On Friday, January 14 2011 the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) will host a night profiling the work of Sandberg Institute students from all departments. Theus Zwakhals of NIMk and Emile Zile (ex-S.I. Fine Arts, emilezile.com) are curating and producing the event. The last two editions have hosted installations, performances and a screening program to a broad public audience.
Participating artists:
Manon van Trier, Samantha Thole, Tom Milnes, Katja Novitskova, Maartje Smits, Salomé Lamas, Edwin Stolk, Jetske Verhoeven, Eva Marie Rodbro, Sina Khani, Lida Krul, Sayaka Abe, Marc Barreda
Electric Cinema presents two striking examples of essay film-making Tuesday evening at the old squatted film academy at Overtoom 301: Chris Marker’s serene and mesmerising Sans Soleil against Johan Grimonprez’s unrelenting history of terrorist airjackings, Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. http://www.electric-cinema.org
Bar at 20:00. Starts: 20:30 hrs. Last Electric Cinema program before cinema renovations and the summer break.
The guiding visual thread of the piece is the almost exhaustive chronology of airplane highjackings in the world. The soundtrack is constituted of a fictive narrative inspired by two Don DeLillo novels—White Noise and Mao II—which, for Grimonprez, highlight the value of the spectacular in our catastrophe culture. – http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/dial-history/
One connection or reflection in the movie becomes four or five in your mind as you watch Sans soleil or think about it afterwards, as if the filmmaker has sent you on a mission to find out this or that idea or bit of information (the movie is inspirational in a very concrete sense), or to consider something from a different perspective, and still another, and so on; the cinematic equivalent of a stone being thrown into a pond, wherein you are the pond. All this, and Marker still finds room for a melancholy, weary, yet strangely optimistic, exhilarating emotional texture. It also happens to be very funny at times. – http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/marker.html
My regular screening night returns with films that were scheduled in May, but delayed due to Icelandic gods of vulkan interruption. Full details at http://www.electric-cinema.org
Tuesday 8 June 2010 at Overtoom 301 Amsterdam
Final Flesh 90′ dir. Vernon Chatman 2009 U.S.A. House 88′ dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi 1977 Japan
From the creator of Xavier: Renegade Angel and Wonder Showzen, Final Flesh – a feature film made by commercial porn companies commissioned to visualise the sexual fantasies of the client. This movie replaces the sex with metaphysical dialogue, cum shots with cold meat, intercourse with brain-damaged philosophy. A murky, awkward trip to suburban fantasies, existentialist longing for meaning and antibacterial hand cream. The second film on the bill is an optically intense, Japanese teen-comedy ghost film ‘House’, Dario Argento circa Suspiria meets Sound of Music on acid. Beware of singing watermelons and carnivorous pianos.
Three days in a cinema to pick the brain of Mike Figgis, director, artist and musician. Sugar and cocaine. Digital and celluloid. Grain and focus. Portrait and landscape. Hollywood and independence. Script-writing and score notation. Bullshit and real bullshit. Theatre and self-obsession. Pornography and J.L. Godard.
