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Jeu de Paume exhibits Omer Fast

The Parisian art centre Jeu de Paume is devoting an extensive solo exhibition to the filmmaker Omer Fast starting in October 2015. Featured will be a selection of his works from 2000 onward, including video installations and his films “The Casting”, “5,000 Feet Is the Best” and “Continuity”. The German production of “Continuity” received a special award for medium-length films at the 2014 German Short Film Award, along with prizes at the short film festivals in Oberhausen and Hamburg.

Omer Fast is currently working on a new version of “Continuity” for the Paris exhibition. After filming in Germany and Morocco, new scenes will be interwoven with the old material according to a different scenario. Excerpts from the script and the storyboard have been available in facsimile since early June in the Jeu de Paume’s online magazine.

Omer Fast’s works are marked by fluid transitions between documentary and fiction. The starting point is usually reports on specific events, which the filmmaker transforms into fictional experiences of staged protagonists. 

Born in 1972 in Jerusalem, Fast lives and works today in Berlin. His works have been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including at the Whitney Museum in New York and MUMOK in Vienna, and in Germany at the Kunstverein Hannover and the Kölnischer Kunstverein. Fast also took part in documenta 13, the 2011 Biennale di Venezia and two Whitney Biennials (2008, 2002).

Jeu de Paume exhibition announcement: http://www.jeudepaume.org/index.php?page=article&idArt=2280
Jeu de Paume magazine: http://lemagazine.jeudepaume.org/omer-fast
Production and distribution of “Continuity”: http://www.filmgalerie451.de/filme/continuity

End of an era: Submarine Channel freezes music video history || 17/06/2015

The Submarine Channel, operated by the Amsterdam-based production company Submarine, has been presenting for many years – eons before YouTube as they proudly claim – international artistic music videos by the likes of Chris Cunningham, Mike Mills and Spike Jonze. In April 2015, the operators decided to close the chapter and not add any new videos, but at the same time to make the collection to date available to the public on a new website called “2Pause”.

On “2Pause” the 1,000 or so music video titles are curated according to categories such as Psychedelic, Sonic Animation and Electric Cinema. Particularly interesting is the section Interviews & Stories, with over 40 posts presenting music videos, documenting production processes and featuring music video makers talking about their work.

Submarine is a production company of TransMedia, based in Amsterdam. Founded by Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix, Submarine is one of the pioneers in the Dutch media sector. Its main focus today is on digital storytelling, in particular the production of interactive Web documentaries and motion comics.

2Pause: http://www.2pause.com
Submarine Channel: http://www.submarinechannel.com
Submarine: http://www.submarine.nl

Discoveries in the Vlogosphere – Short film online || 17/06/2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A small playlist on the themes of social media and privacy

_“Mass Ornament”, Natalie Bookchin (2009)
URL: http://bookchin.net/projects/massornament.html 

_“We Love Surveillance“, Alexander Lehmann (2014)
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlmYHbg5i_w&feature=youtu.be

_“Sentient City Survival Kit”, Mark Shepard
URL: http://survival.sentientcity.net/

_“Men in Grey”, Mikael Brain (2010)
URL: http://criticalengineering.org/projects/men-in-grey/

_“Home (Holly Herndon)”, music video by Metahaven (2015)
URL: https://vimeo.com/106282943

DVD Spotting || 17/06/2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Re:Voir: Double DVD “Das goldene Tor” & “Passion” by Jürgen Reble
New digitized edition of the 16mm original (1990/1992).
2 x DVD5 PAL interzone/region-free, mono, 4:3, colour, 32-page booklet, €34
https://re-voir.com/shop/fr/jurgen-reble/477-pack-2dvd-jurgen-reble-passion-et-das-gulden-tor.html

_Re:Voir: “Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film” by Pip Chodorov
2011 documentary on the history of experimental film (Hans Richter, Maya Deren, Len Lye, Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, Jonas Mekas, Peter Kubelka, et al.)
DVD9 PAL interzone/region-free, stereo, 16:9, colour, 83 min., EN/FR, €22.90
https://re-voir.com/shop/en/pip-chodorov/467-pip-chodorov-free-radicals-3493551101093.html?search_query=Chodorov&results=8

