Saturday 21st April 2018, 8pm, Spektrum
facebook event
SPRING PORTRAITS
Ute Aurand
Clara Bausch
Robert Beavers
Alix Blevins
James Edmonds
Helga Fanderl
Jeannette Muñoz
Margaret Tait
Jeff Weber
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| Ute Aurand - Lisa (2017) |
The program Spring Portraits groups together filmmakers who at times deal loosely with the theme of portraits - either of people, places, atmospheres, and who mostly also have, in some way, a connection to the city of Berlin. Some are long established names, others are making their first film - what is important is that they share some sensibility - and a belief in films power as a medium to transcend mere representation whilst simultaneously capturing something of life's fleeting moments.
*all films will be shown on film
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| Helga Fanderl - Portrait (1992) |
P R O G R A M :
Alix Blevins - Looking out in, 2018, super8, 3min, b/w, silent
James Edmonds - Seasons Patterns (winter reel), 2017, super8, 3.5min, b/w, silent
Helga Fanderl - Portrait (1992) / Teetrinken (1993) / Roter Vorhang (1998), 6min, super8, colour, silent
Ute Aurand - LISA, 2017, 16mm, 4.5min, colour, sound
Margaret Tait - A Portrait of Ga, 1952, 16mm, 5min, colour, sound
Robert Beavers - First Weeks, 2014, 16mm, 4min, colour, silent
(pause)
Jeff Weber - Meditations On The Cross (2015 / 2016) / The Faras Gallery (2018), ca.5min, 16mm, b/w, silent
Clara Bausch - Wald, 2017, 16mm, 6min, colour, sound
Jeannette Muñoz - ENVÍO 24, 2010, 16mm, 3min, b/w, silent
James Edmonds - A Return, 2018, 16mm, 6min, colour, sound
Ute Aurand - Schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft, 1980, 16mm, 8min, colour+b/w sound
total ca.54min
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| Margaret Tait - A Portrait of Ga (1952) |
Program details:
Alix Blevins - Looking out in, 2018, super8, 3min, b/w, silent
searching through fragments of darkness & light, siſting through discontinuous moments in a contained space. shot and edited on hand processed super8.
James Edmonds - Seasons Patterns (winter reel), 2017, super8, 3.5min, b/w, silent
The series Seasons Patterns consists of single rolls of super8, one for each season, exposed between 2016 and 2017. Leitmotifs, physical and ephemeral, providing some unity within each season, as a reflection on its atmosphere and passing presence.
Helga Fanderl - Portrait (1992, 3min25) / Teetrinken (1993, 1min30) / Roter Vorhang (1998, 1min), total 6min, super8, colour, silent
Portrait, Teetrinken and Roter Vorhang (Portrait, Tea Time and Red Curtain) have been shot in different spaces and years. Combining the three individual Super 8 films Helga Fanderl creates an intimate triptych depicting a tender relationship.
Ute Aurand - LISA, 2017, 16mm, 4.5min, colour, sound
A portrait of my Japanese friend Risa (Lisa) Tamaru, filmed in Berlin and Yokohama. It's the sixth film in a series of short portraits of close women friends and my two godchildren. Filming portraits allows me to emphasize private gestures and moments beyond narration and documentation.
Margaret Tait - A Portrait of Ga, 1952, 16mm, 5min, colour, sound
The 'Ga' of the title refers to the film maker's mother. The film gathers together this elderly lady's everyday actions to offer an abstract insight into her life.
Tait described this film as follows: 'My mother seemed a good subject for a portrait, (she was there), and I thought it offered a chance to do a sort of 'abstract film', in the sense that it didn't have what you might call 'the grammar of film'. It's mostly discontinuous shots linked just by subject, in one case by colour, only rarely by movement'.
Robert Beavers - First Weeks, 2014, 16mm, 4min, colour, silent
“Call them spontaneous or occasional films. I did not know if I would show this publicly when I filmed. The gift was Luke Fowler suggesting that I film his and Corin’s first child, Liath, while I visited them in Glasgow. The images are left in the order of filming, and the editing is only a few excisions.” (RB)
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| Robert Beavers - First Weeks (2014) |
Jeff Weber - Test Reel for Meditations on the Cross (2015) / The Faras Gallery (2018), ca.5min, 16mm, b/w, silent
Test Reel for Meditations on the Cross
I made this this test reel in anticipation of the animation film “Meditations on the Cross”, using the drawings of artist Snejanka Mihaylova that emerged during our collaboration for the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Leipzig in 2015. I was looking for a possibility to document these in an adequate way and it occured to me to use 16mm film as it also keeps intact the chronological order in which they have been drawn. Subsequently I started to multiply the frames per drawing, at the end ranging from 1-6 frames, in order to be able to refer to the test film to make a decision for the frame-rate of the final film.
The Faras Gallery / Cathedral
This film was made in the first days of march (2018) in the Faras Gallery at the Polish National Museum in Warsaw, using both rooms, IV and VI, that present a collection of early Christian wall paintings together with architectural elements from the Faras Cathedral, in the former Lower Nubian city of Faras.
Clara Bausch - Wald, 2017, 16mm, 6min, colour, sound
Wald shows the camera travel-panning over pieces of shrubbery on the edge of the woods. Over time, the viewer realizes that the pan travels through different seasons and different weather conditions and what started as a meditation on nature on a winter day becomes more complex as the story time unfolds, breaking the perception of continuity editing. The city and the relation of the city dweller to surrounding nature, become the primary story.
ENVÍOS is film that leaves film behind in order to become the emerging space of what has been, of what is and could be.
ENVÍOS are dffering spaces that cohabit.
ENVÍOS are sequences, incidents, occurrences, fragments, moments, glimpses.
ENVÍOS don't have objects nor subjects, and are of heterogeneous provenance and motivations.
They are capable of meeting and coexisting only within the small and singular.
ENVÍOS inhabit the intimate and public at once. They have been realized with and/or for a person and will be presented in public.
James Edmonds - A Return, 2018, 16mm, 6min, colour, sound
To return again. To re-align is the object of these visits, perhaps. Geography of origin becoming catalyst for an inner re-alignment with the secret, private, unspoken work of one’s being.
Peering into layers, sliding planes of windows and time, the fragmentary gesture of the dance.
A series of rapid contrasts, a synthesis of elemental and everyday experience.
Structures shift and intermingle, two worlds become one.
Ute Aurand - Schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft, 1980, 16mm, 8min, colour+b/w sound
"Aurand’s first film, Schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft (Deeply Absorbed in Silent Conversation, 1980), establishes the intimacy of her style even as it creates a quiet interiority that disappears from her more celebratory later work. From its opening title, a reverse title card that flips to the correct reading, the film is about mirrors and reflections. The central character walks out of her front door and looks down at her reflection in a puddle on the street. Her subjectivity is constantly revealed in her surroundings. Her cast shadow and reflection appear along the cobblestones, on the hood of a car, in mirrors, in mylar that is ripped apart and a puddle that drains before our eyes. In this remarkably direct film, she permutates a series of possible reflective moments, attempting to see herself more clearly as she reveals herself to us."
(Chris Kennedy, 2009, In Present Tense: Films of Ute Aurand)
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| Clara Bausch - Wald, 2017 |
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with many thanks to all the filmmakers
special thanks to Ute Aurand, Robert Beavers and Helga Fanderl
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Light Movement 29: SPRING PORTRAITS
Saturday 21st April 2018, 8pm
Spektrum,
Bürknerstraße 12,
12047 Berlin
U8 Schönleinstr.
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