(still from Olver Laric’s Versions)

Summer is almost here! And after the Osnabrück/Oberhausen double header that Kate just returned from, the next slate of amazing film festivals we want to mention here are happening a little closer to home: the third edition of Migrating Forms in New York from May 20 to 29; the 17th annual Media City Film Festival in sunny Windsor, Ontario from May 24 to 28; and 19th Chicago Underground Film Festival taking place from June 2 to 9.
We wanted to give a shout out to a few artists whose works featured in the 2011 Images Festival have been selected for these upcoming festivals.

At Migrating Forms:
Adele Horne’s And Again
Ryan Garrett’s History Minor
Andrew Lampert’s Rigamarole Reversal
Oliver Laric’s Versions
Steve Reinke’s Tiny Ventriloquist
Laure Prouvost’s Monolog

At Media City:
Samantha Rebello’s Forms Are Not Self-Subsistent Substances
Aglaia Konrad’s Concrete and Samples III Carrara
Robert Todd’s Bridges: Blocks
Kevin J. Everson’s The Prichard

At CUFF:
Adele Horne’s And Again
Ryan Garrett’s History Minor
Charles Fairbanks’ Irma
JB Mabe’s To Another and Measures Kindling
Jesse McLean’s Magic for Beginners
Deborah Stratman’s …These Blazeing Starrs!
Zachary Epcar’s A Time Share Unlimited

Congratulations to all these artists! And to all you Images friends in and around New York, Windsor and Chicago, head out and support your local film festivals. Though we at the Images Programming team sadly won’t be making it to Chicago or New York, you will find us in Windsor, where Kate will be donning her projectionist hat and I will be donning my watching movies by night while record shopping across the river in Detroit by day hat. So look for some more blog posts from the road during Media City!

—Pablo de Ocampo

While several of the Images installations are still installed in galleries around the city, we are already planning for next year’s festival: setting dates, sending out calls for submissions, writing grants, and looking for exciting new work both at home and abroad.

So now I am in Germany, where I just attended the 24^th European Media Art Festival (EMAF). Created the same year as Images, EMAF is also characterized by a mix of film and video work exhibited over a range of venues including in cinemas, in galleries and other non-theatrical venues, as live audio-visual performances, and feature programming such as artists’ spotlights and retrospectives.

EMAF takes place in Osnabrück, a small city with a well preserved downtown of winding cobblestone streets and buildings dating back many centuries. The scale and bourgeois elegance of the place makes one feel they are walking through a set from a Max Ophuls film, and especially at night, it is easy to imagine his characters there, confined in varying degrees by politics, geography, labour, marriage and class. But the streets are no longer home to horses and carriages. Instead, cars, buses and bicycles speed past cafes, sports bars and a seemingly disproportionate number of ice cream shops whose sidewalk tables are always full despite the cool spring air. All in all, a nice atmosphere to watch and discuss work, and to meet visiting artists, curators and film and video fans from Germany and beyond.

The tagline of the festival this year is the definitive THIS IS MEDIA ART. Indeed, the festival offers a cross section of media works from moving op–art with eurobeat electronic soundtracks, to fiction films and documentaries with more or less formally experimental characteristics. The welcome note in the catalogue states that, “in the area of cinema, the trend is moving away from formal experiments toward narrative and documentary contents where history and stories are told and portrayed in a new exciting way.” I’m not convinced that the statement is particularly timely, but the festival was not without compelling work.  Overlapping programs made it impossible to see everything so the following are highlights from what I was able to catch.

Low-Tech by Hui-Ching Tseng and Chen-Chun-Yu Wang is simple funny stop motion animation that uses classic techniques to mimic new technology in an engagingly cute way.

Triumph of the Wild shows animator Martha Colburn at the top of her game in a densely layered illustration of the epic and bloody history of mans relationship to nature.

Piotr Zlotorowicz’s Smolarze depicts a day in the life of charcoal burners and their dog in the mountains of Poland. Zlotorowicz’s sympathetic eye and attention to detail assure that the images from this film will stay with the viewer long after it is over.

In Lilong, Valentina Fernandes depicts what at first appears to be lush paradise, and then gradually reveals the true nature of her subject. A quiet but powerful portrait of a place and the people who frequent it.

Bettina’s Job, by Patrick Richter follows Bettina through her workday in a kitchen cooking for the impoverished aged and then setting up a modest used clothing store. As she works she describes the difficulties and disappointments in her life but is also careful to point out the significance of her work to the people she serves.

Peter Miller's "Vrolok"

Klara Tasovska's "Pülnoc (Midnight)"

Vrolok by Peter Miller depicts the trajectory of a bat through the dark streets of a Transylvanian town. The simplicity of the film and the density of the 16mm print, add much to its power. Pülnoc (Midnight) by Klara Tasovska, was part of the same program as Miller’s film, but deals less obliquely with the subject of darkness. Tasovska records the accounts of several subjects who discuss their relationship with darkness–or the lack of it–in our contemporary surroundings. One man has gone so far in his quest for darkness that he resorts to industrial sabotage, short-circuiting huge power networks for his own amusement.

