CRISS - CROSS
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PRESENT SCREENINGS
Criss - Cross in January 26-29
at Maison du Danemark, Paris
and in February 1- March 5
at Västerås Konstmuseum, Västerås
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Selectors:
Thierry Jousse, Åsa Nacking,
Cristina Ricupero, Mats Stjernstedt
and Cilla Werning
CROSSING FRONTIERS
The world of images today is somewhat paradoxical, or even self-contradictory. On one side, if one considers commissions and administrative rules, disciplines and media seem more stratified than ever before and specialists of all kinds appear to have acquired excessive power to legislate over the complexity of the real. On the other, images seem usually governed by a general regime of elusiveness, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, and the frontiers between the different disciplines are constantly being blurred and transgressed, which inevitably causes a certain amount of confusion. In between these two extremes, it can be observed that many artists have gone over to video and cinema. Some of them, such as Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, have their works shown in film festivals, while, on the other hand, filmmakers like Chantal Akerman, David Lynch, Claire Denis and Atom Egoyan are invited to take part in exhibitions of contemporary art. The main characteristic of the five programmes focusing on the Nordic and Baltic region put together by NIFCA is that they take on board this constant interplay between disciplines, these structural mutations in art and cinema. At the same time, they try to reorganise different kinds of works within formal and thematic categories that transcend genres and formats.
The main goal is to organise, within the same programme, the coexistence of highly diverse objects, i.e., short fiction films, documentaries and artist’s videos. This is anything but self-evident and raises a number of crucial questions: how does one articulate within a single space works taken from multiple sources? How does one go about mixing the images from different horizons without just making the kind of audiovisual hotchpotch that usually means zero thought content? What are the criteria one should use to underpin mixed, cross-disciplinary programmes?
Rather than sticking to rigid principles or giving in to overly ingrained ways of thinking, the guiding line in this process was to start with the works themselves and, in an almost musical sense, to compose arrangements, to trace lines between different objects, wagering that the friction between forms would open up meaning. A number of key works, which are at the heart of this problematic of mixing, helped us effect this shifting of lines. One of them is The Five Obstructions, a film by Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier. A playful and highly personal reflection on cinema which freely transgresses the boundaries between fiction and documentary, art and movies, the camera’s real-life capture and animation, and between periods, this film quite naturally touches on this contemporary impurity of images which interests us so much here. This work would be equally at home in a cinema and an exhibition of contemporary art, for its images make light of pre-existing categories and set about rearticulating them. To name but a few of the works selected, the stylistically very diverse proposals include a remarkable political documentary by the artist Petra Bauer; Der Fall Joseph, the films of the Estonian Marko Raat – an amusing and very personal essay, For Aesthetic Reasons, and a short fiction film, Suite for Two, a kind of combination between Sophie Calle and Alfred Hitchcock; the works of Pia Rönicke, which connect references to architecture, cinema and art; the astonishing Meet you in Finland Angel by Veli Gräno, a documentary portrait with tinges of fiction or even fantasy; and Jens Jonsson’s brilliant short fiction, Headway, which uses a set-up that is very close to contemporary art. All of them contribute to this shifting of frontiers. Indeed, this observation could easily be extended to the great majority of pieces shown here, for traditional formal definitions are pushed to the limits by these works from multiple horizons.
Having made our selection, we decided to divide the works into five genre-mixing thematic programmes. The first, “Family/Domestic,” is about the importance of the private, personal sphere as a source of images of all kinds. The second, “Identity/Portrait,” considers the question of the representation of the body and the individual’s shifting position in society. The third, “Social/Political” focuses on the present and past state of the world, and the way filmmakers, artists and documentary makers respond to its chaos. The fourth, “Urban Situation/Utopian Modernism,” questions the notions of space, architecture, design and, more generally, environment. The fifth, “Film on Film,” presents the different ways of thinking about images and their history, vertiginously exploring the limits of true and false. All reflect our actual experience of images and transgress the customary frontiers, not to create new ones but to capture the complexity and movement of a universe where trans-border exchanges have become the defining principle.
PLEASE HAVE A LOOK AT THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION:
Criss - Cross film descriptions
Criss - Cross information for interested venues
Criss - Cross press information
For further information please contact: information@nifca.org
Between Us
Director: Laurits Munch-Petersen (DK)
Genre: Fiction
Denmark, 2003 / 35 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
The film is a modern, humorous and sexy love story, which takes place during one night, in one apartment with four young Copenhageners. The little brother, Adam, invites his closest family for dinner–his beloved girlfriend, his successful big brother and his brother’s beautiful wife. They’re having a good time. But there’s a special reason for the invitation. Adam has prepared a highly untraditional plan for the night—a plan, which will make up for all the humiliation suffered in the past as a little brother… especially for one time.
Laurits Munch-Petersen
Laurits was raised in Copenhagen, where he, from an early age, started drawing comics, posters, painting, etc. At age 15, he lived in Mexico for one year with his parents. This stay inspired him to go back 7 years later to shoot his first professional film "The Circle" in the desert of Oaxaca. From 1992 he served apprenticeship at a graphical copper print workshop in Madrid, and later at Danish sculptor Bjørn Nørgaard's studio for 2 years and planned to become an illustrator/painter. But when his mentor gave him a camera to shoot a documentary about an exhibition in Estonia, Laurits' plans changed. He fell in love with the camera and stopped his apprenticeship, to start shooting his own films. As his girlfriend, for his 20-year birthday, gave him the present that he could film her under any circumstances, he planned to shoot a series of nudity scenes, but it soon developed to a longer story, and ended up being the film "Lisas Dag". After shooting "A Woman in Every Town" on a travel through Europe, starring his friend and the women they met on their trip, and the longer film in Mexico, he went to The European Film College in 1998. In 1999 he was accepted as a student of directing at The National Film School of Denmark. Graduated with the film "Mellem os" in 2003.
For more information please see: www.imdb.com
Headway
Director: Jens Jonsson (SW)
Genre: Fiction
Sweden, 2003 / 15 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
A manager visits his anorectic daughter at the hospital and holds a talk with a problematic employee at his office. A film about two conversations and about a man trying to make headway in life.
Jens Jonsson
Jens Jonsson (b. 1974 in Umeå, SE) studied graphic design 1994-1998 and film directing 1998-2001 at the Dramatiska Institutet in Stockholm. He also drew comic strips that appeared in Swedish magazines, which motivated him to make storyboards. In a relatively short time, he has written and directed many short films (including Brother of Mine, for which he received the Silver Bear in Berlin). They are striking thanks to original narrative techniques, sharp psychological insight in the characters and an emotional wisdom that is certainly surprising in view of his young age. In addition, the acting in his films is exceptionally good and the camerawork incomparable, almost always in the hands of Jonsson's regular cameraman Askild Vik Edvardsen. No one will be surprised that Jonsson is also a very popular maker of commercials, for instance for Absolut Vodka. In the last year, Jonsson has been exceptionally productive, including the masterpieces Utvecklingssamtal and A Changed Man, which was made in England. At the moment, Jonsson is working on his first feature.
A Womb of One’s Own
Artist: Gun Holmström (FI)
Genre: Art Film
Finland, 1999 / 12:45 min (Beta SP), colour & sound
The Film
The film is a documentary about a pregnant woman, who is carrying a child for her close friends, a male couple. One of them is the father of the child. Society easily condemns a woman who lends her body and gives up her child to a gay couple. The biological mother tells plainly and openly about her situation and feelings.