_absolut MEDIEN: The Modern City – 6 film essays
Six film essays on the new urbanity of the 1950s/60s: documents on the theme of modern housing and urban planning, editors: Ralph Eue, Florian Wüst.
Films: En dag i staden, Pontus Hultén & Hans Nordenström (1956); Für einen Platz an der Sonne, Rudi Hornecker (1959); Die Stadt, Herbert Vesely (1960); Bau 60, Dieter Lemmel (1961); Bag de ens facader (Behind the Same Facades), Peter Weiss (1961); Die gemordete Stadt, Manfred Durniok (1965)
DVD PAL, code-free, mono, 4:3, 177 min., original languages with subtitles, €14.90
https://absolutmedien.de/film/4033/Die+moderne+Stadt

Call for submissions for online exhibition “Enhanced Vision – Digital Video” || 03/12/2014

ACM SIGGRAPH is accepting submissions until 10 December for its exhibition “Enhanced Vision – Digital Video”, to be presented in 2015. The aim of the show, curated by Kathy Rae Huffman and Nancy Buchanan on behalf of ACM SIGGRAPH’s Digital Art Community, is to create an international survey of digitally enhanced video art.

Beginning in spring 2015, around 30 selected video art works will be published on SIGGRAPH’s website. The works can be up to 10 minutes long and must have been made in between 2009 and 2014.

“Enhanced Vision – Digital Video” focuses in particular on digital techniques that are used to enhance moving images, thereby revealing specific meaning and content that cannot be visualized using classical methods. The selection criteria include evidence of an individual artistic style in statements on pertinent social issues.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGGRAPH is an international organization for computer graphics and interactive technologies. Among other events, ACM hosts the annual SIGGRAPH conferences (in Shenzhen in December 2014 and in Los Angeles in August 2015).

Further information on the call for submissions: http://www.siggraph.org/connect/digital-arts/enhanced-vision-call-for-submissions

To Save and Project: short films at this year’s MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation || 03/12/2014

The Museum of Modern Art (New York) hosted its 12th festival for film preservation from 24 October to 22 November. Aside from the highlight, the screening of the 1929 classic “The Iron Mask” (Allan Dwan), a number of short films also returned to the big screen, among them “The Sun Film (1956)” and “The Sun, Variations with a Sphere No. 10 (1956)”, two works in which John Cage participated that have been recently restored by the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles, along with Oskar Fischinger’s “Studie Nr. 5” (1930) and Jordan Belson’s “LSD“ (c. 1962). A rediscovered and restored 16mm film made by Joseph Cornell between 1940 and 1955 was shown as a world premiere.

Also included in the programme were short films made by famous feature-film directors such as John Ford and John Huston in the 1940s in support of the Allied Forces during the Second World War, Charlie Chaplin films that have been restored in France and Italy, as well as recently digitized films by Norman McLaren.

Source: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1521?utm_source=responsys&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=e110714_film_110714#related_screenings

International Short Film Festival Oberhausen’s new distribution catalogue is out || 03/12/2014

In autumn, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen published its new distribution catalogue. As in the previous catalogues, theme-based programmes and individual films from the past year’s festival are on offer. The new selections comprise 45 films purchased from 27 different countries. Among them is the winner of the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen, “La Estancia” by Federico Adorno, as well as the German Competition winner, “Sieben Mal am Tag beklagen wir unser Los und nachts stehen wir auf, um nicht zu träumen” (Seven Times a Day We Complain about Our Fate and at Night We Get up to Avoid Our Dreams) by Susann Maria Hempel.

The films can be rented individually or as a full evening programme. Except for films from the archive, the titles are available on DCP, BluRay or DVD. Video clips of the films are available for viewing by prospective screening venues on the festival website: http://www.kurzfilmtage.de/verleih/programm

Weitere Informationen: http://www.kurzfilmtage.de/verleih/

The Current: alternative distribution channel for hybrid journalistic film formats || 03/12/2014

The Current is a Danish production and exhibition platform for short films that combine fiction and journalism to create a new form. The Current is a joint initiative of the production company KnockKnock and the full-service production company Flying Films (Copenhagen).

The eight films created during the pilot phase, which were directed not only by staff of the companies involved but also by filmmakers from other countries, treated serious topics such as eating disorders or asylum politics, yet were styled to resemble advertising films. The platform’s professed aim is to relate facts on current issues through film in an emotionally effective way.

In September 2014 The Current launched a second series of 10 new films by 10 different directors. A new film is released every Thursday, just like at the cinema.

