Screening

Les Rencontres Internationales

Sun, Mar 20, 2016

1–7 pm

Free admission

Further information on www.art-action.org

Screening Sessions in the Auditorium (Audi) and Theatersaal (Ths)

1 pm: Workers (Theatersaal)
Rafiqul Shuvo: Faster satiation, but only for Nevertheless behavior | Exp. film | hdv | b&w | 0:06:38 | Bangladesh | 2014
Frank Koolen, Kasper Jacobs: Play Curacao | Doc. expérimental | hdv | couleur | 29:28 | Curaçao | 2015
Simon Gush: Lazy Nigel | Video | hdv | b&w | 0:11:41 | South Africa | 2015
Pleurad Xhafa: Tireless Worker | Exp. film | hdv | colour | 0:42:57 | Albania | 2015

Rafiqul Shuvo films workers in a country of extreme political, social and cultural domination, and questions connections between the notions of people and nation. Frank Koolen and Kasper Jacobs observe life in Curaçao, in the Caribbean with its social rituals, contemporary games and the leisure time of Homo Ludens (Playing Man). Simon Gush passes through a small industrial town in the vicinity of Johannesburg at the weekend when there are no workers, and questions the notions of idleness and productivity. Pleurad Xhafa follows Xhiku, a man who has been working in a factory in Tirana since 1973. He received the medal of honour for ‘fatigue-free worker.’ After the fall of the communist regime, the factory was privatised, and the former guard became the owner of it. Xhiku is currently paid 3 euros per day.

1 pm: Special Screening (Auditorium)
La Ribot: Film noir 001 // 002 // 003 | Vidéo | hdv | couleur | 0:28:00 | Espagne | 2015

La Ribot takes another look at films that form the history of cinema. In ‘Film noir 001,’ La Ribot features extras from two epics, ‘Spartacus’ by Stanley Kubrick and ‘El Cid’ by Anthony Mann, filmed in Spain in the 60s. An account of the political and social movements in this period, the film constructs the real story through anonymous bodies. The series continues in ‘Film noir 002’ with extras or workers from several films, leaving us to thus contemplate their art of acting. The spatial and choreographic aspect is central to ‘Film noir 003.’ Organised musically, the extras fill the background space, creating a sensual and funny, sometimes catastrophic, yet always impeccable performance.

Jonas Matauschek examines the surroundings of a big factory. Individual points of view evoke the relationship between social links and industry. Based on the structure of Brecht’s text, ‘The Purchase of Copper,’ Theo Prodromidis establishes correlations between the political structure and the structure of finance, using their architectural form and their specific features as a visual starting point.

2 pm: Mined Soil (Theatersaal)
Filipa César: Sol miné | Exp. documentary | hdv | colour | 0:34:00 | Portugal, France | 2014

In this experimental film that is part of a research project in progress, "People are the mountain", Filipa César revisits the work of the Guinean agronomist Amilcar Cabral, from the study of soil erosion in the Portuguese region of Alentejo until his commitment as one of the leaders of the African Freedom Movement. This way of thinking merges with the documentation of an experimental gold mine site, now managed by a Canadian company and located in the same zone that Cabral studied at the time. The film explores present and past definitions of the ground as a designated area for memory, vestiges and exploitation.

Nicolas Carrier and Marie Ouazzani film a school that, during the Japanese colonisation of Korea, enrolled orphans in the occupying army. Now an artist residency, there is a rumour that it is haunted. By reproducing artistic, historical and touristic images, three young Koreans awaken the memories of what happened in this place in the past.

Lamia Joreige films Beirut. The city is immersed in a strange calm while the surrounding region is ablaze. Through five characters, mainly non-professional actors, Lamia Joreige produces a unique portrait of her hometown. Whether sales representative, musician, student or actor, each confides their deep attachment to Beirut and how difficult or impossible it is to live there. For several months, the filmmaker asked them to act out scenes that she conceived, inspired by their love, professional or social lives. She has made their daily lives into fiction, thereby highlighting their unease. These scenes were acted out in districts they live in, places dear to them. The city and their feelings are intricately linked. The anguish of the political instability of the Near East and the fear of a devastating war lies beneath the beauty of the images, beneath the apparent sweetness of their lives.

