Events

  • Parakino: February-March screenings

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    Modern Post Mortem
    24 January 2009, At 6 PM
    Centre for Contemporary Art Laznia
    Jaskolcza 1
    PL80-767 Gdansk

    Although modernism has come to an end, modernist thought is still alive. The idea of changing the world and bringing new order is prevailing and subject to numerous transmutations. So is socialism, which keeps changing and seeking to put revolutionary ideas into practice. In a film, Brzezinski wish to juxtapose Soviet socialism with an intellectual and sophisticated French socialism, as well as, with Polish social reality. As a result, the film s recipients will be able to transfer certain values and mental situations from one area to another. Images taken from the home archive of people belonging to post-punk culture were here put side by side with the pictures showing the dark side of living in a post-soviet reality and D. Vertov s film Enthusiasm: Donbass Symphony. Moreover, the film The Society of the Spectacle was re-edited to fit G. Debord s text. Apparently then, the work becomes a recycling of culture and memory enriched with abstract elements, closed-eye visions and the aesthetics of video images.

    The technique of digital electronics was used in the film completion. However, it only simulates other media and employs temporal aspects of time during which the film was made. Hence, it seems to be a perfect medium for a found footage mystification. My approach to the simulation of other media effects is a flexible one. Occasionally, I tend to cause a disturbance by distorting video and marking it with the traits of film images, or vice versa. It is then an innocent play with the role of propaganda films, even those from the home archive.

    Each and every medium is, after all, ideologically marked.

     

    Thorsten Fleisch
    6 February 2009, At 6 PM
    Centre for Contemporary Art Laznia
    Jaskolcza 1
    PL80-767 Gdansk

    Thorsten Fleisch, German artist, winner of many prestigious awards visits Parakino. His works have become a constant show at film festivals. His films examine the relationship with great sensitivity and awareness of historical context. His films are also a full sense of the word experiment and the artist becomes a researcher looking for new ways to view the new images, new contexts.

    Landscape Film
    20 February 2009, At 6 PM
    Centre for Contemporary Art Laznia
    Jaskolcza 1
    PL80-767 Gdansk

    Landscape film is a trend of the British film avant-garde. It refers to the structural focus on the nature of the medium (the characteristic feature of cinematic representation), with the emphasis on its illusionary character, easily recognisable thanks to the references to the history of art and art-historical category of the landscape. The essential artists of landscape film were Chris Welsby and William Raban. As representative examples, A.L. Rees lists Park Film (1972) and Streamline (1976) of Chris Welsby, River Ya (1972) of William Raban and Welsby. Dagmara Rode s presentation includes posterior works of the artists.

    Ryszard W. Kluszczynski
    14 March 2009, At 6 PM
    Centre for Contemporary Art Laznia
    Jaskolcza 1
    PL80-767 Gdansk

    PIONEERS OF VIDEO ART: WOODY AND STEINA VASULKA
    Professor Ryszard W. Kluszczynski s presentation provides an occasion to look at the art of the classics of the genre systematically and methodologically. Using their art as example, the lecturer will introduce his original topology of video art. Woody and Steina Vasulka is an artist couple who exerted an enormous impact on the development of video art, playing an exceptional role in the field. Active since the 1960s, they created video tapes, installations and performance. They founded The Kitchen  the famous New York-based alternative organisation. Together with Gene Youngblood and Peter Weibel, they shaped the ideas of media art. They contributed especially to the development of video which used devices processing and generating electronic signals. Still active today, they combine artistic creation and educational and curatorial activity.

    Krzysztof Jurecki: The Significance Of Mechanical Reproduction
    20 March 2009, At 6 PM
    Centre for Contemporary Art Laznia
    Jaskolcza 1
    PL80-767 Gdansk