Gun Holmström
Gun Holmström (b. 1964 in Porvoo, Finland) lives and works in Helsinki. Her works include single video and installations. Gun Holmström has received critical acclaim for her video portraits that examine "the strange everyday world", that the artist sees around her. These works, shot in a style that sits somewhere between documentary film and home video, introduce us to characters that may be considered as being outside the norm of society. In Holmström's oeuvre, the aesthetic and the ethical are one. She explores the complex web of contradictory human emotions and situations, and addresses current social and moral issues. While Holmström often starts out with very personal experiences, the essential element is the humane nature of social communication; the individual as a social and communal being remains at the core. Gun Holmström graduated in 1993 from Turku Art Academy (FI). She is currently studying in a 2 year MA program in "Context and Media" at Valand School of Fine Art in Gothenburg (SE). Her video works have been exhibited in several international solo and group exhibitions. Holmström participated in the May 2003 residency with Gillian Wearing at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. A portfolio is available at www.gnuh.net.
16 Minutes
Artist: Annika Ström (SW)
Genre: Art Film
Sweden, 2003 / 16 min (DV), colour & sound
The Film
The artist asked her friends to identify the people in family and leisure time snapshots. Their reactions of oblivion and the gaps in memory bespeak a melancholic awareness of the fluctuating nature and impermanence of relationships, fraternal or amorous. Quick changes to different improvised sequences, accompanied by self-made and performed pop songs, with simple lyrics and electronic rhythm, keep the film at ease and vivid.
Text: Sabine Schmidt
Annika Ström
Annika Ström (b. 1964 in Helsingborg, Sweden) lives and works in Berlin since 1993. Selected exhibitions: everything in this show can be used against me at Casey Kaplan in New York City, U.S.A., 2003; Vatt på video at Charlotte Lund in Stockholm, Sweden, 2002; Songs for a Time Like This at Atle Gerhardsen in Berlin, Germany, 2001; grant for revolutionary at Goldman tevis in Los Angeles, U.S.A., 2000; Ten New Love Songs at Wiener Secession in Vienna, Austria, 1999; Manuscript Song at Galleria Sonia Rosso in Pordenone, Italy, 1999.
The Boy Below
Director: Morton Giese (DK)
Genre: Fiction
Denmark, 2003 / 30 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
Anders is a 10-year-old boy living with his father in a small flat in Copenhagen. Anders loves diving. He is going on holiday with his father to Greece, and they are both really looking forward to doing some real diving. But Anders’ father is an alcoholic. Anders’ father constantly tries to pull himself together and be a good parent, but, time and again, he ends up venting his violent temper on Anders.
Morton Giese
Morten Giese (b. 1964) graduated in Film Editing from the Danish Film School in Copenhagen in 1993. In recent years he has edited such films as Okay by Jesper W. Nielsen, The Bench and Inheritance by Per Fly. He also directed 14 episodes of the popular TV2 series The Hotel which is produced by TV2/Denmark and directed a couple of short films such as The Boy Below in 2002.
Sound Cut
Artist: Peter Geschwind (SW)
Genre: Art Film
Sweden, 2002 / 1 min (excerpt from a loop),
(Mini DV), colour & sound
The Film
In Peter Geschwind’s works the frenzy prevails. Working with everyday household items, Sound Cut has a crowd of brand products go bonkers: a ketchup bottle drops, scissors click, next, a box of washing powder skates the kitchen floor chased by a roaring vacuum cleaner in a racy sequence not unworthy of high-end animation films. Edited to the rhythmic chart of a Dead Kennedy’s song, this hilarious clip both exorcises and ridicules our often conflictive, but strangely human relationships with the world of objects. How often have you caught yourself pleading with a renitent bottle cap, trying to reason a defunct dishwasher, or cursing a humming fridge?
Edited from a text by Boris Kremer, BE Magazine, Berlin, 2002
Peter Geschwind
Peter Geschwind was born 1966. He lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.
All About My Father
Director: Even Benestad (NO)
Genre: Documentary
Norway, 2002 / 71 min (35 mm), b/w, colour & sound
The Film
Even Benestad has made a personal documentary about a well-respected medical doctor and transvestite in a small Christian town in Norway. It is directed by the one person most likely to convey his story with warmth, humour and irony—his son. Armed with a small video camera and the family’s Super 8mm films, he sat out to make a personal portrait of his transvestite father.
Even Benestad
Even Benestad studied directing at the Film and Television Academy in Oslo. “All About My Father” is his first longer work, following a number of short films and short documentaries. This film was shown in the Panorama programme of the Berlinale international Filmfestival in Berlin, in 2002.
Even Benestad / All about my Father has received the following awards and nominations:
- FIPRESCI, Int. Film Critic's Award, Gothenburg Film Festival -02.
- TEDDY for best doc, Berlin Int. Film Festival -02.
- SPECIAL DOC. PRIZE, Int. Doc. Film Festival Munich -02.
- GOLDEN AWARD, for best int. doc, HotDocs, Toronto -02.
- THE DOC. AWARD, for best doc, The Norwegian Short Film Festival -02.
- AMANDA AWARD, for best feature film, The Norwegian Int. Film Festival -02.
- AUDIENCE AWARD, Festival of Festivals, Århus –02.
- SECOND PRIZE, for best doc, Valladolid int. Film Festival -02.
- NORDIC COUNCIL'S FILM PRIZE, nominated for best feature -02.
- EUROPEAN DOCUMENTARY AWARD, nominated for best doc. -02.
- HONORABLE MENTION, The Church of Sweden –02.
- FILM CRITIC'S AWARD, for best feature film, Oslo -03.
Gösta & Lennart
Director: Babak Najafi (SW)
Genre: Documentary
Sweden, 2001 / 8 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
The bulldog Gösta was bought at the insistence of Lennart’s ex-partner. The love faded, and the dog was left in Lennart’s care. Gösta and Lennart have now become the perfect couple.
Babak Najafi
Babak Najafi (b. 1975 in Iran) studied documentary film directing at the Dramatiska Institutet in Stockholm and has made the following films: Gösta & Lennart, Pablo's Birthday, Skolan and Elixir.
Meet You in Finland Angel
Artist: Veli Granö (FI)
Genre: Documentary
Finland, 2003 / 35 min (35 mm), b/w, colour & sound
The Film
Tähteläiset, »star people«, believe that they’re descended from another planet. One or both of their parents might be visitors from space. Some of the star people are residents of far-away planets who have moved to Earth. Many of the star people do not know their origin, but it is estimated (according to the New Age press) that there are as many as tens of thousands on our planet.
Author Anne Pajuluoma and artist Jarmo Ylänen from Helsinki do not lead an ordinary life. Their life, harsh and materially meagre, is surrounded by a world of miracles. They miss their lost daughter, who is growing up on the planet Sirius C. Unexpected visitors from other planets protect their everyday life, and Jarmo paints his powerful paintings in collaboration with van Gogh.
Veli Granö
Veli Granö (b. 1960 in Kajaani, Finland) is a visual artist, photographer and filmmaker, living and working in Helsinki. He studied 1983-1986 at the Lahti Design Institute in Lahti, FI. He has taught at the Lahti Design Institute, University of Art and Design Helsinki, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.
His works cover solo exhibition projects, group-exhibitions, films and videos, as well as, books and other publications. He was awarded the Ducat Prize for young artist in Finland in 1992, the Pronze award of the 23rd Houston International Film Festival, USA in 1999, the Prize of State of Finland for Finnish Photographer in 2002, and the Risto Jarva Award of the 33rd Tampere International Film Festival in Finland in 2003.
Another Breathing
Artist: Egle Rakauskaite (LI)
Genre: Art Film
Lithuania, 2001-2003 / 6 min (Mini DV), b/w & sound
The Film
The video consists of five film-interviews with elderly people from Alaska, Lithuania, Russia, Austria and Italy. Elderly people discuss old age, death, loss and fate. The issues are discussed both as a sequence of personal events of their own choice and as predetermined by external circumstances. Black and white images, subtle editing and the slow rhythm of repeated questions create a classical stillness and monumentality. The variety of psychological characters is unified by the topic with a humanist tinge. The film is an interesting study of 20th century European and American identity, revealing different aspects of the mentality of various nations and their closeness in humanist values.
