ART TORRENTS

Angela Schanelec - Marseille (2004)
Monday, January 22, 2007

The first movie of the "Berliner Schule" ("La Nouvelle Vague Allemande" Cahiers Du Cinema) that gained international recognition with it being screened in the "Un certain regard"-section of Cannes Film Festival 2004.


After the very sparse white on black of the opening credits we see the back of Sophie's head. She's in a car, she speaks awkward French, the woman who drives gets out, gets her a map, of Marseille. We learn, very soon, that they are exchanging apartments, the other woman, her name, we learn later, is Zelda, will go to Berlin and Sophie will stay, for a few weeks, in Marseille. Zelda says: Guten Tag, Auf Wiedersehen, Mein Freund, der Baum, ist tot - the latter phrase being a German song by a German singer who died young. Zelda disappears, Sophie stays. Zelda very literally disappears because there won't be a trace of her when Sophie will return to Berlin. The Marseille apartment, empty, unlived in as it is, will have been a gift, something inexplicably given in a film that ends with something - almost a life - taken.

Sophie, for the first third of the film, is in Marseille. She walks around, she takes pictures. She looks at the pictures, she moves without a direction, the camera is with her, sometimes distant, sometimes following her closely. Sophie is a stranger in a strange world, she sometimes seems cut off from her surroundings. We hear sounds, we see her face but the background is blurred. She does not seem unhappy, she does not seem happy. She does not talk much and she always thinks for a long time when she is asked. In the end she will be asked what it is she photographs. She will think for half a minute (or perhaps she does not think, but simply refuses to answer, to herself, to the policeman who asks) and then she says: The streets.

We do not know much of her and we do not learn much of her in these minutes we spend in Marseille, walking around with her. She meets a young man from a garage, who lends her his car, she drives around, which we don't see. There is a lot we don't see - although it takes some time to realize how much. She meets the young man in a bar, they drink, a friend arrives who insults Sophie, for no reason. Sophie and Pierre, the young man, walk up in a street that is lit in brownish golden light and they sleep with each other, which we don't see (and, really, don't know). The next night they dance.

One very sharp cut later Sophie is back in Berlin, she is approached by a young woman who returns a cap to her, a cap she has left in a McDonald's restaurant before she went to Marseille. There is more she has left, or rather: she has run away from. (At least this is what can - but does not have to be - inferred.) There is Ivan, a photographer she might be in love with. There is Hanna, an actress, Ivan's girl friend, their son Anton. We learn more about Ivan, we learn more about Hanna. We see Ivan taking pictures of women workers in a factory, without an explanation. We just see and watch. We watch the women from a sidewards angle, then we watch Ivan taking the pictures, then we watch the woman from Ivan's perspective. They talk, but not much. We just hear and see and watch. There is a lot we see - although it takes some time to realize how much. We are left with these images. They remain unexplained and they don't explain what we see. "Marseille" has a bewildering structure, switching from the elliptical cut (shocking, really) to the insistent gaze (frustrating first, but amazing after all).

For ten minutes, at least, we watch a rehearsal. Hanna plays a minor role in a Strindberg play. The same scene is rehearsed three times. We watch the man talking to the woman in an aggressive Strindberg way and we see Hanna entering the stage. Then the camera moves to the left and we watch the woman answering to the man in an aggressive Strindberg way. This time we don't see Hanna entering the stage. When leaving she makes a mistake, she adds a word that does not belong in her line. We see her then off stage, cowering. Hanna is not happy. She is not happy with David, she suffers from unexplainable pain. We do not learn much more about her. Sophie is out of sight for quite some time. We start doubting if this is really her story we are told. Oh yes, it is, but Schanelec refuses to follow her and her story in linear fashion. Ivan's taking of pictures, Hanna's rehearsal become important, not so much as explanations for their behaviour, just as the parts of their lives Schanelec has decided to follow.

Sophie then returns to Marseille and after the most daring ellipsis we see her at a police station, in a yellow dress. She sits, then she talks, then she does not talk for half a minute. She is asked what it is she photographs. The streets, she says after what seems a very long time. She cries. We see her on a sidewalk, the camera moving parallel to her. She crosses the street, the camera remains on the sidewalk, Sophie is moving away from it. Then she stops and the camera stops. She enters the German consulate. In Schanelec's (and cinematographer Reinhold Vorschneider's) films you see the most intelligent and subtle travellings imaginable - and even mor effective as they starkly contrast with a lot of very long, very static takes that just make you watch and see.

"Marseille" ends with a series of takes on the beach. It is getting dark, the streetlamps are switched on. We see Sophie in her yellow dress, distant, moving, we see the sea and there is a strange kind of consolation in this image of the dress, Sophie, the sea.