    A presentation of the book of Krzysztof Jurecki. It contains twenty conversations about photography, performance, video and painting, carried with both renowned as well as less known artists of considerable artistic potential. The interviews are categorised into groups. The first one are conversations with the artists of the neo-avant-garde and Kultura Zrzuty (Andrzej Rózycki, Andrzej Kwietniewski of Lódz Kaliska art group, Zbigniew Libera and Grzegorz Zygier), who sometimes distance themselves from the mainstream (Rózycki). The next group are women artists with feminist viewpoint: Ewa Swidzinska and Magdalena Samborska. Joanna Zastrózna, Magda Hueckel and Sylwia Kowalczyk represent ideologies of different kind, even if being close to feminism. The dominant of the book is located in the third cluster of interviews, devoted to the topic of the sacred, the religiousness or the lack of it, search for spirituality in the Christian aspect (Zbigniew Treppa, Jan G. Issaieff, Basia Sokolowska), in the aspect of the Far East (Andrzej Dudek-Dürer, Katarzyna Majak), in the aspect of shamanism (Marek Rogulski) or video technology (Michal Brzezinski). The last group is represented by the artists true to photography, though of differing origin, like: photography teacher Waldemar Jama, pictorialist and portraitist Marek Gardulski, Wojciech Zawadzki  one of the founder of the programme of elementary photography and Jelenia Góra school of photography and Ireneusz Zjezdzalka  representative of the new documentary .

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  • LAFF: Festival of (In)appropriation 2009

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    *Los Angeles Filmforum* invites film and videomakers to take part in the *2009 FESTIVAL OF (IN)APPROPRIATION*.

    *WHO*: All film and videomakers
    *WHAT*: Call for entries for the Festival of (In)appropriation
    *WHEN*: Entries must be received by April 1, 2009.
    *WHERE*: Send submissions to Jaimie Baron, 10480 National Blvd. #308, Los Angeles, CA 90034
    *PRESENTED BY*:  Los Angeles Filmforum

    Whether you call it collage, compilation, found footage, detournement, or recycled cinema, the incorporation of previously shot materials into new artworks is a practice that has generated novel juxtapositions of elements which have produced new meanings and ideas that may not have been intended by the original makers, that are, in other words "inappropriate." This act of appropriation may produce revelation that leads viewers to reconsider the relationship between past and present, here and there, intention and subversion. Fortunately for our purposes, the past decade has seen the emergence of a wealth of new sources for audiovisual materials that can be appropriated into new works. In addition to official state and commercial archives, vernacular archives, home movie collections, and digital archives have provided fascinating source material that may be  repurposed in such a way as to give it new meanings and resonances.

    Thus, Los Angeles Filmforum invites submissions for a Festival of (In)appropriation, open to all works that appropriate film or video footage and repurpose it in "inappropriate" ways. We will consider both films and videos, including works that are made up entirely of found footage and those that only use small segments of appropriated material. Particular consideration will be given to films that repurpose materials in an inventive way and to films that are under twenty minutes long. We will only accept work finished in 2006 or later.

    The Festival of (In)appropriation will take place in June 2009.
    Curated by Jaimie Baron and Andrew Hall

    Guidelines:
    •    Submission deadline: April 1, 2009
    •    Please send all submissions in DVD format to: Jaimie Baron, 10480
    National Blvd. #308, Los Angeles, CA 90034
    •    Submissions must be 20 minutes or less and must contain some form of "(in)appropriation."
    •    Acceptable submission formats: DVD and VHS
    •    Acceptable exhibition formats: mini-DV, DV-Cam, 16mm film, 35mm film, DVD (but discouraged, since DVD is not a reliable projection medium).
    •    Please include: title, filmmaker, running time, a 30-word or less synopsis, and contact information (phone and email).
    •    No submission fee, but please send only good films ☺

    Los Angeles Filmforum is the city's longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film and video art, documentaries, and experimental animation.

    For more information, please go to: http://lafilmforum.wordpress.com/

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  • Experimental Film Club: T , O , U , C , H , I , N , G

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    T ,O , U , C , H , I , N , G
    The Architectures Of Perception

    Cinematic enchainment & sentient machines
    Invited artist Maximilian Le Cain

    Sunday 25th January
    4pm / Doors: 5 Euro
    Ha'penny Bridge Inn (upstairs)
    Dublin

    This month’s programme looks at plastic, quasi-sculptural aspects of cinema as present in a series of correlated explorations of light, space and repetition. The starting point in selecting these films was Making a Home (2007), a video work by Cork-based artist Maximilian Le Cain, who also collaborated in curating this programme. The other films were selected for the various ways in which they resonate with and expand certain features present in Making a Home. In general terms, the films we are presenting (dis)articulate the structures of architecture, in the broadest and most perceptual sense of the word- space as it is objectively constructed (or dismantled), but also as it is experienced by the camera eye, by fictional characters and by the audience. Whilst each of the four films puts a different emphasis on one or more of these three centres of attention, they have in common that their drama is an individual subject’s direct perceptual experience of light, time and space, occurring at the extreme limits of his or her senses.