Egle Rakauskaite
Egle Rakauskaite could be easily regarded as an artist engaged in effacing the boundary between art and life. Earlier in her professional life she produced objects and installations made of non-painterly and non- sculptural materials, but of natural and everyday materials instead. These were either suggesting a process or involving decay, that is, they were, as ‘everything in life’, submitted to the workings of time. She made performances and live sculptures, media usually taken to be so closely bonded to life, as they necessitate the presence of the human body. Egle Rakauskaite is an artist who understands that as soon as she starts to work with ‘real life’, she is undertaking the process of undoing it, rather than producing artworks in which a happy interface of life and art takes place.
(From Bojana Pejic. Art cum Life, or Does Your Mother Know What You Are
Doing?)
For more informationplease see: www.rakauskaite.com
Screaming Men
Director: Mika Ronkainen (FI)
Genre: Documentary
Finland, 2003 / 73 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
Meet the choir of screaming men that travels from Finland to Tokyo, with the goal of getting photographs of their Japanese audience while performing the Japanese national anthem. Meet the choir that screams the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, even though the museum and the embassy of Finland try to prevent them. Meet the choir that deals with nationalism, fascism, and power and can only be led by a total dictator. Screaming Men is a film about power, nationalism, intransigence and firm belief in your own art. The film follows the choir during a time span of five years, both in Finland and on international tours in France, Japan, and Iceland. Similarly to the choir, the documentary walks the thin line between the deadly serious and the absurd.
www.klaffi.com/screamingmen
Mika Ronkainen
Mika Ronkainen (b. 1970) lives and works in northern Finland. Screeming Men is his theatrical distribution debut. In addition, his work includes prize-winning and acclaimed documentaries Our Summer, Car Bonus, Before the Flood, Father's Day, and Oulu Burning. In his films Ronkainen has predominantly depicted social and political themes. Ronkainen was a member of the screaming choir 1994-1998.
Boygirl
Artist: Aurora Reinhard (FI)
Genre: Art Film
Finland, 2002 / 11:57 min (Mini DV), colour & sound
The Film
Boygirl is a delicate video about three girls who can’t identify themselves simply as female or male. The video is about feeling different and misplaced in everyday life.
Aurora Reinhard
Aurora Reinhard (b. 1975 in Helsinki) lives and works in Helsinki. 1995-2003 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki where she got a MFA degree. She also studied at the International Center For Photography, New York, U.S.A. and at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden at the department of Film and Photography.
The Diver
Director: PV Lehtinen (FI)
Genre: Documentary
Finland, 2000 / 21 min (35 mm), b/w & sound
The Film
»Diving is like poetry, each movement flowing into the next«. The Diver is a hymn to diving and the aesthetics of movement. Helge Wasenius (b. 1927), the main character in the film, was the almost sovereign swim diving champion of Finland and the Nordic countries for two decades, representing Finland at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Parallel to his professional career, he pursued another career as a children’s favourite clown diver. His speciality was dangling, cold-bloodedly, head downwards, high on a diving platform, hanging by his feet. In the film he decides to perform the stunt one last time, before making his final plunge into the unknown, even though all the water has been drained from the pool. The film takes place at the Helsinki Swimming Stadium, scene of the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics.
PV Lehthinen
PV Lehtinen (born in Helsinki) has been studying film at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. Besides directing and screenwriting, he has also worked as film editor.
Stayceyann Chin
Director: Ulrik Wivel (DK)
Genre: Documentary
Denmark, 2001 / 28 min (DigiBeta), colour & sound
The Film
Staceyann Chin, aged 29, is one of America’s most respected and popular poetry slammers. Driven by her strong and musical talent for words and a personal rage, she has taken Poetry Slam as an artistic expression very far. This film is a portrait of her. It tells her story, and lets her introduce the audience to »the athletics of poetry«. Poetry Slam originated in the mid-1980s in Chicago, when a poet came up with the idea of a poetry competition to entertain the Sunday regulars at a bar. Several years later the phenomenon has caught on nationwide in the US.
Ulrik Wivel
Ulrik Wivel (b. 1967), after a course in script writing at Columbia University in 1998, worked as assistant on the writer Paul Auster’s film Lulu on The Bridge. The same year he worked as assisting assistant director on Olsens Bandens sidste strik. In 1999 he was assisting production manager and assistant photographer on Jørgen Leth’s film about Søren Ulrik Thomsen. Since then he has worked as production manager for Anne Belle on her film Stanley Williams. Ulrik Wivel made his debute as film director in 2000 with the film Dancer. Aside from this, he is doing the preparing work for a film about Roskilde Festival.
Ulrik Wivel is a ballet graduate of The Danish Royal Theatre, and has danced as a soloist in the Danish Royal Ballet., The National Ballet of Canada, Pacific North West Ballet and The New York City Ballet. He ended his dancing career in 1998 and has since then been involved in the making of films.
(From: www.barokfilm.dk)
Suite for Two
Director: Marko Raat (EST + DK)
Genre: Fiction
Estonia + UK, 2003 /15:40 min (Beta SP), colour & sound
The Film
The feature is about moral blackmail and the exploitation of power. A rich woman returns to her hotel suite to
discover one of the young maids going through her belongings and trying on her clothes and jewellery.
Rather than report her, the older woman subjects the girl to verbal and physical violence. The harmless Cinderella-game turns into a cruel game in which the maid becomes an object on which the woman vents all her frustration and dissatisfaction with life.
Marko Raat
Marko Raat graduated from film school in Tallinn in 1998 (specialty: director). He has made documentaries, video art works, shorts, TV productions and has been involved in several art projects. He is also a freelance film critic. In 2004 he made his first theatre production as a director.
Hidden
Directors: David Aronowitsch, Hanna Heilborn and Mats Johansson (SW)
Genre: Animated Documentary
Sweden, 2002 / 8 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
The film is based on an interview with twelve-year-old Giancarlo. He lives as a hidden refugee in Sweden. Documentary sound, from the real interview made by Hanna Heilborn and David Aronowitsch in August 1999, is combined with art work by Mats Johansson, animated in 3-D. The directors aim to create a level where you can listen to and absorb the story of one refugee child in a new way.
David Aronowitsch
David Aronowitsch (b. 1964) has worked with documentary films the last ten years. He studied film directing 1988-1992 at the polish National Film School in Lodz. He has done shorter and longer documentary films for the Swedish Film Institute and The Swedish public service television company (SVT). He has also worked as producer for the television series Ikon for SVT. He is co-owner of the production company Story AB. Recently he has done the short animated documentary Hidden with Hannah Heilborn and Mats Johansson. It has been awarded with several prizes, Best International Short in Hot Docs, Canadian International Documentary Festival and Fajr International Film Festival in Iran. It also got honorary mention at Nordic Panorama 2002.
Hannah Heilborn
Hanna Heilborn (b. in 1968) studied at the Dramatiska Institutet in Sweden from 1994-1996 and at the New York Film School in 1994. She produced the radio documentary “Miriam, Miriam” together with David Aronowitsch.
Who Hangs the Laundry?
Director: Hrabba Gunnarsdóttir (IS)
Genre: Documentary
Iceland, 2001 / 20 min (DV), colour & sound
The Film
The personal documentary is about washing, war and electricity in Beirut, and about the aftermath of war.In an unanticipated happening, the Icelandic filmmaker Hrabba Gunnarsdóttir and the Lebanese human rights advocate Tina Naccache »collide« in Tina’s Beirut apartment on washing day. Plagued by the lack of water and electricity, as a result of the wars, Tina describes the gymnastics of doing the laundry. As we watch Tina scrub the filmmaker’s pants and intimately move through the privacy of her home, her non-conformist and articulate views on feminism, war and servitude are revealed. With most of the footage shot in less than two hours, Who Hangs the Laundry? communicates clearly, yet in a raw manner, an experience and outlook on war.
