Quote:
“Legendary avant-garde filmmaker and visual artist James Benning returns to the Festival with L. COHEN, one of the year’s most awe-inspiring and transcendent experiences. Benning has described the landscape as ‘a function of time’ and this film elegantly invites us to savour the relationship. Shot in a barren Oregon field, the film’s fixed camera presents us with the deceptively simple: canary-coloured jerry can, twin tires, some rusty barrels, abandoned agricultural machinery, a plain of green grass and overgrown hay, and faint, portentous details in the distance.Read More »
Experimental
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James Benning – L. Cohen (2018)
USA2011-2020DocumentaryExperimentalJames Benning -
Harun Farocki – Zum Vergleich AKA In Comparison (2009)
Documentary2001-2010AustriaExperimentalHarun FarockiQuote:
Bricks are manufacured in Africa, India and Europe and used to erect clinics, children’s homes, schools and residential buildings. Harun Farocki observed the different steps of the manufacturing process. Bricks are cast, fired or pressed by hands, machines or robots. Depending on the country of production, this involves a single worker or a large group. The film’s title communicates a decisive aspect: Farocki merely offers material to the viewer, who has to draw the actual comparisons between traditional, early industrial, and fully industrialized societies himself. Read More » -
Nathaniel Dorsky – Threnody (2004)
2001-2010ExperimentalNathaniel DorskyUSAThrenody is a somber but luminous progression through a delicate articulation of earthly phenomena… an offering to a friend who died. It is the second of two devotional songs, the first being The Visitation. These two films were preceeded by a series of Four Cinematic Songs: Triste, Variations, Arbor Vitae, and Love’s Refrain.Read More »
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Stephen Dwoskin – Dirty (1971)
1971-1980ExperimentalShort FilmStephen DwoskinUnited KingdomQuote:
DIRTY is the reincarnation of two girls, a bottle and one bed. Their bodies, hands and face expressions reach out in a refilm look.Read More » -
Chris Marker – Trois Vidéos Haïkus AKA Three Video Haikus (1994)
1991-2000ArthouseChris MarkerExperimentalFranceA collection of three short ‘haiku videos’ by Chris Marker.
The first haiku, ‘Yanka / Tchaika’, shows the river Seine passing under a bridge. A bird in flight stays motionless in the air.
The second haiku, ‘Owl Gets in Your Eyes’, shows Catherine Belkhodja smoking a cigarette while a superimposed shot of an owl in flight fades in and out over her face.Read More »
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Yvonne Rainer – Lives of Performers (1972)
1971-1980ExperimentalPerformanceUSAYvonne RainerA stark and revealing examination of romantic alliances, Lives Of Performers examines the dilemma of a man who can’t choose between two women and makes them both suffer. Originally part of a dance performance choreographed by Rainer.
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Alejandro Fadel – El Amor – primera parte aka Love – Part one (2004)
2001-2010Alejandro FadelArgentinaComedyExperimentalA fresh, likeable comedy about the beginning, middle and end of a romance, “Love (Part One)” is a charming piece of froth that should hit the mark with young audiences who will see themselves reflected in the 25-year-olds’ pains. The rare indie made without state subsidies, its anti-auteur stance makes sense, though viewers over 30 are likely to find the concept too cute for its own good….Read More »
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Harun Farocki – Ein Tag im Leben der Endverbraucher AKA A Day in the Life of a Consumer (1993)
1991-2000ExperimentalGermanyHarun FarockiVideo ArtQuote:
Harun Farocki plunders 40 years of advertising films, which he orchestrates to constitute an ironic 24 hours in the life of typical consumers. Mixing different colours, periods, various “ideologies of well being” to hold up a mirror up to our times, values, worries, hopes.This collage of “beautiful images”, gleeful and chaotic, deconstructs not only the domestic reference points which punctuate our daily life, but also gives full rein to an off-beat humour in the tradition of Brechtian distanciation.
(Andrei Ujica)Read More » -
Patrick Bokanowski – Battements solaires (2008)
2001-2010ExperimentalFrancePatrick BokanowskiShort FilmQuote:
Walking towards the fire. In a ceaseless stream of light, people, landscapes and objects lead us to mysterious regions. French filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski’s work is hard to classify – and all the richer for it. Together with his wife Michèle, whose musique concrète compositions form the basis of the sound design, Bokanowski offers a prolonged, dense and visually visceral experience of the kind that is rare in cinema today. Difficult to define and locate, its strangeness is quite unique.Read More »