    - Making A Home (Maximilian Le Cain, Ireland, 2007, Video,  color, sound, 10 mins)
    - Leo es pardo (Iván Zulueta, Spain, 1976, 16mm on DVD, 12mins)
    - Chromo Sud (Etienne O'Leary, France, 1968, 16mm on DVD, 21 mins)
    - T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (Paul Sharits, USA, 1968, 16mm, 12 mins)

    See the full programm here.

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  • Benning & Rivers in Punto de Vista 09

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    RR (James Benning, 2007)The 2009 edition of the documentary film festival Pnnto de Vista (Pamplona, Spain), to be held next February 13-21, will feature a near-complete retrospective of the film career of James Benning, ranging from his works of the seventies to his latest films RR and Casting a Glance, both of which won the latest LAFCA award. The presence of the filmmaker has benn already confirmed.

    Another prominent protagonist in this edition will be british filmmaker Ben Rivers, who will screen a selection of his most relevant films, including This is my land, House, The Coming Race and Ah, Liberty!.Rivers received recntly the award to the best short film at the Rotterdam Film Festival for Ah, Liberty!. The festival will include a programme called La segunda vida de las imágenes ('The second life of images') featuring found-footage films ranging from classics by Joseph Cornell and Ken Jacobs to recent works by Alan Berliner, Félix Viscarret or Jesús Pérez Miranda.

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  • Essential Visual Music: Rare Classics

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    UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Center for Visual Music (CVM) are pleased to present a new program of rarely screened films from the CVM collection, at The Billy Wilder Theatre at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles on January 21, 2009. This evening features a range of works, from experiments by German film pioneers to light show psychedelia, and highlights the evolving technology and artistic sophistication of visual music and experimental animation. This new program curated by CVM includes little-seen films by Oskar Fischinger, Jules Engel, Charles Dockum, Mary Ellen Bute, John Stehura, David Lebrun, and Sixties Light Show films by Jud Yalkut/USCO and The Single Wing Turquoise Bird.

    Several of the works in the show were designed to be used in performance contexts, light shows and other expanded forms of cinema, often with independent musical accompaniment, such as the 35mm ‘recreation’ film of Oskar Fischinger’s multiple-projector film performances from the mid-1920s. Accordingly, one of the themes that
    emerges from this program is a dialogue between structure and spontaneity in visual music. A number of the films were made in Southern California, including early experiments in computer graphics from UCLA in the 1960s and Cal Arts in the 1970s. Many of the prints in this show represent recent preservation work by CVM.

    The program will be presented by archivist/curator Cindy Keefer, and a Q&A will follow the screening with filmmakers Michael Scroggins, David Lebrun and Peter Mays.

    Funding for the preservation of many of the films was provided, in part, by the National Film Preservation Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Jules Engel Preservation Project, Deutsches Filmmuseum and private donors. Mood Contrasts screened courtesy Cecile Starr.
    The Billy Wilder Theatre is on the Courtyard Level, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024. 310-206-8013. UCLA Film & TV Archive website: www.cinema.ucla.edu/calendar/calendar.aspx
    FREE admission. 16mm/35mm. 7:30 pm show.
    NOTE: As admission is free, UCLA does not offer advance reserved seating through their website.
    Parking is available in the Hammer Museum structure, enter on Westwood Blvd.

    Title list and film notes are at CVM’s website at:
    http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/VMEssenClassics.htm
    and on UCLA’s Calendar page

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  • Italian Experimental Cinema V 1 '08

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    Le Farfalle (Anonymous, 1907)Next week will see the first edition of the Italian Experimental Cinema festival, featuring the work of over 40 artists through several screenings, graphic works, photos and multimedia installations.