Hrabba Gunnarsdóttir
Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir is a native of Iceland. She has been working in film since the late eighties. Besides directing, Hrabba has worked as a cinematographer and editor on films by Lynn Hershman, Tom Shepard, Mark Huestis and others. Hrabba's films include "Corpus Camera" 1999; "Who Hangs the Laundry", 2002, "Straight Out", 2003, “Alive in Limbo”, 2004.
Der Fall Joseph
Artist: Petra Bauer (SW)
Genre: Art Film
Sweden, 2003 / 47 min (DVCam), colour & sound
The Film
In 2001 Petra read an article in a Swedish newspaper about a six-year-old German-Iraqi boy, who was found dead on the bottom of a swimming pool in a small town in eastern Germany in 1997. According to the article, the boy’s parents soon began to suspect that their son did not drown but was murdered by a gang of Neo-Nazis. The boy’s mother is German and his father is Iraqi.
Petra became interested in the case and started to investigate it. Based on Petra’s research, the film addresses what affected the actions and interpretations of the different actors involved in the case, and how a certain opinion eventually got the preferential right of interpretation and was experienced as the truth.
Petra Bauer
Petra Bauer (b. 1970 in Malmö, Sweden) studied 1997-2003 at the Malmö Art Academy and also got a teaching degree in politics and psychology in Stockholm. Her work has been shown at several film festivals.
War on Paranoia
Director: Jannicke Systad Jacobsen
Genre: Documentary
Norway, 2003 / 4 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
War on Paranoia is a small protest film on the circumstances at the American embassy in Oslo, Norway, after September 11th, 2001. It is also a film the embassy tried its best to stop from being made.
Jannicke Systad Jacobsen
Jannicke Systad Jacobsen (b. 1975) has studied film directing with focus on documentaries at FAMU – The National Filmschool of the Czech Republic and London International Film School. She has also studied Dramaturgy/Drama and Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo.
Films directed by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen: Nothing to Hide (1998), her graduation film at LIFS, A Little Red Dot (2001), The Stamp and the Lighthouse (2002), War on Paranoia (2003), Klovnebarna, a short film that is still in production (2004) and the TV documentary Sandman - The Story of a Socialist Superman (2004) which is also still in production.
(From: www.nfi.org)
Three Poems by Spoon Jackson
Director: Michel Wenzer (SW)
Genre: Documentary
Sweden, 2003 / 14 min (Super 8), colour & sound
The Film
»My name is Spoon Jackson. I’m an actor, poet and writer, perhaps, sometimes philosopher. I’m also a human being who did a hurtful deed back in 1977. I’ve been in prison since that time…« Serving a life sentence in his native USA, Spoon Jackson reads out his poems over a crackling telephone line from jail. In this moving and poetic short film, his verse is blended with imagery and music.
Michel Wenzer
Michel Wenzer (b. 1968 in Vantör, Sweden) is a composer, photographer and director living in Stockholm and on Gotland, Sweden.
Anagram
Artist: Annika Eriksson (SW)
Genre: Art Film
Sweden, 2001 / 7 min loop (DV), colour & sound
Music: John Caldor
The Film
Annika Eriksson works with groups who are used to doing things together, and asks them to do something over and above their ordinary activities. In Anagram the artist collaborates with the MOOMS teatern in Malmö, Sweden. The troupe performs a swinging choreography, based on and including a sentence chosen by the artist. Usually the unedited videos are filmed in one go and with a steady camera, and they document and accompany each project. Like a visual echo, the films are often also shown, either in the vicinity of, or in the place, where they were filmed. A characteristic of Annika Eriksson’s art, in terms of subject and design, is seeming simplicity—with the stress on »seeming«. She is interested in the almost invisible bonds and contexts, which for better or worse, work to glue society.
Extract from a text by Maria Lind, 2002.
Annika Eriksson
Annika Eriksson (b. in Malmö, Sweden), lives in Berlin.
Professor at the Art Academy in Malmö
DAAD stipendium, Berlin 2002/2003
Selected exhibitions:
2004
“Do you want an Audience?, commission for Frieze Art Fair, London
“BerlinNorth”, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
2003
“Arbeitswelt”, Kunstverein, München
“Spectacular”, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf”
2002
“Fixation:Notions of Obsession”Lopez Memorial Museum, Manilla
25th Bienal de Sao Paulo
2001
“Everything can be different”, ICI, Independent Curators International, New York
“Vi-Intentional Communities”, Rooseum, Malmö and CAC, Villnius
2000
“Democracy”, Royal College of Art Galleries, London
“Organizing Freedom”, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Charlottenburg, Köpenhamn
1999
”Sociale Sabotage”, Der Standard, Museum in Progress, Vienna
”Art and Entertainment”, Chicago Project Room
1998
”Collectors”, Moderna Museet Projekt, Stockholm
”Do all Oceans have Walls?”, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen
1997
”X-squared”, Sessesion, Vienna
”Letter and Event”, Apex Art, New York
1996
”Now-Here/Work in Progress”, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen
”I am curious/Come and see us”, Independent Art Space, London
Grandmother, Hitler and I
Director: Carl Johan De Geer (SW)
Genre: Documentary
Sweden, 2000 / 17 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
To most people, condemning Nazism is a matter of common sense. But not to all. Carl Johan De Geer lived, as a child for a few years, with his grandmother who was a Nazi, even after World War II. Carl Johan did not know that he should have been ashamed of his grandmother. He loved her. He never understood what went on in her mind, and it was not until after she had died that he started to think about it and wonder: I loved my grandmother. She was a good person. A Nazi cannot possibly be a good person. That is the paradox of the film.
Carl Johan De Geer
Carl Johan De Geer (b. 1938) is a photographer, filmmaker, writer, artist, a popular lecturer, etc. He has worked with the TV series Tårtan, Doktor Krall and Privatdetektiven Kant. He is the author of the books Det bombade ögat, Med kameran som tröst, Kyss mej dödligt and Örnis bilar. Furthermore he has done scenography and fabric design.
A Little Red Dot
Director: Jannicke Systad Jacobsen (NO)
Genre: Documentary
Norway, 2001 / 5:16 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
Once there was a large country and a small island that didn’t get on very well. Many years ago a lot of people escaped from the large country to the small island. After staying a while on the small island, they were allowed to write letters to relatives and friends in the large country. The letters never arrived, because the large country didn’t like the stamp. The film is a visual fable about what happened when the postal service between China and Taiwan was re-opened after nearly forty years.
Jannicke Systad Jacobsen
Jannicke Systad Jacobsen (b. 1975) has studied film directing with focus on documentaries at FAMU – The National Filmschool of the Czech Republic and London International Film School. She has also studied Dramaturgy/Drama and Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo.
Films directed by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen: Nothing to Hide (1998), her graduation film at LIFS, A Little Red Dot (2001), The Stamp and the Lighthouse (2002), War on Paranoia (2003), Klovnebarna, a short film that is still in production (2004) and the TV documentary Sandman - The Story of a Socialist Superman (2004) which is also still in production.
(From: www.nfi.org)
Habibti, My Love
Director: Pernille Fischer Christensen (DK)
Genre: Fiction
Denmark, 2002 / 30 min (35 mm), colour & sound
The Film
Without the knowledge of her family or friends, 24-year-old Zahra, a medical student born in Pakistan, is passionately involved with a 27-year-old fellow student, Mads. She regularly tells people she is on duty in the Accident and Emergency ward, but in fact spends the night at Mads’, while making sure she gets home early enough to get breakfast for her father and younger brother. However, one morning Zahra’s relationship with her family becomes extremely acute as her secret life is accidentally revealed.
Pernille Fischer Christensen
Pernille Fischer Christensen (b. 1969 in Copenhagen, Denmark) graduated with the film India from the Danish Film School in 1999. Her films are Poesie Album, SFC (1994), Pigen som var søster and Honda Honda (1994-1996) and Habibti my Love (2002). Her next work is a feature called The Soap and is to be shot this spring.
