheque is an internationally recognized arts institution and the Bay Area’s premier venue for avant-garde/experimental, underground and personally expressive film and video work.
Cinematheque is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of film and video works that challenge the boundaries of moving-image art with the goal of making experimental cinema a part of the larger cultural landscape. CROSSROADS is Cinematheque’s annual film festival, a showcase for and celebration of recent and rediscovered avant-garde film/video work. Established in 2010, CROSSROADS is intended as a much-needed Bay Area/West Coast equivalent to such lauded festivals as the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde series and the Toronto International Film Festival’s Wavelengths showcase. CROSSROADS 2012, curated by Cinematheque Artistic Director Steve Polta, is this festival’s third manifestation.
Running May 18–20, CROSSROADS will present a total of 52 films, videos and performance works by 47 filmmakers from around the world screened over 8 feature-length programs. Highlights of this festival include a tribute to Cinematheque founder and experimental-film matriarch Chick Strand (1931–2009); an in-person presentation of the “complete works” of Basque filmmaker Laida Lertxundi (featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial); and a special program—Apparent Motion—celebrating the Art of Live Projection with three film/music collaborative teams: Gerritt Wittmer & Paul Knowles, Kerry Laitala & John Davis, and, from Norway, Greg Pope & John Hegre (Jazkamer).
PLAY Festival 2012. Direct cinema
March 29-31, 22h
La Casa Encendida, Ronda Valencia, 2 28012 Madrid
The PLAY Festival brings together visual artists working directly with the projected image and that transform cinema into a performing art. Sally Golding combines performance with projections over his body creating images of phantasmagoria between science and superstition. Takashi Makino acts as a musician accompanying his own films, stunning abstract landscapes made from a very careful work using high-definition pictures. In Anharmonium a laser beam is reflected in a liquid sensitive to minor variations in sound, and space lights in line with the quadrophonic soundtrack. La Chambre Des Machines incorporates the Intonarumoris, sound machines, invented by the Italian Futurists in the early twentieth century. Sculpture combines electronic music with traditional animation zoetrope, disk-based images that turn on themselves, creating movement. Martha Colburn will project her multiple reels of film and slides and manually animate her drawings with the music of saxophonist Hayden Chisholm and composer Juan Felipe Waller.
Update: Today's session (March 29th) has been cancelled and postponed due to the general strike in Spain.
The veteran Ann Arbor Film Festival reaches its 50th edition (March 27-April 1) and they have set to celebrate it with an impressive programme of over 200 experimental and independent films, artist talks, round tables... Among the many highlights, the special presence of Bruce Baillie, who is the protagonist of a three-programme retrospecive, including the screening of a newly-restored copy of Quick Billy; a programme of LGBT films selected by Barbara Hammer and monographical programmes dedicated to the films of Robert Nelson, Paul Clipson, Omar Amiralay and Phil solomon. This year's jurors, Peter Rose, Michael Robinson and Kathy Geritz will also present a programme of their works (or, in the case of Geritz, a programme curated by her with films screened over the AAFF's 50 years of history). The AAFF as always will also serve as a meeting point with many filmmakers in attendance, including (apart from those rpeviously named) Craig Baldwin, Leighton Pierce, Tomonari Nishikawa, Irina Leimbacher, Scott MacDonald, Mark Toscano and many others.
The AAFF also recently published the fourth volume in its annual compilation series with a selection of films from its 49th edition, available at their store.
Click on the link to see the AAFF's extensive full programme.