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DUE TO THE SITUATION IN LEBANON, THIS PART WILL BE PRESENTED LATER
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EMAF
The EMAF is one of the most influential forums of international Media Art. As a meeting point for artists, curators, lenders, gallery owners and an audience of specialists, the festival has had a great impact on the topic and aesthetics of Media Art. Each year the festival offers its visitors a current overview of experimental films, installations, performances, digital formats and hybrid forms, ranging from personal and political subjects or formal experiments to provocative statements. |
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In the presence of Alfred Rotert
Alfred Rotert, director of the European Media Art Festival, Germany, will comment the screening, focusing on recent aspects of Media Art and he will present the videoprogramme "Alone amongst friends". |
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Alfred Rotert
Born 1957, studied in Frankfurt and Osnabrück. MA in media art. Head of the European Media Art Festival (EMAF), which presents annually over 300 productions in the area of film/ video, installation and internet as well as congresses about film- and media specific topics.
Organization of various EU projects, which were carried out in cooperation with festivals and other cultural organisations in Europe. Amongst them VCM, as a platform for the cultural exchange in Europe in the area of digital media; Europanet, a project for the promotion of low budget feature movies; Europe in Shorts, a programme with experimental films and Stories behind the Screen, a DVD about actual video art in Europe.
Since 2007 planning and organising of the new digital archive for media art “Mediaartbase.de”, which is being realized in cooperation with EMAF, documeta Archiv and the ZKM, centre for art and media, Karlsruhe.
Various lectures at universities and media events and in cooperation with the Goethe Institut presentation of film- and video programs in Europe, USA/ Canada, Hong Kong and Japan.
Member of the jury among others at Senef, Seoul, Biennale Film and Architecture, Graz and at the competition of MARS Lab at the Fraunhofer – institute for media communication. |
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ALONE AMONGST FRIENDS
ALONE AMONGST FRIENDS is an entertaining compendium of current international Media Art, reflecting the artists’ highly varied strategies and approaches. Included are three prize-winning films: THE DELAWARE PROJECT won the EMAF Award 2007, WIE ICH EIN FREIER REISEBEGLEITER WURDE (How I Became a Freelance Travel Guide) received the award of the German Filmcritics 2007 at EMAF and the Jury and Audience Award at Hamburg Films and the film FIRST ELECTIONS which was awarded with the Dialogue Award given by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Thematically the program is based on films dealing with the individual and his/her relationship to their group, family, clique or to society as a whole. Even if they present themselves as individual, autonomous personages, their emotions and behaviour are influenced by the group and their processes, which in turn are constantly redefined by these inputs.
Portrayals can be critical, investigative or simply comical, depending primarily on the subject involved in the film. They can be expressed as emotional, as with E. Pong and R. Kjartansson, obsessive, as with E. Olaf and M. Shatzky and B. Cassidy, political, as with S. Vanagt, R. Vrugt, C. Peppermint and Ch. Nadir, or ironic, as with A. Walther and J. Peters. |
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JE SUIS UNE BOMBE
Elodie Pong • CH 2006 • 6:38 • Photography: Simon Jaquemet • Editing: Rafael Sommerhalder • Music: Michael Hilton
A pole-dancing panda bear develops into a young woman claiming ›je suis une bombe‹. |
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LE DERNIER CRI
Erwin Olaf • NL 2006 • 2:29
Erwin Olaf‘s video ›Le Dernier Cri‹ makes use of a kind of hyperrealism which is characteristic for most of his work. Here the slick realism of the Hollywood film is being driven to its limits, giving the whole work an absurd character. Everything is reminiscent of the ›homely‹ variation of modernism that was popu¬lar in the 1950s and 1960s and is stylishly designed and decorated in tranquil grey-brown colours. Jacques Tati meets David Lynch. (Netherlands Media Art Institute, Esma Moukhtar) |
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THE DELAWARE PROJECT
Melanie Shatzky, Brian Cassidy • USA/CDN 2006, 15:00 • Cast: Donita Beeman, Kelsey McCabe, Dave Vescio, Eleanor Murray, Susan Antonellis, Alan Ross, Arash Afari.
›The Delaware Project‹ centers around a young woman‘s fledgling sense of connection in a landscape that is undergoing rapid development. A precarious highway carries her to a series of doctors‘ appointments, where it is unclear what ails her. She speaks to no one and expresses nothing. More a tone poem than a traditional narrative, this film defies linear convention in an attempt to show the unceremonious demise of person and place. |
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ME AND MY MOTHER
Ragnar Kjartansson • IS 2005, 4:00
Ragnar Kjartansson‘s mother is spitting him in the face. Is this real Mother-Love or is it more that Ragnar did something wrong? A video which opens a wide field of interpretations. |
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HOW I BECAME A FREELANCE TRAVEL GUIDE//WIE ICH EIN FREIER REISEBEGLEITER WURDE
Jan Peters • D 2007, 15:37 • Photography: Michael Win¬terbauer • Editing: Sandra Trosel • Sound: J. Grehl, M. Klöfkorn • Music: Pit Przygodda • Production: ABZ Hamburg • www.shortfilm.com
A film diary about the experiment to do a placement with a man who had taken early retirement and who earned a bit on the side by buying a group ticket for the tube every day at Frankfurt airport and then offering to accompany travellers, standing at the ticket machine, to their respective travel destination – for a small fee, slightly less than the actual fare – of course. |
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TWIST
Simon Beaufils • Editing: Martial Salomon • Sound: Sébastien Pierre • Music: Maxime Matray
Four men dance in the set of a beach bar off season. One of them, before, recalled the circumstances of a military defeat. Sustainable relationships between humans and their environments.
The film puts in parallel an episode of Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars and a choreographed digest of the history of Twist. |
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FIRST ELECTIONS
Sarah Vanagt • B 2006, 14:42
A group of children acts out the elections that will have to take place a couple of weeks later – the first democratic elections since independence. This ›election game‹ turns into a barometer for the current political climate in the border region between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DCR) and Rwanda. The relationship between local politics and the children are embodied by Bebe Rico and Bebe Elegance, two animated babies, who advertise baby soap. The Rico commercials have a political connotation in the collective imagination of the Congolese people: Bebe Rico is identified with President Joseph Kabila, and Bebe Elegance with Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba. |
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A GROUP OF FRIENDS
Ruud Vrugt • NL 2006 • 7:29
He only had one wish in his life: to belong to a group. He looks back on his life with amazement and sadness. Although he is still longing for the things that never came true, he is also curious about what the future will bring. |
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WILDERNESS TROUBLE
Cary Peppermint, Christine Nadir • USA 2006 • 3:30
This video is inspired by William Cronon’s article entitled ›The Trouble with Wilderness or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature‹ which argues that the concept of ›wilderness‹ has no basis in nature but is a historical and cultural construction. His concern is that it fails today to imagine new, healthy, and sustainable relationships between humans and their environments. |
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(c) FIFVC 2004-08
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