URL: http://www.thecurrent.dk

Oscar shortlist for documentary and animated short films || 03/12/2014

In late October/early November, the shortlists for the coming Oscar nominations in the categories documentary and animated short film were announced. The following eight films are on the shortlist for the Documentary Short Subject Award:
– CRISIS HOTLINE: VETERANS PRESS 1, Ellen Goosenberg Kent, Perry Films & HBO, USA
– JOANNA, Anety Kopacz, Wajda Studio, PL
– KEHINDE WILEY: AN ECONOMY OF GRACE, Jeff Dupre, Show of Force & PBS, USA
– THE LION’S MOUTH OPENS, Lucy Walker (UK), Tree Tree Tree, USA
– ONE CHILD, Yulin Liu & Zijian Mu, New York University, USA
– OUR CURSE, Tomasz Sliwinski, Warsaw Film School, PL
– LA PARKA (The Reaper), Gabriel Serra Argüello, Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, Mexico
– WHITE EARTH, J. Christian Jensen, Weary Traveler, USA
The shortlists are selected by members of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Only 58 international submissions qualified!

Für die Shortlist Animated Short Films wählte die zuständige AMPAS-Abteilung folgende zehn Filme aus ebenfalls nur 58 Einreichungen aus:
– THE BIGGER PICTURE, Daisy Jacobs, National Film and Television School, UK
– CODA, Alan Holly, And Maps And Plans, Ireland
– THE DAM KEEPER, Robert Kondo & Dice Tsutsumi, Tonko House, USA
– 
DUET, Glen Keane, Glen Keane Productions & ATAP, USA
– 
FEAST, Patrick Osborne, Walt Disney Animation Studios, USA
– 
FOOTPRINTS, Bill Plympton, Bill Plympton Studio, USA
– 
ME AND MY MOULTON, Torill Kove, Mikrofilm (N) in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada
– 
THE NUMBERLYS, William Joyce & Brandon Oldenburg, Moonbot Studios, USA
– 
A SINGLE LIFE, Joris Oprins, Job, Joris & Marieke, NL
– 
SYMPHONY NO. 42, Réka Bucsi, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, H

To qualify, films must have either been screened at a cinema in Los Angeles for at least three days or won an award at an AMPAS-certified festival. In June of this year, the rules for short films were loosened in the sense that films that have been publicly exhibited or distributed outside the cinema are no longer automatically disqualified if they have received an award at a certified festival. Another recent change is that short films that have won a 2014 Student Academy Award in other categories also qualify for the short film categories

The nominations from the aforementioned shortlists will be announced in January 2015.

Info on documentary film: http://www.oscars.org/news/8-doc-shorts-oscars-2014-shortlist
Info on animated film: http://www.oscars.org/news/10-animated-shorts-advance-2014-oscar-race
Download Festival List (pdf): http://www.oscars.org/sites/default/files/87aa_doc_shorts_film_festival_list.pdf
ps. November 2014 Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (CH) was added as a qualifying festival

Discoveries in the vlogosphere – short films and trailer online || 03/12/2014

Koji Yamamura: „Yamamura Animation Sample“, J 2002-2007, 16:15 min.
URL: vimeo.com/111901705

_MiniDrones Film Festival: “Phonezombies!”, Aviv Kosloff, D 2014, 3:17 min.
URL: youtu.be/yvo5x2z_NQY

_Filmolaboral: „Flone, The Flying Phone“, ES 2013, 3:06 min.
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HloPr_V6elI

_Vimeo-Kanal Dronies: vimeo.com/channels/dronies/videos

_Dronie: „Bernal Hill Selfie“, Amit Gupta, USA 2014, 0:15 min.
URL: vimeo.com/91898486

_Microcinema: „Aurora Picture Show 2008 Trailer“, USA, 2008, 2 min.
URL: vimeo.com/6387355

_Microcinema: Basement Films Videos, Bryan Konefsky, USA
URL: http://www.basementfilms.org/index.php/media1/14-sample-data-articles/76-videos

_Hot Tub Cinema: „Summer of Tub“, David Bridle, UK 2013, 2 Min.
URL: http://vimeo.com/69181481

_ Secret Cinema: „Secret Cinema Presents Back to the Future“, PHIXfilm, UK 2014; 3:16 Min.
URL: http://phixfilm.com/filter/digital/Secret-Cinema

_Soirée de lancement de la manifestion Le jour le plus Court: interventions de Mélanie Laurent et Agnès Varda
URL: http://www.cnc-webtv.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=573:soiree-de-lancement-du-jour-le-plus-court&catid=70:videos-2011

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