D21 Kunstraum Leipzig

Friday 16th December
8.30 pm Poor Man’s Expression
Installation, screening, with 16mm films from the archive of Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst:
Len Lye, Tusalava (1928, GB, 16mm, s/w, LT, 7 min)
Tony and Beverly Conrad, Straight and Narrow (1970, USA, 16mm, s/w, LT, 10 min)
Joyce Wieland, Sailboat (1968, KA, 16mm, Farbe, LT, 3 min)
Bruce Conner, Looking for Mushrooms (1959-67 / 96, USA, 16 mm, Farbe, LT, 14 min)
Followed by a talk between artist Martin Ebner and curator Rike Frank

Saturday 17. December
6pm  Aurélien Froment, two films
The Apse, the Bell and the Antelope (France, 2005, 27’37”)
Le Yoga par l’image (UK, 2011, 16’10”)
+ Q&A with the artist

8pm Emily Wardill, Game Keepers Without Game (UK, 2009, 72’).
+ Q&A with the artist

10pm The Artists Cinema (LUX/The Independent Cinema Office (ICO))
Program (Total running-time: 55’):
- The Anthem, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand, 2006, 5’)
- Ausgeträumt, Deimantas Narkevicius (Lithuania, 2010, 6’)
- The Coat, Keren Cytter (Germany, 2010, 6’)
- The Last Days of British Honduras, Catherine Sullivan with Farhad Shamini (US, 2010, 6’)
- A Love Story, Amar Kanwar (India, 2010, 5’)
- Pulmo Marina, Aurélien Froment (France/US, 2010, 5’)
- This Quality, Rosalind Nashashibi (Egypt, 2010, 5’)
- Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright, Akram Zaatari (Lebanon, 2010, 12’)
- Special Afflictions by Roy Harryhozen, Bonnie Camplin (UK, 2006, 5’)
Q&A with Benjamin Cook, Director of LUX

11.30pm (ca) Ausklang, DJ sosoul (mzin x edit), open bar

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Tickets can be bought at the FIlmgalerie Alpha60 (Karli 30) or at the door
Prices: 1 ticket = 4/3 €, 2 tickets = 6/5 €, Festival = 10/8 €
Discount = Students, Leipzig Pass, Members of Filmgalerie Alpha60
Members of D21 Kunstraum Leipzig admitted for free

Tickets gibt es bei der Filmgalerie Alpha60 oder an der Abendkasse
Preise: 1Ticket = 4/3 €, 2 Tickets = 6/5 €, Festival = 10/8 €
Mitglieder des D21 Kunstraumes erhalten freien Eintritt

Film,

das ist Blut,

das sind Tränen,

Gewalt, Hass,

der Tod

und die Liebe

Tangen

nach

Meyer

nach

Fassbinder

nach

Sirk

“I like to think of my films as the walls to my house.” (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

“If films are walls, what are the windows?” (Emily Wardill)

“[...]the phrase “poor man’s expression” also signifies, for me, an idea for an ongoing development of projects and ideas, a history of minor stories that began for me twenty years ago with the Botschaft collective” (Florian Zeyfang)

“Le Yoga par l’image is mimicking a training situation in which the audience is potentially involved in the physical exercises: “Now stretch your legs, bend your body, etc.” However, you are not in a gymnastic class but a projection room. So something has to be re-adjusted. This creates a dynamic between the audience and the text read by the character on the screen.”( Aurélien Froment)

Reihe Experimentalfilm is pleased to present our issue nr. 39 of your screening series, our second Minifestival and also the end of our 2011 project AVANTGARDE IST KEINE STRÖMUNG II where we presented both feature films such as Film Socialisme, Le Quattro Volta and Trash Humpers, but more importantly the first presentation in Leipzig of a young generation of film makers such as: Andrew Lampert (New York, Laida Lertxundi (Los Angeles), Takashi Makino (Tokyo) and Christian von Borries (Berlin) which have all been presenting new works.

Reihe Experimentalfilm is a project that wanders between conventional cinema space, via more unusual spaces such as out-door cinema to installation and performance-based projects and screenings in the proximity of D21’s white cube in Leipzig. To round up 2011 and our project AVANTGARDE IST KEINE STRÖMUNG II we have invited the two curators Rike Frank (Berlin/Leipzig) of Studio International and Benjamin Cook (London) of LUX to put together one program each- additionally the artists Aurélien Froment (Dublin) and Emily Wardill (London) have been invited for solo presentations.