EMAF favourite Kevin Jerome Everson was represented with two films at the festival. House in the North Country, is an elliptical interpretation of a play by Talaya Delaney about the death of a young soldier and the grief and mourning of his mother and sister. Abrupt shifts between intimate black and white performances shot in the studio and colour footage shot outdoors contrast presence with absence, dreams and reality.  Fifteen an Hour shows night workers cleaning the beaches of Pensacola, Florida in the wake of the deepwater horizon oil spill last year.

Camilo Restrepo’s Tropic Pocket serves as a poetic critique of colonialism in his home country of Columbia. Layered, mysterious and troubling, this first work by the painter turned filmmaker makes him someone to watch.

The Sower Arepo as Works a Wheel by Marcy Saude, is a three-part exploration of rural American existence. The most affecting is the second chapter, a silent look at the landscape with subtitles providing a first person account of a woman who grew up the daughter of subsistence farmers in rural Georgia.

Perhaps my favourite film at EMAF, Sidewalk Stories by Rizki R. Utama, consists of a list of small objects found on the streets of Munich and beyond. The list is used to illustrate the bittersweet experience of immigration, and the mix of alienation and wonder that goes along with it.

Volker Sattel's "Under Control"

Along with mixed programs, the festival was rounded out by a number of feature length works: Enter the Void, Gaspar Noé’s pathetic and tedious attempt to depict the search of a lost soul looking for a place to land; Wasteland Utopias, David Sherman’s sometimes overworked but consistently compelling essay on Wilhelm Reich, Del Webb and desert development in Arizona; Branded to Kill, Seijun Suzuki’s stylish gangster classic; and Under Control, Volker Sattel’s study of European nuclear power plants. The best of the bunch, Sattel’s film lets the audience read between the lines as he trains his camera on the industrial aesthetics and architecture that we have come to accept as symbols of wisdom and expertise. The unease we feel when he shows us the proximity of the plants to nearby towns and recreation centers is by no means allayed by the impassive confidence of the people behind the controls. Under Control is a unique portrait of a questionable industry, and an unfortunately timely one at that.

Candice Breitz's "The Character"

Ryoto Kuwakubo's "The Tenth Sentiment"

Of the installations, there were two stand-outs: The Character by Candice Breitz and The Tenth Sentiment by Ryoto Kuwakubo. In the former, Breitz has a group of children describe the characters in three different popular Bollywood films. Their answers are then edited together to maintain the flow of the description while exploring the communal and individual experience of film watching. The articulate and passionate performances by the children Breitz cast are a fascinating foundation for this engaging work. Kuwakubo’s The Tenth Sentiment was the best of all the installations, where a model train creates a film noir shadow play as it makes its tour along the tracks.

EMAF’s artist spotlight this year was on Standish Lawder whose canonical works from the 1960s are rarely shown today. The best of the bunch are Necrology, Corridor, Raindance, and 60 Suicide Notes. Revisiting these films together revealed the dark side of works that had once just seemed amusing. Lawder shrugged of questions of ethics around works like 60 Suicide Notes saying things like, “Sure maybe it was mean but that was a long time ago…” or, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” That being said, Lawder also provided the most radical, disturbing and creepy image of the festival (quite an accomplishment given the inclusion of the Noé and Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s sing-songy appreciation of beastiality The Lesser Apes) with Regeneration. Lawder explained that he was looking for the most impossible subject to imagine happening in reverse, and indeed his un-birth movie is difficult not just to imagine but to watch, this ultimate reversal somehow becoming the most violent denial of life itself.

Exhibition and Its Discontents Extended Mix!!

Click above pic to enlarge…

As promised, we want to keep this dialogue alive. Here are the talking points I proposed at the beginning of our fantastic meeting as well as some of the main topics from the notes. Feel free to riff off of what’s here, restate your points from the meeting or add comments to threads you remember from the discussion. We welcome any and all constructive voices. Remember the ground rules still apply: honesty is encouraged, gossip ok, slander not ok!

Preamble:

* Funders, Festivals, Distributors, Curators, Critics have all let down – how ever gently or not so gently – their fair share of artists. For an active artist, even one with a moderately successful ‘career,’  ‘rejection’ is a real part of our experience.

* So how do we as artists interpret this ‘rejection’  – is it useful? Can it be more that a personal dismissive? More than something we have to suppress in order to keep going?

* Conversely how do we as Funders, Jurors, Festival Directors, or Distributors, manage public responses to our decisions, how do we navigate negativity at that awkward party or potluck – how do we handle the confrontations and the angry letters?