Rocco Goes Berserk in Norway
Artist: Matias Faldbakken (NO)
Genre: Art Film
Norway, 2003 / 4:35 min (DVD-video), colour & sound
The Film
The video tells a story about the Italian anarchist Rocco, who goes to Norway to carry out his anarchist and anti-capitalist vision. This vision is based on the notion that the file-sharing network Gnutella has accomplished anarchy on a virtual level. It undermines the logic and processes of economic exchange. Rocco wants to realise this system in real life.
Matias Faldbakken
Matias Faldbakken (b. 1973 in Hobro, Denmark) studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Bergen, NO 1994-1998 and the Staatlich Hochschule für Bildende Kuenste, Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main, Germany (prof. Thomas Bayrle) 1996-1997. In 2004 Faldbakken showed his work at the Biennale of Sydney, Kunst-Werke, Berlin, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Kunstverein München and Momentum - the Nordic Festival of Contemporary Art. In 2005 he will represent Norway in the Nordic Pavilion at the 51st Biennale of Venice. He also works as a writer and has published two novels that are (or will be during 2005) translated into German, Danish, Finnish, Russian and Spanish.
For Aesthetic Reasons
Director: Marko Raat (EST)
Genre: Documentary
Estonia + Denmark, 1999 / 28 min (Mini DV),
colour & sound
The Film
How does the Danish society react if a person wants to stay in the country but his motives are primarily aesthetic? The film For Aesthetic Reasons portrays the young Estonian art historian Andres Kurg who goes to Denmark and, at the director’s instigation, turns to all kinds of institutions with an attempt to seek permission to settle down in Denmark because he likes the environment. »For purely aesthetic reasons«, as he claims. As Eastern Europe is still a no-man’s land, the migrant-aesthete from the Baltics tends to arouse suspicion on an ethical level. The only practical advice that the Danish can give Andres Kurg—and this is on an ethical level as well - is to marry a Danish woman. Lovers will not be separated by law!
Marko Raat
Marko Raat graduated from film school in Tallinn in 1998 (specialty: director). He has made documentaries, video art works, shorts, TV productions and has been involved in several art projects. He is also a freelance film critic. In 2004 he made his first theatre production as a director.
Outside the Living-Room
Artist: Pia Rönicke (DK)
Genre: Art Film
Denmark, 2000 / 9:10 min (Computer Animation)
colour & sound
The Film
The film is an investigation of the garden, an attempt to reconcile nature with urbanism. Rönicke’s strange visions include Manhattan skyscrapers, surrounded by dense forest, and rice fields on top of Mies van der Rohe’s Lake Shore Drive Apartments. The visions are as utopians of a restored balance between urbanism and nature. In the film, collage is used as a medium with images from popular culture. Rönicke also criticises modernism’s way of presupposing one particular way of living. In her pieces, Rönicke takes on the role of a kind of a poetic urban planner. By presenting her subjective utopias, she is on one hand revealing a possible future, and on the other, reflecting on their utopian character.
Text: Henrikke Nielsen
Pia Rönicke
Pia Rönicke (b. 1974 in Roskilde, Denmark) studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art . 1995-1999 and at the Californian Institute of the Arts 1999-2001.
Future Is Not What It Used To Be
Director: Mika Taanila (FI)
Genre: Documentary
Finland, 2002 / 52 min (S16, 8 mm, DV Cam)
b/w, colour & sound
The Film
A documentary film about Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941), whose career represents a surprisingly natural blend of music, film, computers, robotics, science and art. His project, of collecting everything around him, will perhaps be the most significant of all his works. Kurenniemi records his thoughts, observations, objects and images, constantly, with manic precision, and with the ultimate goal of merging man and machine reconstructing the human soul.
Mika Taanila
Mika Taanila (b. 1965) lives and works in Helsinki. He belongs to the first generation of young artists who began studying video art at a time when the independent video sector began to emerge alongside traditional filmmaking and even more traditional television work. Taanila studied video at the Institute of Design of the Lahti Polytechnic 1989–92. He has also studied cultural anthropology at Helsinki University.
Taanila has designed and directed documentaries as well as music videos. The core of his documentary work is the 'Science & Progress' trilogy consisting of Robocup99 (1999, 25:00, 35 mm), Futuro – A New Stance for Tomorrow (1998, 29:00, 35 mm) and Thank You for the Music (1997, 24:00, 35mm), each of which investigate, from its own angle, the development of technology into an integral part of our society. The films are media archaeological treasures, unearthing the foundations of what we call the media society.
Taanila has shown his work and won awards at several video and film festivals both in Finland and abroad. For example, his work Birdy placed fifth in MTV Europe's music video competition. His documentary Futuro won the first prize in the national competition at Tampere Film Festival in 1999, and Thank You For The Music a special prize in 1997. He was also awarded a special prize in 2000 at Internationaler Medien Kunstpreis, the largest media art competition in Europe.
Taanila is also an active expert in the sphere of audiovisual culture, and he is the director of Avanto, the most important festival in the field in Finland.
(From: www.kiasma.fi)
Shouter
Artist: Gintaras Makarevicius (LT)
Genre: Art Film
Lithuania, 2002 / 3 min (Mini DV), b/w & sound
The Film
Fragments from a rough everyday conflict, recorded at night, become laconic titles on a screen without an image. The phrases that appear, one after the other, across the empty stretch of the video monitor—»Open the door!«, »Why are you silent?«, »Can you hear me?«, etc. do not correspond to the aggression and tension of the soundtrack in the headphones. Like a skilled surgeon, the author has separated the sounds in the original tape, cut out non-Lithuanian words, translated the remaining text into English, and realized his intention with formal means only—the Gothic lettering on the black screen. What he has achieved is the complete sterilization of conflict.
Text from: Walls for NATO, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, 2001
Gintaras Makarevicius
Gintaras Makarevicius (b. 1965 in Trakai, Lithuania) studied painting at the Vilnius Academy of Arts 1988-1994.
Helsinki Shipyard
Artist: Laura Horelli (FI)
Genre: Art Film
Finland, 2002-2003 / 13 min (Mini DV), colour & sound
The Film
The film presents interviews and images from a shipyard in Finland that builds cruise ships. Short sequences from cruise vessels in operation at the port-of-call of San Juan are also shown. The film attempts to address the division of work and to concentrate, especially, on the »invisible work« involved in this popular leisure industry. Employees from various departments of the company were asked to describe their work and their personal views on different aspects of the industry. The interviews were conducted during working hours.
Helsinki Shipyard has been further developed into the video installation Helsinki Shipyard/Port San Juan.
Laura Horelli
Laura Horelli (b. 1976 in Helsinki) lives and works in Berlin. 1997-2002 she studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule, Klasse Bayrle in Frankfurt, Germany, and 1995-2001 at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, Department of Time and Space. Selected Solo Exhibitions took place at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck, Austria and in 2003 You Go Where You’re Sent at the Galerie Barbara Weiss in Berlin.
Filter City
Artist: Knut Åsdam (NO)
Genre: Art Film
Norway + Switzerland, 2003 / 21 min (35 mm),
colour & sound
The Film
Filter City focuses on two women, their relation to each other and to a city that is in transformation architectonically, politically and socially. The film uses scenes from modern apartment complexes that resonate with different Western cities. The urban spaces that they use are both »theirs« to use, but also out of their economic or social control. The characters narrate the spaces they inhabit and use, and also their desires for friendship, intimacy and meaning. The women’s relationship develops through placement and through their different use of language where in fact they are talking to, yet past each other. One character attempts adopting a searching and affirmative use of language, while the other uses a depressed speech as her social medium.
Knut Åsdam
Knut Åsdam (b. 1968 in Trondheim, Norway) lives in New York and Son, Norway.
For more information please see: www.knutasdam.net.