Rike Frank suggested a collaboration with Martin Ebner (Berlin) and Florian Zeyfang (Berlin/Umeå) titled Poor Man’s Expression – Ornamentals and Accidentals which comprise of a workshop open for public upon reservation at Studio International (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst) and a screening in D21, using experimental film from the past and present combined with the light and special context in the space.

Poor Man’s Expression… is an ongoing investigation into Technology, Experimental Film and Conceptual Art by Ebner and Zeyfang which visits the notion of minor history and self organization in art.

On friday, as a part of a evening that includes relating to the existing possiblities within the space of D21 – there will also be a rare chance to see some historical 16mm films from the archive of Arsenal – Institute für Film und Videokunst:

Len Lye, Tusalava, 1928, GB, 16mm, s/w, LT, 7 min
The first film that Len Lye made in England, Tusalava was constructed using around 4400 different drawings, each of which was photographed; a process known as cel animation. Lye rarely used this technique again, marking Tusalava out as unusual in his output.

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Tony and Beverly Conrad, Straight and Narrow, 1970, USA, 16mm, s/w, LT, 10 min

Straight and Narrow expands and extends the flicker phenomena to attack our visual sensibilities and optic nerves.

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Joyce Wieland, Sailboat, 1968, KA, 16mm, Farbe, LT, 3 min

A boat glides along Lake Ontario and the word SAILBOAT is superimposed on the screen.

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Bruce Conner, Looking for Mushrooms, 1959-67 / 96, USA, 16 mm, Farbe, LT, 14 min
An edited-in-the-camera proto-psychedelic romp set to a trippy Terry Riley soundtrack

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Poor Man’s Expression – Ornamentals and Accidentals is a collaboration between Avantgarde ist keine Strömung and Studio International – with the friendly support of Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst in Berlin

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Aurélien Froment will commence a solo presentation and show two of his short-films on Saturday the 17’th. The project Arcosanti is located directly in the centre of a transitional zone, an environmental transition zone, a biotic transition zone according to Roger Tomalty, the protagonist and guide through The Apse, the Bell and the Antelope (France, 2005, 27’37”), a film shot on location in Arizona where architect Paolo Solari’s never ending, ever changing, experimental and urban living project is situated. Le Yoga par l’image (UK, 2011, 16’10”) shows beside some designer chairs; a man reading from a yoga instruction book, a woman exercising the yoga positions described in the book. All in a fairly non-descriptive studio surrounding, a blue-gray background and floor flatly lit from several sides. Le Yoga par l’image is a part of Froment’s new project 9 Intervals – short films that occupies space before the screening of feature films in a cinema context. Froment will be available for a Q&A after the screening.

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The second solo presentation is by Emily Wardill. We will screen her Game Keepers Without Game (UK, 2009, 72’). a feature film drawing on a Spanish play from the baroque period (Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s play La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream)). Objects that does not interact, acting that seems to relate to verfremdungseffekt, opaque language – a fairly sterile environment (toned down contrast and colour, mostly with white or neutral background). Stay (the main human character) has been given up for adoption by her parents for being a violent child, years later she is approached by her father to rejoin the family. Game Keepers… has references to, or traces of, melodrama, structuralist film, conceptual art, concrete poetry, and even performance.

Wardill’s newest film, Full Firearms will have its German premier at the Badischer Kunstverein in Jaunary 2012. Wardill will be present for a Q&A after the screening

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Benjamin Cook of LUX will show a selection from their commissioning program The Artists Cinema, a collaboration with The Independent Cinema Office (ICO). The commissioned films, originally made for 35mm, are shown without announcement just after the commercial break before the feature in commercial cinemas in the UK. Cook will be present for a Q&A after the screening

Program (Total running-time: 55’):

- The Anthem, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand, 2006, 5’)
A lady of age performs a ritual where she is channelling energy to the audience in order to give them a clear mind. The ritual will ensure that after the film ends, life in the outside world will be better.