Language: French/German Subtitles: English

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at 11:59 AM  

EMAF 2006: Stories Behind the Screen (2002-2005)
Monday, January 8, 2007

The collection Stories Behind the Screen presents ten videos from European media artists, which tell stories in a variety of ways that differ from the kind of story-telling we are used to from Hollywood. Most of the videos work without language or text, putting their visual effect into foreground. They show new, interesting and some very entertaining approaches in the international media art scene.

They were shown at the European Media Art Festival (EMAF) in Osnabrück, Germany, in spring 2006.
The European Media Art Festival (EMAF) is one of the most extensive media art events world-wide. As a forum for international media art, the EMAF presents films, videos, performances, multimedia installations and digital media.


ABOUT THE FILMS

1. Nummer Twee | NL | 2003 | 03:03
Realisation: Guido van der Werve
Performer: Guido van der Werve, Magnus Logi Kristensson, Will Trumpie, Margie Oosten, Marloes Meents, Celine Kraal, Rachel Meibergen, Zunaira Choudry
Choreograph: Elisabeth Lambeck
Camera, Light: Ben Geraerts
Sound: Casper Lambeck
Photographer, Focus: Willem K. van der Jagt
Distribution: Netherlands Media Art Institute – Montevideo, Amsterdam

When Guido van der Werve is hit by a car in Nummer Twee, it’s not unusual for dancing ballerinas to take their leave of him.



2. Light Body Corpuscules | B | 2004 | 06:26
Realisation: Antonin De Bemels, Gordon Delap
Concept, photography, editing: Antonin De Bemels
Dancers: Melanie Munt, Ugo Dehaes
Electro-acoustic composition: Gordon Delap
Lighting design: Laurence Halloy
Distribution: Antonin De Bemels

The body of light in Antonin de Bemels’ and Gordon Delap’s video Light Body Corpuscles is a play with light, enabling the discovery of a real body.


3. Safety Tips for Kids | GB | 2003 | 5:12
Realisation: Roz Mortimer
Distribution: Wonderdog Productions, London

Newspaper articles about the disappearance of English children are the starting point of a critical discussion about abuse and the dependence of charges in Roz Mortimer’s Safety Tips For Kids.


4. Hanoi | GB | 2004 | 03:47
Realisation: Lucia Helenka
Script: based on a text by Marguerite Duras
Narration: Catherine Deneuve
Distribution: Lucia Helenka

While Hanoi by Lucia Helenka is an enigmatic and slowly invasive journey to the heart, Calling 911 by Jan de Bruin deals with the idea of reality in the American society.



5. Calling 911 | NL | 2004 | 06:06
Realisation & Distribution: Jan de Bruin


6. Living a Beautiful Life | D | 2003 | 13:21
Realisation: Corinna Schnitt
Performer: Diana Imber, Michael Gianelli
Found Footage: >Der Katzenprinz<, Defa-Film, 1970
Camera: Philipp Lachenmann, May Rigler
Sound: Jens Brand
Light: Philipp Schmitz, Detlef Issel

It can be suspected from Corinna Schnitt’s Living a Beautiful Life that there is more than meets the eye to the depicted intact American family.


7. L'Axe du Mal / Axis of Evil | CDN/F | 2003 | 04:36
Realisation: Pascal Lièvre
Distribution: Vidéographe, Canada

The Axis of Evil is the subject of Pascal Lièvre’s music video of the same name.


8. Optimizer Customizer | NL | 2002 | 12:09
Realisation: Jan van Nuenen
Concept, photography, editing: Jan van Nuenen
Sound: Jan van Nuenen, Martijn van den Berg
Music: Martijn van den Berg

In the animated work Optimizer Customizer by Jan van Nuenen a feminine machine, over-stuffed with the most modern nano-technology, proceeds with her endlessly repeating task.


9. Perpetual Motion in the Land of Milk and Honey | GB | 2004 | 6:10
Realisation: AL + AL
Distribution: Acme Studios

The future we know from SciFi and Orwellian premonitions has become an integral part of our world today. Perpetual Motion in the Land of Milk and Honey by AL + AL delivers the positive proof: we have already arrived in the future.


10. On a Wednesday Night in Tokyo | D | 2004 | 5:40
Realisation & Distribution: Jan Verbeek

A perfunctory activity it would seem is presented in On a Wednesday Night in Tokyo by Jan Verbeek – but in Tokyo it turns into a ritualised magic show, which fascinates the viewer with the question: is it staged or reality?


All films are XVID (not my rip).
Running time 70 min.

