The first awards for video paintings were presented in London in late July as the outcome of the Open Prize competition. The contest was held by the Open Gallery, which specializes in artistic video paintings. The jury included Ziba de Weck (Parasol Unit) and Marc Valli (Magma Books) as well as filmmaker Hilary Lawson, who is regarded as the founder of video painting.

Out of 300 submissions, ten works were nominated. The award, presented at a ceremony held in a former warehouse in the Shoreditch district, went to Jasmina Metwaly for “Crucifixion”. The ten nominated works were on view there alongside a series of exemplary works documenting the development of video painting as an art form.

Works can be entered in next year’s edition of the Open Prize competition starting 1 October.

URL: http://www.openprize.co.uk/
See also our topic article: http://www.shortfilm.de/en/short-film-magazine/archive/topic/video-paintings.html

The NISI MASA network for young European film has announced a competition for filmmakers who would like to take part in a documentary workshop in Finland. The project “Polyglot: on the way to Turku” will begin as an online competition. Young European filmmakers are invited to submit short films on the theme of multilingualism. After an online audience vote, a professional jury will decide which filmmakers will be invited to the workshop.

A similar project is currently running for the European Capital of Culture 2010, in which 45 participants from the cultural capitals Tallin, San Sebastiàn and Turin are setting off by train for Istanbul (“Istanbul Express”).

The workshop this coming year will take place on a “Cine-Boat” that will traverse the archipelago between Turku and the Åland Islands in June 2011. Entry deadline for the competition is 15 December 2010.

Website: http://www.polyglot-turku.eu

The postgraduate programme in Curating at the Zurich University of the Arts regularly publishes research results on its website on-curating.org in the form of a web journal. The third issue looks at curating films. In seven interviews questions are asked about curatorial styles and concepts as well as the specific spatial conditions required for exhibiting films.

The questions were posed to curators who work with film and video formats and who attended the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 2009: Ian White, Katerina Gregos, Gridthiya Gaweewong & David Teh, Mark Webber, Sheryl Mousley, Alice Koegel and Alexander Horwath.

Except for the two conversations with German-speaking curators, the interviews were conducted and published in English. The 17-page web journal is available as PDF download.

URL: http://www.on-curating.org

A study conducted at Rice University in Houston, Texas, set out to determine what influence appealing content has on subjective judgement of the quality of video clips. In four tests, 100 participants were shown 180 film clips of varying technical standards, from 550 KB to DVD quality.

The results demonstrate that attractive content plays a greater role in a positive appraisal than does picture quality. Based on these findings, the researchers recommend that content aspects should also be taken into consideration when evaluating the quality of videos. As practical application, it was suggested that suppliers of digitally coded films might now find it easier to determine (still barely) acceptable quality levels (while saving whole gigabytes of bandwidth ;-)

The study was published in the professional journal “Human Factors”.

URL: http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/52/1/105.abstract

_Flux Film Anthology

Dating from the sixties and compiled by George Maciunas, the Fluxfilm Anthology is a document consisting of 37 short films ranging from 10 seconds to 10 minutes in length. Elements of ephemeral environments, these films, some of which were meant to be screened as continuous loops, were shown as part of the events and happenings of the New York avant-garde.

37 films by Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, George Maciunas, Chieko Shiomi, John Cavanaugh, James Riddle, Yoko Ono, George Brecht, Robert Watts, Pieter Vanderbiek, Joe Jones, Eric Anderson, Jeff Perkins, Wolf Vostell, Albert Fine, George Landow, Paul Sharits, John Cale, Peter Kennedy, Mike Parr, Ben Vautier.
120 minutes, 1962-1970; DVD9 PAL interzone + booklet, €28
Further information: www.re-voir.com


_CONDITIONED

Eight experimental film and video art from Turkey that explores the intellectual conditioning of children and teenagers through both the educational system and contemporary Turkish society at large.

Artists: Hatice Güleryüz, Erkan Özgen, Sener Özmen. Ferhat Özgür. Burçak Kaygun, Güldem Durmaz, Berat Isiks und Ethem Özgüvens.
86 minutes, PAL/NTSC, region-free, engl/fr/dt subtitles, booklet, €25
Further information: www.lowave.com


_AnimateTV: 20 Years of Experimental Animation from the UK

A unique selection from over 100 commissions, which highlights the incredible range of experimental practice accomplished in the UK in the past 20 years.

Artists: Al and Al, Sebastian Buerkner, Paul Bush, Sarah Cox, Simon Faithfull, Petra Freeman, Inger Lise Hansen, Mark Simon Hewis, Jonathan Hodgson, Stephen Irwin, Andrew Kötting, Ruth Lingford, Tim Macmillan, Phil Mulloy, Kayla Parker, Keith Piper, Semiconductor, David Shrigley, Chris Shepherd, Tim Webb, Run Wrake.
113 minutes, PAL, zone-free, booklet, £17
Further information: http://www.animateprojects.org/shop/dvds_cds/animatetv


_Del Éxtasis al Arrebato (From Ecstasy to Rupture)

Film compilation comprising 26 experimental short films made in Spain in the last fifty years.
The edition functions as a kind of catalogue for the touring exhibition Del éxtasis al arrebato. 50 años del otro cine español, a joint production by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB, Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona) and the Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior (SEACEX, State Society for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad) and that will tour several countries during the next three years.
Artists: Equipo 57, Ton Sirera, Joaquim Puigvert, Jordi Artigas, Antoni Pinent, Manuel Huerga, Eugeni Bonet, Egènia Balcells, Lluís Rivera, Laida Lertxundi, Carl Durán, Antoni Miralda, Benet Rossell, Oriol Sánchez, José Val del Omar u.a.
225 minutes, 2 DVD9, zone-free, engl subtitles, booklet, €29,95
Further information: http://www.cameo.es/tabid/78/Id/807/Default.aspx


_Radical Closure

Video Data Bank (Chicago) releases the highly anticipated DVD box set, Radical Closure. Curated by Lebanese video artist Akram Zaatari for the 52nd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2006), Radical Closure features works produced in response to situations of physical or ideological closure resulting from war and territorial conflicts. The program looks at what is known as the Middle East, and how the moving image has functioned throughout its history, charged with division, political tension, and mobilization.
This 5-DVD box set has an accompanying monograph with curator’s essay, alongside important work by 24 artists including Guy Ben-Ner, Harun Farocki, Mona Hatoum, Walid Raad, and Elia Suleiman.
5 DVDs, multi-region, booklet, $1.100 (educational purchase)
Further information: http://www.vdb.org/radicalclo.html