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- Ausgeträumt, Deimantas Narkevicius (Lithuania, 2010, 6’)
Addressing his fascination for naiveté, Narkevicius documents a small group of young Lithuanian boys who have just started a band, asking them questions about their vision of the future.

—

- The Coat, Keren Cytter (Germany, 2010, 6’)
The Coat depicts a dramatic love triangle between two brothers obsessed with the game of sudoku and a beautiful young woman. This film flirts with the cinematic dream, the idea of seduction and the visual representation of happiness.

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- The Last Days of British Honduras, Catherine Sullivan with Farhad Shamini (US, 2010, 6’)
In this film, an interloper plunges into a chamber drama involving ‘locals’ that touches on notions of destiny and rebirth, Meso-American mythology and the super-natural, race and the legacy of colonialism.

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- A Love Story, Amar Kanwar (India, 2010, 5’)
A miniature narrative in four acts where time becomes fluid. The film takes place at the fringe of an expanding Indian city, a world of continuous migration and therefore of continuous separations.

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- Pulmo Marina, Aurélien Froment (France/US, 2010, 5’)
Against a uniform background of purest Yves Klein blue, a pale yellow jellyfish roils and bristles like a fragment of living lace, while a voiceover informs us of its baroque but brainless anatomy.

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- This Quality, Rosalind Nashashibi (Egypt, 2010, 5’)
Shot in downtown Cairo the film comprises two halves: the first shows a woman looking directly at the camera. The second half shows a series of parked and covered cars. Each car suggests a sightless face, like a child covering his eyes.

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- Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright, Akram Zaatari (Lebanon, 2010, 12’)
A late night online chat between two men leads to their reunion after ten years of separation. The film navigates against time with an unsettling use of communication, recording technologies and temporal gaps.

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- Special Afflictions by Roy Harryhozen, Bonnie Camplin (UK, 2006, 5’)
A surreal meditation on man’s hopeless relationship with his own consciousness. Four hapless sideshow figures gossip about their employer and ‘creator’ Roy Harryhozen who has altered them each with a ‘special effect‘ which has gone wrong and left each with an abject temporal affliction.

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After the final screening there will be an open bar and music by DJ Philipp Neumann.

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Schedule:

Friday 16th December

Poor Man’s Expression
10 am – 6pm Book presentation and Workshop (@HGB) send email to studio@hgb-leipzig.de

8.30 pm Poor Man’s Expression @D21
We would also like to recommend the Friedl von Gröller show at Studio International (HGB)

Saturday 17. December

6pm Aurélien Froment, total running time 43 minutes + Q&A
8pm Emily Wardill, Game Keepers Without Games, running time 72 minutes + Q&A
10pm The Artists Cinema, running time 55 minutes +Q&A
11pm Music by Philipp Neumann, open bar

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Tickets can be bought at the FIlmgalerie Alpha60 (Karli 30) or at the door

Infos:
Emily Wardill is an artist, info about her films are to be found on the website of LUX and her latest feature Full Firearms will have its world premier on December 14th at the Cinema Zuid in Antwerpen. She is represented by STANDARD(OSLO).

Aurélien is an artist. His latest project  9 Intervals opened at Hyde Park Picture House in November. He is represented by Motive Gallery, Amsterdam.

Florian Zeyfang and Martin Ebner are both artists, their book Poor Man’s Expression, Technology, Experimental Film, Conceptual Art  – A Compendium in Texts and Images was recently published by SternbergPress.

Rike Frank is a curator at Studio International (HGB). Studio International opens a show with Friedl von Gröller on December 15th.

Benjamin Cook is the founding Director of LUX.

Reihe Experimentalfilm is a project for showing, and to stimulate, artists film in Leipzig.

Avantgarde ist keine Strömung II is the 2011 Series of Reihe Experimentalfilm – supported by Kulturstiftung Sachsen and Kulturamt Stadt Leipzig.

Our partners are Gangart Werbung, LUX, Rapid Eye Movies, Filmgalerie Alpha60, LURU Kino Spinnerei, Kinobar Prager Frühling, Weisses Ross Leipzig, Studio International (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst), SMOW,  Café Westen, Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V., SternbergPress

THANK YOU, of you have been important in making this possible