Share EMAF 2006: Stories Behind the Screen (2002-2005) via thepiratebay or demonoid.

at 4:48 PM  

Hatred of Capitalism, A Semiotext(e) Reader edited by Chris Kraus and Sylvère Lotringer
Thursday, January 4, 2007

Compiled in 2001 to commemorate the passing of an era, Hatred of Capitalism brings together highlights of Semiotext(e)'s most beloved and prescient works. Semiotext(e)'s three-decade history mirrors the history of American thought. Founded by French theorist and critic Sylvere Lotringer as a scholarly journal in 1974, Semiotext(e) quickly took on the mission of melding French theory with the American art world and punk underground. Its Foreign Agents, Native Agents, Active Agents and Double Agents imprints have brought together thinkers and writers as diverse as Gilles Deleuze, Assata Shakur, Bob Flanagan, Paul Virillio, Kate Millet, Jean Baudrillard, Michelle Tea, William S. Burroughs, Eileen Myles, Ulrike Meinhof, and Fanny Howe. In Hatred of Capitalism, editors Kraus and Lotringer bring these people together in the same volume for the first time.

Chris Kraus is a filmmaker and the author of I Love Dick and Aliens & Anorexia, and coeditor of Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader. Index called her "one of the most subversive voices in American fiction." Her work has been praised for its damning intelligence, vulnerability and dazzling speed.

Professor of French Literature and Philosophy at Columbia University and founder of Semiotext(e), Sylvère Lotringer is widely credited for having introduced poststructuralist theories in America. He has coedited Hatred of Capitalism (Semiotext(e), 2002), with Chris Kraus, and French Theory in America, with Sande Cohen. Semiotext(e) has published his book length dialogues with Paul Virilio, Pure War (1998), Crepuscular Dawn (2003), and The Accident of Art (2005).



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at 1:47 PM  

Lessons Of Darkness(1992) by Werner Herzog
Tuesday, January 2, 2007

An apocalyptic vision featuring the oilwell fires in Kuwait after the Gulf-War, as a whole world burst into flames. This film is stylized as science fiction, as there is not a single shot in which you can recognize our planet.

Lessons of Darkness at IMDB.


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at 8:56 PM  

Pirate Cinema Copenhagen
Monday, January 1, 2007

The danish version of pirate cinema will have a screening 20:00 the 3th of january 2007 at culture box. As you can see on their page(i couldn't), they have screenings every wednesday.

at 5:44 PM  

Laika(2005) by Kristjan Zaklynsky
Saturday, December 30, 2006

I found the work by Kristjan Zaklynsky on my way through various online archives yesterday. I love when people distribute their own work through the peer to peer networks, more people should definently start doing this.

Kristjan writes:

This was my first experiment with stop motion animation and I kind of went all the way. I took something like 7000 photographs in two weeks when I was staying at my friend's house in New York and at my parents' place in Newport, RI. There's no narrative here, just a lot of things I found in the house moving around like crazy. I made a randomly modulating squarewave drone with lots of reverb for the soundtrack. Enjoy.

at 5:16 PM  

Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art
Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Balancing environmental, ethical, economic, and aesthetic concerns, sustainable design has the potential to transform everyday life and has already dramatically reshaped the practice of architecture. Beyond Green introduces a new generation of international artists who work at the intersection of sustainable design and contemporary art.

The book explores the ways that this design strategy is being used – and sometimes intentionally misused – by an emerging group of artists who combine fresh aesthetic sensibilities with constructively critical approaches to the production, dissemination, and display of their art. Lavishly illustrated, the book also includes texts by and interviews with individual artists, along with substantial essays by exhibition curator Stephanie Smith and design historian Victor Margolin. What results is a bracing volume that will be of interest to practitioners and aficionados of design and art alike, as well as to environmentalists.

at 11:40 AM  

The Pervert's Guide To Cinema & zizek!, both starring Slavoj Zizek
Monday, December 25, 2006

I found out that the file i referred to a few weeks ago only was the second part of the entire guide. Sorry for the inconvenience.. here is the whole thing along with a documentary on Slavoj Zizek!

The maker of The Perverts Guide To Cinema, Sophie Fennes, is apparently, positive towards her movie being shared via the peer to peer networks. Rasmus Fleischer reports from the pirate cinema event at bootlab..

Filmens regissör Sophie Fiennes hade tydligen fått höra om den illegala visningen och var väldigt positivt inställd, särskilt som hon hoppades att det kunde hjälpa filmen att få en officiell distributör i Tyskland. Det berättade Sebastian Lütgert i sin korta introduktion till piratbion..

For those of you who do not speak swedish, Sophie simply says that she is positive towards the fact that her work is shared via the peer to peer networks. And she hopes that it can help her get an official distributor in Germany.. I hope someone told her that the peer to peer networks are doing a good, if not better job than the official distributors :)

I have heard that Brett Bloom of Temporary Services, the maker of Prisoners' Inventions as well is positive towards peer to peer networks and the fact that he's work is distributed to a wider audience.


