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.

Nightly membership: 4 Euro
OT301 / Overtoom 301 / 1054 HW Amsterdam

Produced and presented by Emile Zile.

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

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pBIubMBwj6M

Bart Rutten of the Stedelijk invited me to come up with a short film introduction and live visual mix for this upcoming conference on museum as content creator. Thinking of Zabriskie point slow-motion explosions of the Guggenheim, youtube tourist videos from outside the represented museums, postcards and snapshots, classicism and iconography. Free entry, reserve via doku.arts@mediafonds.nl

June 11, TrouwAmsterdam, Witbautstraat 127, 1091 GL Amsterdam

http://www.doku-arts.com/2010/program/seminar_artcasting.html

12.30 coffee and tea / visual prologue Emile Zile

Emile Zile is an artist and performer engaged with popular screen iconography, hybrid performance and single-channel video.

13.10 lecture Margriet Schavemaker, Head of Collections, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

A critical analysis of the history of the intricate relationships between museums and media productions: from the early films and television productions up to the latest digital presentations of moving images on the internet and locative media.

13.45 lecture Jane Burton, Head of Content and Creative Director, Tate Media

Besides the wide variety of Tate Media productions and its online platform from which these moving images (lectures, interviews and documentation of exhibitions) are broadcast, Jane Burton will discuss the new Tate plans to produce a feature animation film.

14.45 lecture Anne-Michèle Ulrich, Director audio-visual department, Centre Pompidou

Centre Pompidou is coproducer of the film on Alexander Calder, presented by Doku.Arts. Anne-Michèle Ulrich will present a new iPhone application, and show a preview of the new internet channel centrepompidou.tv, which will premiere in November 2010.
A critical retrospective of the first year of Arttube will be offered, tuning in on the pros and cons, and focusing on the development of this media channel from marketing tool to ‘curatorial depth’.

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.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vmhyfXFtyGE

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.

Brilliant, real and inspiring.

http://www.mikefiggis.co.uk

Thanks to Janine Dijkmeijer at Cinedans.nl

This festival opens this weekend in Osaka. Jona is showing a number of my videos in the screening program. Check it out if you’re in the neighborhood.

http://www.feavs.org