    The event, subtitled "From the origins of Futurism to the new millenium" will feature works from the begginings of last century, including predecessors and derivatives of the Futurist movement such as Le Farfalle (anonymous, 107) or Rapsodia Satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1914) to brad retrospectibves of filmmakers such as Cioni Carpi, Bruno Munari & Marcello Piccardo, Andrea Flamini and Nato Frascà and several themed programmes. The festival programme has been curated by Piero Pala.

    The festival will be held from the 10th to the 14th December 2008 at the Embassy of France (Palazzo Farnese, Rome) and at the Nuovo Cinema Aquila (Via L’Aquila 68, Rome).

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  • no-w-here: Ben Russell screening / workshop

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    Ben Russell - Black and White Trypps Number Three (2007)no.w.here present a screening and workshop with Chicago based artist Ben Russell . Russell  is an itenerant experimental filmmaker and curator who has shown his work at venues and  festivals all over the world. His films range from rigorous experimental enthnographies  to investigations into the phenomenological potential of cinema.

    2 December 2008, 7pm:
    Screening: Ben Russell's Trypps Trypps Trypps Trypps Trypps

    3 December 2008, 10.30am–4.30pm
    Workshop: Film / Phenomenology With Ben Russell

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  • Kill your timid notion on tour

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    KYTN tour 2008The 'Kill your timid notion' Festival has announced a tour through the United Kingdom. The tour will offer a selection of the best of past editions, along with live perfromances and expanded cinema, visiting three cities: London (29,30 Nov), Bristol (2-4 Dec) and Gllasgow (6,7 Dec).

    The tour includes a performance programme by artists Ken Jacobs, La Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine, Kjell Bjørgeengen, Keith Rowe and Philipp Wachsmann, Andrew Lampert, Bruce McClure, Paul Sharits and Greg Pope; and several film programmes , with films by Hollis Frampton, Ben Rivers, Walter Ruttman, Guy Sherwin, John Smith, Peter Rose, Pip Chodorov, Paul Sharits.

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  • Jonas Mekas: New Work at Maya Stendhal Gallery

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    Jonas
    Mekas: New Work     Opens at Maya Stendhal Gallery

    November 13, 2008 – February 21, 2009
    Opening Reception: Thursday, November 13, 6 – 9 pm

    Maya Stendhal Gallery is delighted to announce Jonas
    Mekas: New Work    , which will be on view from November 13,
    2008 through February 21, 2009. The exhibition will present the world
    premiere of Jonas Mekas’ latest 4-monitor video installation entitled
    Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR (2008).
    Also on view for the first time will be new works from the artist’s
    dynamic collection of 40 film stills series.

    Forces of time, memory, change, and human will collide in Mekas’
    compelling work Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR
    (2008). The work’s title refers to the historical time when the
    world watched as Mekas’ home country of Lithuania fought for independence
    from the stronghold of Soviet rule. Comprised of 4 parts with a total
    running time of 4 hours and 46 minutes, it will be presented in a 4-monitor
    video installation format offering a chronological overview of Lithuania’s
    birth as an independent nation. With a video camera, Mekas recorded newscasts
    that played daily in 1991 on his television set at home. Footage includes
    reports of the Soviet Union’s use of “aggressive actions”
    that called for Lithuanian back down, freedom demonstrations, interviews
    and statements made by top politicians, journalists, and analysts that
    include Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis,
    Deputy Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene,
    Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian President
    Boris Yeltsin    , United States President George H.W. Bush
    among others, as well as moving portraits of the Lithuanian people who
    were directly affected by the conflict. Mekas’ account, reported
    by news outlets in the United States, also reveals the shaping and shifting
    of political, economic, and social relations between the Eastern Europe
    and the West at the time.

    “The video is made up of footage that I took with my Sony from the
    television newscasts during the collapse of the USSR, with the home noises
    in the background. It’s a capsule of record of what happened and
    how it happened during that crucial period as recorded by the television
    newscasters. It can be viewed as a classic Greek drama in which the destinies
    of nations are changed drastically by the unbending, bordering on irrational
    will of one single man (Vytautas Landsbergis), one small nation determined
    to regain its freedom, backed by its fight against the Might & Power,
    against the Impossible.”
    Jonas Mekas