4 pm: Iconic (Theatersaal)

Alternately crossing forests, baroque ruins, control towers and Roman catacombs in “Sans titre”, Clément Cogitore looks at a scientific community in the footsteps of a magical animal. He questions the unchanging nature of the meaning of the story and image in the face of developing beliefs in a confrontation between the subterranean and elevated worlds, as well as archaism and new technology. Adel Abidin questions the power of contemporary icons and the belief that they generate through the figure of Michael, interviewed after his resurrection. His answers and speech are nothing other than a compilation of his famous songs.

Monira Al Qadiri brings together VHS images of an oil well on fire in Kuwait after the first Gulf War in 1991. These images, like scenes from the Apocalypse, are accompanied by the sound of poems that the television was broadcasting at the same time. At night Johann Lurf films an arms and drones manufacturer for military use in Austria. Guston Sondin-Kung describes the participation of an intelligence officer, from his hotel room in Denmark, in a cyber-attack against an Iranian nuclear power station. Nadia and Laila Hotait reinterpret the taking of hostages that took place at Bank of America in Beirut on 18th October 1973. Mariah Garnett films American war veterans who continue to test their physical limits on returning to civilian life. In ‘From Satin Island,’ in association with the writer Tom McCarthy, Johan Grimonprez produces a haunting collage of disaster and beauty. With ‘What I will’, we hear the voice of the Jordanian-American poet Suheir Hammad, who is seeking hope in the face of military parades and anti-aircraft rifles. Lydia Moyer calls for reflection on freedom in contemporary America following events in Ferguson, Missouri.

5 pm: Carte Blanche To Pedro Costa (Auditorium)
Pedro Costa: O Nosso Homem | Exp. documentary | hdv | colour | 0:23:00 | Portugal | 2013-2015

With ‘O Nosso Homem’ (Our Man) Pedro Costa produces “a variation in the line of the trilogy devoted to inhabitants of the Fontainhas district in Lisbon, which has been destroyed in the meantime. It can be considered as a sort of appendix to the third part, ‘Colossal Youth!’ in which the hero, Ventura, reappears as one of the four characters of this dialogue of hopelessness. They continue, from one setting to another, from the darkest to the brightest, driven by sumptuous settings and shades of light and shadow that once made Jacques Rancière say (about ‘Colossal Youth!’): “The faith in the art which attests to the greatness of the poor – the greatness of each and every man– shines here more than ever. But it does not assimilate it anymore to an affirmation of a greeting.” A figure runs through ‘O Nosso Homem’ expressing its mythical power: “from this fellow who takes people to a better life,” surreptitiously slipping them a piece of paper that he asks to be returned, to this eviction notice that greatly upsets José Albert at the end of the process, one of four Cape Verdeans continuing these discussions in Lisbon on the unlikely dignity of living.” (Raymond Bellour)
“I was a good mason. I have never built a crooked wall. My boss has never complained about me. One day the work stopped, I lost my unemployment benefit. No retirement pension and no welfare benefits. I looked for work everywhere with no success. I brought no money home, Suzete threw me out.”

6 pm: Closing Drink (Auditorium)
You are all warmly invited to join us for a drink, before the closing screening of Les Rencontres Internationales.

7 pm: Closing Screening (Auditorium)
Thom Andersen: The Thoughts That Once We Had | Exp. documentary | hdv | colour and b&w | 1:48:00 | USA | 2015

Thom Andersen constructs this film around love and the power of the seduction of films in this personal history of cinema, inspired by Deleuze’s theory of cinema. Like Deleuze he examines a huge area that extends from Griffith to Godard, using cinematic images not to explain, but to embody Deleuze’s ideas in all their ambiguity, wealth and nuances.