SELECTION #9
22:10h / ACUD KinoI SEE A DARKNESS (60')
This session looks like the reverse of a regular screening, in which the illuminated screen is only sporadically interrupted by black: here, for the most part, we are plunged into a complete darkness that is pierced by sudden bursts of light. As eclipses allow us to observe the usually hidden details of celestial bodies, these films confront us with an unusual relationship between vision and bodily presence. Lacking the perceptual experience of blindness or the technical prothesis of a night vision viewfinder, we are left to explore a new order of the senses and the strange suspense that accompanies it. (T.I.)
It
Anouk De Clerq, Tom Callemin
13', 2017, Belgium
A blind man reports on an eclipse, a light phenomenon that he perceives through senses that do not involve sight. He takes us by the hand and guides us through the dark, through this temporary event that transforms the world as we know it. In the midst of the darkness comes a presence, visible at the sudden fall of nighttime till the sun inevitably rises again. True to tradition, the camera captures what temporarily passes us by. It is akin to trying to project the sun into our home in order to admire and capture the great cosmic movements. In this encounter between work by visual artists Anouk De Clercq and Tom Callemin, light and darkness also meet. Their respective worlds continually find themselves in the realm of the barely visible, in black-and-white, in the fascination with what light can reveal.
portapak.be
Viewfinder Material
Baptiste Jopeck
16', 2017, France, German première
Viewfinder Material is a "night footage" film based on US military nocturnal training images. All the film images are shot in "night vision" and testify to the visibility and invisibility production of the target. These images were made for specific military use, for simulation purposes and archives.
The Place I Will Have Left
Lena Ditte Nissen
15', 2017, Germany, German première
The Place I Will Have Left was shot around Rio Catatumbo in Venezuela, the area where most lightnings in the world strike down. The film is about the experience and absorption of something non-digestible. Something foreign and other, that does not assimilate, that remains within our selfs as a foreign body and provokes rejection reactions. The short and destructive energy of a lightning is dilated into a state of stasis as an overreaction.
lenadittenissen.com
Monelle
Diego Marcon
16', 2017, Italy, German première
A number of little girls lie asleep between the intersections and the architectural elements of the Casa del Fascio in Como, design by Giuseppe Terragni — one of the most important modernist architecture. Flashlights shine in the space, making the images appear for an instant–just the time necessary for the exposed frames to register with the viewer’s gaze before being plunged back into darkness. Monelle is a circular film without any narrative or hierarchy, without a beginning or an end, and it circumscribes a place of promiscuity and ambiguity between the different formats used—35mm and CGI animation—and the approaches of two opposites film attitudes—the structural cinema and the horror genre.
diegomarcon.net