    The 1960s witnessed the breakdown of art’s time worn paradigms as
    artists exchanged ideas through activities that permeated medium specific
    boundaries, the white box galleries and museums, and hierarchies that
    delineated high and low. Mekas, a programmer, archivist,
    fundraiser    , theoretician, and all around proselytizer
    for the moving image, encapsulated this revolutionary spirit in his films
    from the era, which include portraits of Fluxus and its
    founder George Maciunas along with members Nam
    June Paik    , Yoko Ono, Shigeko Kubota,
    and Jackson Mac Low. The currents felt during this decade
    resonate in Collection of 40 Film Stills from
    Zefiro Torna or Scenes of the Life of George Maciunas     (2007),
    which chronicles the life of Fluxus impresario George Maciunas
    and his friends. Similarly, Collection of 40 Film Stills:
    Velvet Underground     (2008) draws from the only recorded footage
    of the Velvet Underground’s first public appearance at the Psychiatrists
    Convention from January 14, 1966. A psychedelic montage of music, color,
    and dance, this group includes appearances by 1960’s pop culture
    icons Lou Reed, Nico, Eddie
    Sedgwick    , and Andy Warhol. Collection
    of 40 Film Stills from Birth of a Nation     (2008) imparts
    a telling portrait of the enigmatic characters and diverse impulses comprising
    the underground film community. Included are images of Stan Brakhage,
    Peter Kubelka, Harry Smith, Shirley
    Clark    , Peter Bogdanovich, Ken Jacobs,
    Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, and others.

    “There are no rules written on the sky…I can show
    my films on the screen, I can cut them into pieces and show them as objects
    or multi-media installations.”

    Two new works also on view illustrate Mekas’ unique sensibility
    to the beauty, poeticism, and meaning of his subject matter, whether he
    is observing epic events and pop culture icons, or life’s everyday
    occurrences. Collection of 40 Film Stills from Mozart &
    Wein     (2008) gives a riveting account of Elvis Presley’s
    last concert in New York on June 9, 1972. A tableaux of flickering lights,
    movement, and mesmeric color, images portray a white jumpsuit clad Elvis
    at the peak of his now legendary performance. Whether addressing film,
    art, or life, the manifesto has always been a crucial aspect of Mekas’
    practice. Collection of 40 Film Stills: Summer Haiku: A Manifesto
    (2008) began as a project for Serpentine Gallery’s
    Manifesto Marathon 2008, a futurological congress
    in which leading artists, architects, writers, philosophers, politicians
    presented manifestos for the 21st century. For his presentation, Mekas
    unveiled images captured from his vast archival footage, which convey
    his philosophical views on nature, illuminating nature’s beauty
    and fragility.

    The hallmark feature of Mekas’ captivating film still collections
    underscore his ability to transcend mediums, and at the same time, illustrate
    his willingness to reevaluate past methods to test the boundaries of artistic
    practice. They compliment the ephemeral nature of his films, bringing
    subjects and events to a stand still and memorializing them forever. This
    dissection of the medium is truly avant-garde - it refuses to obey the
    conventions of the medium and reveals and examines the very nature of
    the medium itself.

    All Collections of 40 Film Stills are produced in edition of 3 with 1
    artist proof, and printed in cibachrome measuring 20” x 16”
    (50.8 x 40.64) each. The film stills are signed individually in verso
    by Jonas Mekas, and a certificate of authenticity also signed by the artist
    and Maya Stendhal Gallery accompanies each collection.

    The exhibition at Maya Stendhal Gallery coincides with a major career
    retrospective on Jonas Mekas, which will be held at Museum Ludwig,
    Cologne, Germany from November 8, 2008 to March 1, 2009. Through personal
    archives in the form of documents, photographs, catalogues, texts, and
    film posters, the presentation will survey important periods of the artist’s
    life and career including New American Cinema, Film-maker’s
    Cinematheque    , Film Culture, and Anthology
    Film Archives    . Also on view will be Mekas’ classic films
    in combination with his most recent work, notably 365 Project
    and Collection of 40 Film Stills: Summer Haiku: A Manifesto.
    Jonas Mekas will have a second major exhibition at Serpentine Gallery,
    London in 2010.

    For further information please contact:
    Maya Stendhal Gallery | 545 West 20th St. | New York, NY 10011
    T 212.366.1549 | F 347.287.6775 | email [email protected]
    www.mayastendhalgallery.com
    | www.jonasmekas.com
    | www.paulascher.com

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