Stockholm-75
Director: David Aronowitsch (SW)
Genre: Documentary
Sweden, 2003 / 58 min (DVCam and 16mm)
b/w, colour & sound
The Film
In April 1975, Commando Holger Meins occupies the West German Embassy in Stockholm. They want to force the release of RAF prisoners in Germany, including Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin. The occupation lasts twelve hours and ends in defeat for the occupants. Left is a blown up Embassy and four people dead, two of them executed by the occupants. Karl-Heinz Dellwo is arrested and sentenced to jail. He is 23 years old. Twenty years later, in 1995, he is released from prison. Today he lives in Hamburg with his girlfriend Ella, also a former terrorist, or activist, as she rather calls herself. He works as a manager in a small software-company. Karl-Heinz has succeeded in creating a new life for himself, but he will always be aunted by his violent past.
David Aronowitsch
David Aronowitsch (b. 1964) has worked with documentary films the last ten years. He studied film directing 1988-1992 at the polish National Film School in Lodz. He has done shorter and longer documentary films for the Swedish Film Institute and The Swedish public service television company (SVT). He has also worked as producer for the television series Ikon for SVT. He is co-owner of the production company Story AB. Recently he has done the short animated documentary Hidden with Hannah Heilborn and Mats Johansson. It has been awarded with several prizes, Best International Short in Hot Docs, Canadian International Documentary Festival and Fajr International Film Festival in Iran. It also got honorary mention at Nordic Panorama 2002.
Countdown for 2000 Broken Dreams
Artist: Andrea Lange (NO)
Genre: Art Film
Norway, 2003 / 8:24 min (Mini DV), colour & sound
The Film
The takes for this video were made on the final day of the last millennium, on new year’s eve 1999. While preparing for the big New Year’s celebration, Lange became aware of the fact that people in the hotel rooms across from her house, all were doing the same thing. In the background Radio NRK P3 was continuously playing Motorpsycho’s Vortex Surfer, as a countdown for the new millennium.
Andrea Lange
Andrea Lange (b. 1967 in Norway) lives and works in Oslo. Lange is educated at The National Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen, Norway and Accademia di Belle Arti Pietro Vanucci in Perugia, Italy. She works with various medias, such as photography, audio and video installations. Issues concerning identity and cultural encounters and diversity are often central in her artistic approach. Lange has participated in a number of exhibitions, among them the Enzimi Festival in Rome, MOMENTUM 04 – Nordic Biennial for Contemporary Art, Fundamentalisms of the New Order at Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Refuge at Henie Onstad Artcentre, Oslo, Milano Europa 2000 La Triennale di Milano, Melbourne International Biennial and the UKS Biennial 98. Most recent solo shows at Henie Onstad Artcentre and with the project Arabic Lesson at the Stenersenmuseum in Oslo.
The Five Obstructions
Directors: Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier (DK)
Genre: Documentary
Denmark, 2003 / 90 min (16 mm & Video),
b/w, colour & sound
The Film
Together with Danish documentary film veteran Jørgen Leth, Lars von Trier enters the world of documentary filmmaking. They take on the task of challenging conventional ways of documentary and film production. In 1967 Jørgen Leth made a 13 minutes short film, The Perfect Human, a documentary on human behaviour. In the year 2000, von Trier challenged Leth to make five remakes of this film. Von Trier put forward obstructions, constraining Leth to re-think the story and the characters of the original film. Playing the naïve anthropologist, Leth attempts to embrace the cunning challenges, set forth by the devious and sneaky von Trier. He must deal with the limitations, commands and prohibitions. It is a game full of traps and vicious turns. The Five Obstructions is an investigative journey into the phenomenon of filmmaking.
Jørgen Leth
Jørgen Leth (b. 1937) is a film director, producer, poet and television commentator. Leth is a significant figure amongst documentary filmmakers in Denmark as well as abroad. He has made more than thirty films, many of which have been distributed worldwide. The poetic and visual qualities in his films have given viewers an awareness for sport as a classical drama. Furthermore, he is a professor at the National Film School in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the State Studiocenter in Oslo, Norway, and has lectured at Harvard, UCLA, Berkeley and other American universities. Among his awards are the Thomas Mann Award 1972, the Danish Academy’s Special Prize 1983, the Paul Hammerich Award in 1992, in 1995 the Drachmann Award for his literary oeuvre, and the Robert Award 1996 and 2000. Since 1995, Leth is a recipient of a life-long grant from the Danish State for his achievements in film-making. Jørgen Leths films have won numerous awards at international film festivals. Among others: the main prize in Oberhausen several times, and in the Perth, Adelaide, Portland, Locarno and other festivals, such as several Hugo awards at the Chicago International Film Festival. The most recent was The Golden Plaque in Chicago, 1996, for "HAITI, UNTITLED" as Best Documentary. Jørgen Leth has been living in Haiti since 1991, where he is the Honorary Consul appointed by Her Majesty The Queen of Denmark.
Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier (b. 1956) graduated from The Danish Film School in 1983. He is widely considered to be the prime mover behind the current revival of Danish filmmaking and has made a significant impact on a new generation of directors both in his home country and around the world, not least because of his central role in Dogme95.
Von Trier’s film work ranges from the avant-garde to reinterpretations of classical genres. His earliest shorts were stylistically inventive explorations of themes and symbols that would later play a central role in his feature films and von Trier developed a mode of cinematic expression that was at once heavily symbolic and emotionally intense.
Lars von Trier established himself both in Denmark and internationally with the Europa Trilogy. Illuminating the traumas of Europe in the future, the Europa Trilogy is characterised by a personal, experimental style of filmmaking. The trilogy consists of:
1984 THE ELEMENT OF CRIME
1987 EPIDEMIC
1991 EUROPA (ZENTROPA)
In 1991 Lars von Trier and EUROPA’s producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen established their own company, Zentropa Entertainments, which has grown to become a leading force in Scandinavian film production.
Lars von Trier has made two TV productions: MEDEA in 1988 and THE KINGDOM I & ll in 1994 and 1997, the latter co-directed with Morten Arnfred. It was with THE KINGDOM series that Lars von Trier created a technical style, which made it easier to focus on the story and the actors. It was an insight that would later draw him to the Dogme concept. THE KINGDOM was shot mostly with a hand-held camera, ignoring the usual rules of lighting, continuity and editing, resulting in distorted colours and grainy pictures. The series became von Trier’s first huge popular success. The level of Danish and international interest in THE KINGDOM made it possible for von Trier and his producers Peter Aalbæk Jensen and Vibeke Windeløv to fund his next big project.
The second trilogy, "The Golden-Heart Trilogy", was inspired by a sentimental children's book from von Trier’s childhood about a little girl who is always ready to sacrifice herself to help others. This trilogy consists of:
1996 BREAKING THE WAVES
1998 THE IDIOTS
2000 DANCER IN THE DARK
In 1995, Lars von Trier presented the Dogme95 Manifesto with its “Vow of Chastity” laying down 10 rules for filmmaking. The manifesto was signed by von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (FESTEN, winner of the Special Jury Prize in Cannes).
All of Lars von Trier’s feature films have been officially selected by the Cannes International Film Festival and they have been awarded seven prizes, including the Grand Prix du Jury for BREAKING THE WAVES and the Palme d’Or for DANCER IN THE DARK. His feature films and his work for television have won a host of international prizes, including an Oscar nomination for Emily Watson in “Breaking the Waves”.
Lars von Trier is currently working on his third trilogy "USA -- land of opportunities" of which DOGVILLE is the first film. The second part of the trilogy, MANDERLAY, is currently in pre-production in Filmbyen, Denmark. In 2006 Lars von Trier will add another dimension to his career when he directs Richard Wagner’s ”Das Ring Des Nibelung” at the Bayreuth Festspiele in Germany. Pre-production for the opera has already begun.
