Experimental Film Society (EFS), in partnership with Filmbase, Dublin, will be presenting a day of contemporary experimental cinema from around the world culminating in the Irish premiere of James Fotopoulos’ feature Dignity (2012).
The work selected for these three programmes is drawn from individuals and collectives that share an affinity with EFS. This affinity might be one of artistic vision, the shared (but varied) belief in a cinema that is personal, free and formally experimental. Or the affinity might be in a similar sense of collectivity, as with the five films proposed by the Latin American experimental film collective Hambre: Casa Circular, Journey To A Land Otherwise Known, Being Cat, Abismo and Waves. The filmmakers might be inspiring figures who have long held a place in our consciousness like Fotopoulos or the Buharov Brothers. Or they might be bright lights that have emerged further along the trail. But in all cases, this work vividly demonstrates the extraordinary richness of possibility that exists in truly alternative cinema today.
This programme is selected by Rouzbeh Rashidi and Maximilian Le Cain. Films from Hambre are curated by Sebastian Wiedemann. Sincere thanks to all participating artists.
Saturday January 23rd 2016
Tickets available at the door: €7 per programme or €10 for a day pass to all three programmes.
Filmbase, Curved Street , Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
Programme 1 (1pm)
1_Casa Circular (2011) By Daniela Delgado Viteri / Ecuador / 9mins
Strained family relationships in a house without windows.
2_Journey To A Land Otherwise Known (2011) By By Laura Huertas Millan / Colombia-France / 22mins
Shot in Lille´s tropical greenhouse, Journey to a Land Otherwise Known is based on the first accounts made in America by European scientists, conquistadors or missionaries. As a pastiche of an ethnographic film, it evokes the moment of the first contact and the survival of the exotic imagery that it engendered
3_Being Cat (2014) By Sebastian Wiedemann / Colombia-Brazil-France-Japan / 19mins
“Sometimes, what is in me is not me. What is it?” Becoming, beings-in-flux, inviting the image to dance somewhere between Butoh and the world.
4_Abismo (2012) By Sebastian Wiedemann / Colombia-Brazil / 3:30mins
Drop drop into the abyss …
5_Waves (2015) By Sebastian Wiedemann / Colombia-Brazil / 10mins
In becoming waves or how to be worthy of the sea.
6_Trois Sapates (2014) By Florian Maricourt / France / 10mins
Trois Sapates, which is exactly 10 minutes in length, was made as a part of Experimental Film Society’s The Last of Deductive Frames project. It was shot using an early digital camera, at low resolution. Sapate No. 1 is a gift to EMP, No. 2 to ELM, TD & L, & No. 3 to SLB.
Total: 74Mins
Programme 2 (3pm)
1_Hotel Tubu (2002) By Igor and Ivan Buharov / Hungary / 6mins
What made the cosmos workers?
2_ Oneheadword Protection (2006) By Igor and Ivan Buharov / Hungary / 7mins
“We will activate an immense force of destruction, and therefore I want to ask everybody to release in themselves the purest intentions possible.”
3_Mothmilk (2009) By Igor and Ivan Buharov / Hungary / 8mins
And everything could change: silence is nothing more than a revulsion of speaking out; in the freedom of speech lurks the darkest formation of human confinement.
4_ Been waiting for you so long (2012) By Claudia Siefen / Austria / 3mins
The moment of lifting an apron promises tension. In many cases, the Protagonist is left alone and is waiting for something or someone. That can be danger or a threat, pleasure or tenderness. Scenes in which aprons are used for gestural expressions connect— some of them are doubled, and/or change speed for an easier analysis. The closer the better.
5_Spoor (2015) By Natasha Bourke / Ireland / 16mins
The work incorporates analogue and digital AV media, private archival material and found/resourced objects. Using irony and pathos, it explores the past, perception, distance and connection whilst contemplating more universal themes of transience, repetition, spectatorship/film, identity, legacy, memory and myth.
6_ Merlin The Sorcerer (2015) By Jorge Nuñez / Spain / 31mins
Merlin is a sorcerer who lives in a cabin in the woods. He is dressed in a hooded robe. He has a long white beard and a magic wooden stick… He likes to become a bird and fly through the trees… Get ready for infinite spells!
Total: 71mins
Programme 3 (5pm)
Dignity (2013) By James Fotopoulos / USA / 82 min
“There is a strong case to be made that James Fotopoulos is the greatest experimental filmmaker of his generation… Adopting the basic premise and iconography of a science fiction story, Dignity feels on some level like a solemn game of science fiction that children might indulge in having been exposed to a particularly disturbing film of that genre. The most troubling elements are heightened. Narrative pace is suspended to emphasise a fixation on certain unsettling aspects of the story, which have become abstracted… The film builds to a hallucinatory peak of decidedly non-seamless, bargain-basement transcendence.” (EFS Publications) Features a soundtrack by Nate Archer and Thurston Moore.
