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Commentary
/ Commentary
›Hi, I’m Robert Cambrinus, the director of this film!‹ This friendly greeting can be heard on the soundtrack, then it is immediately swept up by the film’s own images: The wooden lion will play an important role later. Cambrinus pays no attention to the film’s title, Commentary, as he takes a look at the next scene as in the audio commentary on a DVD: He intended to allude to Arabian deserts, shooting took hours, but the camera was, unfortunately, ›a little shaky.‹ In addition, formations that resemble dunes turn out to be wrinkles in a vaguely sand-colored blanket. (…) Commentary is a clever game of deception and commentary on a contemporary viewing regime which has, for the most part, rarely been dealt with in cinematography: As if in an effective final point, Cambrinus promises a version of the film without audio commentary as a DVD extra. The remaining credits are accompanied by the characteristic embarrassed sighing that’s audible on DVD soundtracks when the person doing the commentary has nothing more to say. (Christoph Huber)
Director/author: Robert Cambrinus
Austria 2009
Film & Video Video 15 min.
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Players
/ Players
›Players‹ portrays 6 poker professionals who live among a large poker community in Bangkok. For them, playing poker is just a way to make money rather than a passion, but the rules that govern their community follow the logic of the game. They use probability theory, the fundamental theory of poker, to ensure they treat each other fairly and that everyone contributes equally. The systematic, analytical way in which these poker players look at everyday life may seem absurd, and their life style is easy to judge, but this shock may be due more to them ignoring their original society than to the way they have built their own one.
Director/author: Mikko Mällinen
Finland 2010
Film & Video Video 7 min.
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Satellite, As Long As It Is Aiming At The Sky
/ Satellite, As Long As It Is Aiming At The Sky
We enter the Los Angeles-based Iranian satellite TV stations. The video is a mediation of geography, community and politics in a critical state. Initially exile television stations, they generate a tele-visual micro universe that compensates for their (cultural, geographical and political) deficits by constantly referring to and commenting on its own production and reception. This ›self-mediation‹ produces a sense of immediacy and locality across the TV stations, which increases at times of political and economic upheaval. The video captures these TV stations during the time of the 2009 elections in Iran. The political crisis at home inevitably enters these stations and, in turn, articulates the TV stations’ own crisis.
Director/author: Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi
Netherlands 2010
Film & Video Video 28 min.
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Somewhere only we know
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Standing on the brink of elimination, the suspense threatening to fracture their composure, contestants wait and see if they will be going home. The audience at home is also waiting... Part two of Bearing Witness Trilogy concerned with how we, as a culture, watch ourselves, especially in moments of great emotional significance. With footage culled from mainstream media and television, the single-channel videos (The Eternal Quarter Inch, Somewhere only we know, The Burning Blue) distill moments of sincerity from perhaps insincere sources (televangelists, reality show contestants, screensavers, B-movies). Located in interstitial spaces, these videos continually shift the role of the viewer between voyeur and participant.
Director/author: Jesse McLean
USA 2009
Film & Video Video 5 min.
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Turning Torso
/ Turning Torso
The Turning Torso is the new landmark of the Swedish city Malmö. It's a 190 meter high skyscraper that represents the form of a twisting human being. ›I usually don’t want to turn around, because I am afraid of facing the danger.‹
Director/author: Stefan Neuberger
Germany 2010
Film & Video Video 4 min.