Project for a Revolution
Artist: Johanna Billing (SW)
Genre: Art Film
Sweden, 2000 / 2 x 3:11 min (excerpts from a loop)
(DV), colour & sound
The Film
The film takes as its departure a moment in Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970), but it is set in present-day Sweden. In the video the camera pans through a room, where a large crowd of young people are assembled but not, yet, to interact or perhaps even talk to one another. Instead they seem to be caught in a moment, seemingly waiting for something.
Johanna Billing
Johanna Billing (b. 1973 in Jönköping, Sweden) is an artist who lives and works in Stockholm. Billing works mainly with video and parallel also with music and performance events through the label Make it happen. Recent exhibitions include: "Delayed on Time", Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia, "Collect Call", H.arta, Timisoara, Romania, the first Prague Biennale; 50th Venice Biennale; the 4th Gwangju Biennale, and "Studio Works" at Milch/Gainsborough Studios in London. Billing has most recently been working on the extensive and ongoing film and music performance tour You don't love me yet 2002-2004.
Urban Fiction
Artist: Pia Rönicke (DK)
Genre: Art Film
Denmark, 2003 / 21 min (DVCam and Animation),
colour & sound
The Film
The storyboard for the film collides with ideas of an urban plan, where the urban fiction becomes the point of interest. An everyday urban subject narrates different urban ideologies. You find him sitting in a café, going to the Laundromat, driving through the city, sitting in a park. The urban ideologies take form around a ’conversation’ between Le Corbusier and Constant - with no defined borders of what statement belongs to one or the other. This conversation develops into an undefined territory of new statements about the urban landscape. The storyboard of the film shifts between the activities of the urban subject and the drawings, and the mapping of the urban ideologies. The activities of the urban subject become a text of different ideologies, and the mapping of the city a landscape for the urban fiction to take place. The structure of the film borrows parts from Godard’s Masculin-Féminin (1966). The »conversation« between two subjects is represented as poles, redrawn and repulsed by each other, unable to exist without the other. As Constant could not exist without Le Corbusier, and as the latter could not be defined as the master without a revolting other.
Text: Pia Rönicke
Pia Rönicke
Pia Rönicke (b. 1974 in Roskilde, Denmark) studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art . 1995-1999 and at the Californian Institute of the Arts 1999-2001.
Helmut
Director: Anri Rulkov (ES)
Genre: Documentary
Estonia, 2001 / 23 min (Beta SP), colour & sound
The Film
The arrival of Helmut, a queer old projectionist, causes a sequence of strange events in a small village. Many questions are left unanswered. The film is an attempt to reconstruct the past, to find out what really happened and realise that the truth is always relative.
Anri Rulkov
Director Anri Rulkov (b. 1972) studied Film at the University of Education in Tallinn 1996-2001. He has been making documentaries and short films since 1998.
Hot
Artist: Gintaras Makarevicius (LT)
Genre: Art Film
Lithuania, 1999 / 12 min (Mini DV), b/w, colour & sound
The Film
An abandoned factory canteen, typical of the 60s and 70s, has inspired the idea to revive and reconstruct the memory of the real people who used to work in the factory. Authentic dishes of the 60s and 70s are served, the people who used to work and have lunch there are invited, and their stories about that time are heard. Four toasts said during the lunch became the basis for editing the video film. The original idea, about a meeting of real people, in a real place, and their confrontation with the past, contained a promise of nostalgia. However, the toasts revealed a relevant current issue - social instability. The mode of thinking expressed in the toasts has been juxtaposed with archive footage from the opening of the same factory canteen. The film is an example of creating history and ideology - shaped thinking.
Gintaras Makarevicius
Gintaras Makarevicius (b. 1965 in Trakai, Lithuania) studied painting at the Vilnius Academy of Arts 1988-1994.
Been in Video
Artist: Annika Ström (SW)
Genre: Art Film
Sweden, 2001 / 1:55 min (DV), colour & sound
The Film
Many people have been featured in Annika Ström’s videos, some several times, and some never. Some still have hope to take part in one. Some have, luckily, been filmed, but then been humiliated by being cut out. In this film Annika interviews friends and relatives and asks them how they experienced it.
Annika Ström
Annika Ström (b. 1964 in Helsingborg, Sweden) lives and works in Berlin since 1993. Selected exhibitions: everything in this show can be used against me at Casey Kaplan in New York City, U.S.A., 2003; Vatt på video at Charlotte Lund in Stockholm, Sweden, 2002; Songs for a Time Like This at Atle Gerhardsen in Berlin, Germany, 2001; grant for revolutionary at Goldman tevis in Los Angeles, U.S.A., 2000; Ten New Love Songs at Wiener Secession in Vienna, Austria, 1999; Manuscript Song at Galleria Sonia Rosso in Pordenone, Italy, 1999.
White Flight
Artist: Mats Hjelm (SW)
Genre: Art Film
Sweden, 1997 / Ca. 40 min (DV, 16mm and Beta SP), b/w, colour & sound
The Film
The film tells the history of the Black-Power movement in the USA. In 1968 Mats Hjelm’s father Lars, a renowned documentary filmmaker and journalist, filmed the racial unrest in Detroit and some of the protagonists of the Black Panther. Thirty years later, Mats Hjelm revisited his father’s journey. White Flight combines historical black-and-white documentary material from the sixties with newly filmed colour footage, depicting some of the same places and sometimes also the protagonists from back then. The result is an incisive analysis and a preoccupation with how the past continues to affect the present or is, possibly, forever lost. At the same time, White Flight is Hjelm’s way of artistically taking leave from his father who died in 1996.
Mats Hjelm
For more information please see: www.matshjelm.info
Fast Forward / Fast Rewind
Artist: Stefan Otto (SW)
Genre: Art Film
Sweden, 2002 / 5:40 min (Mini DV), colour & sound
The Film
Fast Forward / Fast Rewind deals with time. Through the front window of a car one travels forward through a landscape. However, an additional time layer is provided by the rear-view mirror. The feeling is of being somewhere between the past and the future.
Stefan Otto
Stefan Otto (b. 1969) lives and works in Stockholm. He graduated from the Royal Academy in Stockholm in 2001, and works mainly with photo, video and installations. Recent exhibitions include: "Videozone", Tel-Aviv, Israel; "Instabilt", Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden; "Liste 04", Basel, Switzerland and "On the road", Sorlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway. Otto has recently had his second solo exhibition at ALP Galleri Peter Bergman in Stockholm, and is currently working on a larger public commission.
Whiteout
Artist: Kajsa Dahlberg (SW)
Genre: Art Film
Sweden, 2002 / 2 min (DV), b/w, colour & sound
The Film
Whiteout proposes a reflection on the relationship between the formal components of a film and its narrative structure. In Whiteout the pictorial space is almost entirely exhausted. Only a few contours are left in an otherwise all-white image that is saved from going blank by a dialogue between two protagonists. Walking through a city landscape, their voices, partly drowned in traffic noise, discuss their apparent exhaustion with imagery, while eventually giving in to the fact that also the image of nothing, consequently, becomes a metaphor.
Kajsa Dahlberg
Kajsa Dahlberg (b. 1973 in Gothenborg, Sweden) lives and works in Malmö, SE. Her works focus on the relationship between the narrative structure and the material she uses (almost always film of one kind or another). In Andersonville (2004), a video work in two parts, Kajsa Dahlberg explores a community constructed on the idea of national heritage. Andersonville is an area in north Chicago with a Swedish museum and many shops and restaurants offering various forms of "Swedishness". Like so many cities in the USA, Chicago is divided into several territories characterised by different nationalities. Chicago is a nation of nations, where the Swedish nation also has a given place. This is only to be expected, in view of the fact that there were more Swedes in Chicago than in Gothenburg around the turn of the previous century.