* Are these just occupational hazards our friends in other dangerous jobs forgot to tell us about. Did we really think being funders, artists and arts administrators would be easy??

* What about trust, expertise, professionalism, conflicts of interest, transparency, respect?

* How do we and when do we choose between professional conduct or spontaneous combustion? Between a rightful challenge or a shit fit!

Main topics raised at the forum:

* Should ‘angry Letters’ should be visible and published? What if your angry letter is rejected?

* If you welcome feedback, will you get more carefully considered responses?

* Premiere policies – are they good/bad for artists? Good/bad for exhibitors? What if you are both?

* Could artists benefit from having a ‘festival strategy’?

* Nepotism: how is being tightly connected making some things (rejection) more difficult?

* How do political pressures play a role in the fragility of the cultural community?

* Open call vs. other models? Can we evolve it? Why don’t we trust it?

My ears are already burning! Looking forward to more discussion!

Sincerely,

Deirdre Logue, on behalf of the Images Festival and MANO. deirdrel@vtape.org

Hello Images Festival goers,

To continue the dialogue from our Exhibition and its Discontents Forum,  Images Festival and MANO are looking for your comments, insight and feedback.  Any comments sent to us may be posted on the Images Festival website under an anonymous author. If you are interested in disclosing yourself as the author, please let us know. If you absolutely do not want your comments published at all, please make this clear in your email. You can email either myself or Deirdre . We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Regards,

Sunny Fong, Images Festival Board, sunnydark33@gmail.com

Images Festival draws to a close this evening with a screening of the lurid cult classic West of Zanzibar, accompanied by a live score from Polaris Music Prize winners Fucked Up. I was fortunate enough to have Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook answer some questions about their upcoming performance.

Carly Whitefield: I understand that you guys agreed to score West of Zanzibar before you had even seen the film. Why did you decide to take on this project? What were your initial reactions to the film?

Ben Cook: Truthfully my first reaction to the film was to fall asleep because we were so jetlagged after our Australian tour and we jumped right into this directly after HAHA! Watching a 1920s silent movie wasn’t really something our tired minds wanted to get involved in after a twenty-seven hour flight—but we’ve overcome and things are sounding good.

In my opinion when you strip away the insane live front man stuff and all the smart man media play, tricks, and gimmicks FU have a pretty interesting and epic musical side to it. Very orchestral at times. This is a chance to really show people that side of the band.

CW: Magic and voodoo figure prominently in this sinister tale. How does the subject matter resonate with your music?

BC: Fucked Up has had a long history of writing about magic, alchemy, bizarre concepts and other whacky shit for potheads… so it’s perfect.

CW: Can you talk about the process of composing for film? What did you take as your starting point? Have you kept or responded to any aspects of the original score?

BC: The first thing we did was gather in Josh’s living room and watched the film on mute. Its a silent movie, but it has its own score and we didn’t want to be influenced by it at all… Not that we’d have been moved to write something that sounded like the tweaked out 1920s orchestral score, but just in case we switched off the sound. We basically took notes and wrote out a rough skeleton of the movie, noting main characters who could have their own musical theme that could be introduced and reintroduced and mixed in with other characters’ themes as the plot progresses. We then sat with the movie on a computer at our rehearsal space for the last three weeks going back and forth, changing, making cues, making notes, making maps, and basically making sure we do it all justice. I’m not about to stand up there in front of everyone and screw up all this hard work. It’s sixty-four minutes straight, and it’s a challenge, but that’s why we took it on.

CW: How do the film’s physical and emotional landscapes influence your composition? Does your score speak more to formal or narrative aspects of the film?

BC: We basically follow the characters and the feelings and emotions they evoke on the screen. Like any good story there is love, betrayal, evil, and cannibalism. So our score is all over the map.

CW: Will the experience of composing for film affect your approach to songwriting in future?

BC: We plan on actually recording this in a studio and releasing it as a 12″ to go along with the movie. We’re pretty pleased with how things are turning out so we figured why not take it a bit further and make it a record. We’ve written some good music and it would be a shame just to play it once and have it be done with. At the end of all this we’re screaming at each other and it’s been a lot of work. So we’ll milk it into a record (or 10).

As for future recordings, I don’t think it will have much of an effect on our regular songwriting. We are all pretty set in our ways. But it is another experience that has brought us together as a band to accomplish something cool, and even though we are hating the sight of each other like at the end of any daunting endeavor… it’s a meaningful thing to accomplish as a group.

CW: Any surprises for us?

BC: I will be personally escorting anyone out of the building who tries to get up and act the fool during the performance. This isn’t a hardcore show. It’s a pretentious masterpiece. Recognize! HAHA!

Live Images 6: West of Zanzibar with Fucked Up screens tonight at 8:30 pm at Toronto Underground Cinema (186 Spadina Avenue). Doors at 8:00 pm sharp.

Is It Better In The Bahamas? from Images Festival on Vimeo.