Information on the guide:

'Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire' - Slavoj Zizek


THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made. Serving as presenter and guide is the charismatic Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst. With his engaging and passionate approach to thinking, Zizek delves into the hidden language of cinema, uncovering what movies can tell us about ourselves.

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA offers an introduction into some of Zizek's most exciting ideas on fantasy, reality, sexuality, subjectivity, desire, materiality and cinematic form. Whether he is untangling the famously baffling films of David Lynch, or overturning everything you thought you knew about Hitchcock, Zizek illuminates the screen with his passion, intellect, and unfailing sense of humour. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA applies Zizek's ideas to the cinematic canon, in what The Times calls 'an extraordinary reassessment of cinema.'

The film cuts its cloth from the very world of the movies it discusses; by shooting at original locations and on replica sets, it creates the uncanny illusion that Zizek is speaking from within the films themselves. Described by The Times as 'the woman helming this Freudian inquest,' director Sophie Fiennes' collaboration with Slavoj Zizek illustrates the immediacy with which film and television can communicate genuinely complex ideas. Says Zizek: "My big obsession is to make things clear. I can really explain a line of thought if I can somehow illustrate it in a scene from a film. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA is really about what psychoanalysis can tell us about cinema."

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA is constructed in three parts. Says Fiennes: 'The form of the Guide is a deliberately open one. There are three parts, but there could be more. Zizek's method of thinking is exciting because it's always building. Things relate forwards and backwards and interconnect into a mind-altering network of ideas. The film's title is something of a McGuffin - just a way to get you into this network.'


PART 1
What can the Marx Brothers tell us about the workings of the unconscious? And why exactly do the birds attack in Hitchcock's masterpiece of horror? Part 1 explores the fictional structures that sustain our experience of reality and the chaotic netherworld of wild drives and desire that undermine that very experience.

Providing a blueprint for approaching cinema through a psychoanalytical lens, Part 1 explores key Freudian concepts such as the psyche's division between Ego, Superego, Id, death drive and libido. Zizek shows how the visual language of films returns to us our deepest anxieties, arousing our desire while simultaneously 'keeping it at a safe distance, domesticating it, rendering it palpable!'


PART 2
Playing on cinema's great tradition for romantic narratives, Part 2 unlocks what these narratives tell us about the critical role that fantasy plays in sexual relationships. 'Why does our libido need the virtual universe of fantasies?' asks Zizek.

Zizek excavates the nightmarish truth behind Tarkovsky's dreamy sci-fi Solaris and its chilling reverberations with Vertigo, Hitchcock's great romantic epic. The consequences are alarming. For the male libidinal economy it appears, 'the only good woman is a dead woman.' Zizek argues that it is the very excess of female desire that poses a fundamental threat to male identity.

Fantasy can be both pacifying and radically destabilizing. From David Lynch's Lost Highway and Ingmar Bergman's Persona to Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher, fantasy is the battleground of the war between the sexes. Part 2 interrogates the structure of fantasy that makes the sexual act possible. But it also asks whether this very plague of fantasies is finally staged - like cinema itself - as a defence against anxiety.


PART 3
Part 3 plays with appearances. Appearances are not deceiving, but extremely efficient. When Dorothy & Co discover The Wizard of Oz is actually an old man behind a curtain, they nonetheless expect him to work his magic. And so he does: the illusion persists. Says Zizek, 'There is something more real in the illusion than in the reality behind it.'

With iconoclastic gusto, Zizek evokes the Gnostic theory of our world as an 'unfinished reality' where 'God bungled his job of creation'. If film itself is structured through cuts, edits and missing scenes, then so too is our own subjective experience. This is perhaps why we can believe in cinema - as well as other systems of faith, paternal, religious and ideological.

Zizek shows us that the key to cinema is beyond the narrative, beyond the 'story' that we witness. What provides the density of cinematic enjoyment is material form beyond interpretation.



Share The Pervert's Guide To Cinema by Sophie Fennes via thepiratebay or demonoid(if you want an invite, write your mail in a comment).

If you want to learn more about Slavoj Zizek, then share the documentary directed by Astra Taylor!

'Zizek!' is a feature documentary exploring the eccentric personality and esoteric work of the 'wild man of theory': the eminent Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek.

Support the peer to peer networks by sharing the file via thepiratebay or demonoid!

Enjoy!

at 10:38 PM  

Writing's by Slavoj Zizek
Saturday, December 23, 2006

Various writing's by Slavoj Zizek.

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at 8:21 PM  

How to Build an Igloo(1949), by Douglas Wilkinson

Simple documentary about the creation of an igloo, commented by Douglas Wilkinson. Very fine footage. 10min playtime.

Share it at demonoid and thepiratebay.

at 7:21 PM