(From: www.modernamuseet.se)
Criss-Cross Tour (2004-2006)
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PRESENT SCREENINGS
Paris, France, January 26-29, 2006
Criss-Cross at Maison du Danmark
(Programme 1,3,5 + debate)
More information: www.maisondudanemark.dk
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Västerås, Sweden, February 1- March 5, 2006
Västerås Konstmuseum
(Programme 5)
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PAST SCREENINGS
Reykjavik, Iceland 18 February – 20 November 2005
Criss-Cross at the Nordic House
18 February, 20.00: Film on Film
12 November, 13.00: Film on Film
13 November, 13.00: Social/Political
15 November, 13.00: Film on Film
16 November, 13.00: Social/Political
17 November, 13.00: Film on Film
18 November, 13.00: Social/Political
19 November, 13.00: Film on Film
20 November, 13.00: Social/Political
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Belgrade, Serbia & Montenegro, 3 November 2005
Criss-Cross at Prodajna galerija ‘Beograd’
3 November, 17.00: Urban Situation/Utopian Modernism
+Talk by Thierry Jousse
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Roskilde, Denmark 16 April – 12 June 2005
Criss-Cross at the Museum for Contemporary Art in Roskilde
Screenings running in the Mediateque daily from 11 a.m., in weekends from 12 a.m.
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Trondheim, Norway 26 November – 1 December 2004
Criss-Cross at the KIT gallery
26 November, 12.00 and 15.00: Family/Domestic & Identity/Portrait
27 November, 12.00 and 15.00: Social/Political & Urban Situation/Utopian Modernism
28 November, 12.00 and 15.00: Film on Film & Family/Domestic
29 November, 12.00 and 15.00: Identity/Portrait & Social/Political
30 November, 12.00 and 15.00: Urban Situation/Utopian & Modernism Film on Film
1 December, 12.00 and 15.00: Identity/Portrait & Film on Film
For further information and detailed programme, please check www.kit.ntnu.no/galleri_kit
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Visby, Sweden 30 October – 12 December 2004
Criss-Cross at the Baltic Art Centre
Opening at the Baltic Art Center: 30 October, 19.00
Screenings at the Baltic Art Center: 31 October-12 December, Tue. – Sun., 12.00-16.00
Screenings at the Roxy cinema in collaboration with the Baltic Art Center: 8-22 November, every Mon., 19.30 + 26-28 Special Criss-Cross Week End.
Seminar at the Almedals Library in collaboration with the Baltic Art Center and the University of Visby: 26 November, 13.00. -17.00.
For further information and detailed programme, please check www.balticartcenter.com and www.folketsbiovisby.org
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Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1-8 November 2004
Criss-Cross at the Frankfurter Kunstverein
1 November, 20.00: Family/Domestic Programme
2 November, 20.00: Identity/Portrait Programme
4 November, 20.00: Social-Political Programme
5 November, 20.00: Urban Situation/Utopian Modernism
8 November, 20.00: Film on Film
INFORMATION
INFORMATION FOR VENUES INTERESTED IN SCREENING THE PROGRAMME
Criss-Cross is based on the observation that the boundaries between what is considered traditional film, documentary film and visual art seem to be blurred. Maybe, it would be more precise to speak of a ‘cinematographic’ language stemming across these fields, rather than trying to categorise the works by placing them in distinctive spheres. Criss-Cross, which essentially focuses on the Nordic and Baltic scene, tries to emphasise this.
Criss-Cross highlights the interplay between the worlds of cinema and the visual arts and proposes a reflection on the structural mutations affecting these disciplines. It includes 44 films by 42 artists and film directors from the Nordic and Baltic regions within five thematic programmes:
Programme 1: Family/Domestic
Programme 2: Identity/Portrait
Programme 3: Social-Political
Programme 4: Urban Situation/Utopian Modernism
Programme 5: Film on Film
Criss-Cross is the result of research that led to the pre-selection of more than 450 films produced during the last five years. These cross-disciplinary programmes have been put together by Thierry Jousse (film director and film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, FR), Åsa Nacking (director of Lund Konsthall, Lund, SE), Cristina Ricupero (curator at NIFCA, Helsinki, FI), Mats Stjernstedt (director of Index, Stockholm, SE) and Cilla Werning (producer at Silva Mysterium and Kinotar, Helsinki, FI).
Criss-Cross was premiered in Lund (SE) and in Helsinki (FI) during the summer of 2004 and is touring internationally 2004-2006. For other touring venues, please, see www.nifca.org. The programme is available for screenings at venues until the end of 2006.
The running time of each one of the five thematic programmes is approx. 3 hours. The mode of presentation of the programmes is open for negotiation. The screening fee for the complete Criss-Cross, including all five thematic programmes, is EUR 4 800. It is also possible to screen only one or more of the programmes.
The screening fees (decreases according to the number of programmes):
1 programme EUR 1 200
2 programmes EUR 2 280
3 programmes EUR 3 240
4 programmes EUR 4 080
5 programmes EUR 4 800
The screening fee includes an unlimited amount of screenings at one venue, and 50 free copies of the Criss-Cross brochure (per programme). The brochure has an introduction to the whole project and short presentations of each film. The Criss-Cross invitation card and poster templates are available to touring venues. The fee for the adaptation of the templates is EUR 150.
Criss-Cross is initiated, compiled and produced by NIFCA. The totality of the fees paid by the touring venues will be allocated directly to the artists and the production companies.
Criss-Cross is available on DVD. For preview copies and further information, please, contact NIFCA: Nathalie Aubret, e-mail: information@nifca.org, tel: (+358 9) 686 43 202
NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art creates a variety of new opportunities for artists, audiences, curators and critics to experience, enjoy and explore contemporary visual culture in the Nordic countries and internationally. NIFCA is situated in Helsinki and is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the body responsible for co-operation between the governments of Denmark, Finland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the Åland Islands.
Film Programmes 1 - 5
Programme 1- Family / Domestic
Between Us
Headway
A Womb of One's Own
16 Minutes
The Boy Below
Sound Cut
All About My Father
Gösta & Lennart
Programme 2 - Identity / Portrait
Meet You in Finland Angel
Another Breathing
Screaming Men
Boygirl
The Diver
Stayceyann Chin
Suite for Two
Programme 3 - Social - Political
Hidden
Who Hangs the Laundry?
Der Fall Joseph
War on Paranoia
Three Poems by Spoon Jackson
Anagram
The Girl Is Innocent
Grandmother, Hitler and I
Where Did They Disappear?
A Little Red Dot
Habibti, My Love
Rocco Goes Berserk in Norway
Programme 4 - Urban Situation / Utopian Modernism
For Aesthetic Reasons
Outside the Living-Room
Future Is Not What It Used To Be
Shouter
Helsinki Shipyard
Filter City
Stockholm-75
Countdown for 2000 Broken Dreams
Programme 5 - Film on Film
The Five Obstructions
Project for a Revolution
Urban Fiction
Helmut
Hot
Been in Video
White Flight
Fast Forward / Fast Rewind
Whiteout
For further information please contact: information@nifca.org
PRESS IMAGES PAGE
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Criss - Cross Press Images:
Family/Domestic:
> All About My Father Director: Even Benestad
> Gösta & Lennart Director: Babak Najafi
Identity/Portrait:
> Meet You in Finland Angel Artist: Veli Granö
> The Diver Director: PV Lehtinen
Social/Political:
> Three Poems by Spoon Jackson Director: Michel Wenzer
> Anagram Artist: Annika Eriksson
> A Little Red Dot Director: Jannicke Systad Jacobsen
Urban Situation/Utopian Modernism:
> Ouside the Living-Room Artist: Pia Rönicke
> Future Is Not What It Used To Be Director: Mika Taanila
Film on Film:
> The Five Obstructions Dir: Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier
> Fast Forward / Fast Rewind Director: Stefan Otto
NIFCA Web 2.0 / Projects / Projects and events / CRISS - CROSS
http://www.nifca.org//projects/events/crisscross.html