For a total of five days each year, The European Media Art Festival in
Osnabrück brings together film and video makers, performance artists,
media theorists, journalists and a young and involved public. The tour
programme consists of two seperate and individual film and video programmes,
which are not meant so much to present a best of... scenario, but moreso
to provide a representative overview of the international film and video art
scene.
For the first time this year, the tour programme will present you with a
selection of film and videos taken from two festival years; the 9th European
Media Art Festival which took place in September 1996, and the 10th festival,
which due to organisational reasons took place in May 1997. The festival in
1998 will also be in the early part of the year from 6th to 10th of May.
The opener of the film programme for this tour is
L'Hôtel, by Mark Steffen Göwecke.
The filmic portrait of a
hotel in the Bretagne and its owner won the award for the best German
Experimentalfilm or video production of the year given by the jury of film
journalists. Ken Kobland`s film, The Shanghaied Text,
impresses though
its use of poetic montage binding-in archive material and individual takes.
Thematised in different ways, AIDS and death are the subjects of the films
Pensão Globo by Matthias Müller, and
Letters from Home by Mike Hoolboom. Müller`s
Film involves a staged train of
narrative derived from a (fictional?) diary; Hoolboom has created a collage of
personal material and found-footage which often demostrates documentary
character.
The film programme ends with two satirical commentaries of our affluent
society. In his film The Itch, Alan Smith uses various animation and
trick techniques. In NY - the lost Civilization Dylan McNeil is using
mostly imported material to construct a utopian view of a New York, which, in
the true sense of the phrase and raised above the rest of the world, has to
battle against the most astounding consequences of civilisations related
elements of arousal.
The Video programme also commences with a piece of work honoured by
the Working Circle of Journalists` Jury which received commendation at the 10th
EMAF. Busby, by Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck, is a hommage to the opulent
film choreographies of Busby Berkeley. Dark Blotches, Women and Beetles
by Ulla Väätäinen presents a mythical journey through the dark
forests of the north.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Jannicke Låker`s No. 17,
is an intimate performance shot in a private room using the subjective eye of
the camera. Wada Junko from Japan describes the pitfalls of an unfulfilled
relationship in Athletics # 3.
Bounderies of Mankind represents the final part of a trilogy with
the title Supercollider, in which Paul Swadel and his brother Marc
thematise the borders of human capability and limiting cases in an increasingly
computerised world. 9 1/2 Finger, by Axel Gaube and Valeria Valenzuela
amongst others, demonstrates a finger excercise in the true sense of the word,
which takes an unusual view of every-day life.
In A Refutation of Time, Luis Valdovino, Greg Durbin and Dan Boord
take a trip across the American continent which starts off as a virtual journey
and culminates in a philosophical tractatus on cyberspace.
Filtered out through Japanese television-reality and iconography, and
produced in a most entertaining manner, Making out in Japan, by Meret
Merewether, teaches us the Japanese art of intimacy in five stages. Taking a
step in the direction of hardcore, Susan Hinnum describes the search for her
own personal artistic form of expression in her video
Woman`s got to have it.
In Two Minutes of Experimentation and Entertainment Paul Granjon is
forced to come to terms with the fickleness of the object. Pablo
Jáureguí transports us into the world of the celebrated
Captain Cardozo who saves the world once more in his
new adventures.
To round off the programme, Bart Dijkmann and his dog commune together in
Freezing, in a short and silent conversation.
Ralf Sausmikat
