IVALO FRANK’s film Echoes selected for the American Independent FIlm Festival 2011
The tri-city American Independent Film Festival celebrates the work of independent filmmakers. It is a unique platform for new talent and a tour-de-force of low-budget creativity and innovation. The Festival attracts an amazing array of filmmakers from across the world and offers film lovers coast to coast an extraordinary chance to glimpse the future of cinema.
AIFF focuses on the work of new filmmakers and films presenting new approaches and innovative solutions to limited budgets. As the festival venues are all closely connected with prominent film schools, the audiences are unusually sophisticated in their appreciation of quality film.
In May 2011 we’ll show more than 70 films in our three screening venues in Miami, Los Angeles, and New York.
http://www.film-fest.us/
ALL THAT FITS: The Aesthetics of Journalism
A new exhibition exploring the apparently opposite realms of Journalism and Art launches in QUAD, Derby in May. All that Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism will be on display in QUAD Gallery from Saturday 28th May until Sunday 31st July 2011.
All that Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism explores the idea that art and journalism are not separate forms of communication, but rather two sides of a unique activity, the production and distribution of images and information. What the project brings to surface are the ways of communicating this nexus of image production and information procedures, and the aesthetic principles in these acts of transmission.
The exhibition will be presented in three chapters: The Speaker, The Image and The Militant. These three separate displays of artwork respond to the overall theme and each include new artworks. ‘The Speaker’ runs from 28th May – 19th June, and concerns itself with a specific figure; the speaking subject or author. How does this figure emerge through discourse, and what are its functions? What can be said and not said in order for a speaking subject to appear as real, as authentic, as authoritative and/or as truthful. How are subjects positioned, and how is truth produced, and subsequently, staged? Who can speak the truth, and does it require a certain kind of speech? For and to whom does one speak when speaking the truth, with power or to power? What is implied in certain speech acts and subject positions, such as the figure of ‘the reporter’ and ‘the artist, as well as the ‘witness’ and the ‘source’? As single figures, both the reporter and the artist have throughout modernity been viewed as such authentic voices and heroic figures. Simultaneously, though, they are constantly vilified as being complicit and corrupt, of reneging on their potential position of truth-sayer. What is the position of the speaker today, and how does this position influence the statement, whether artistic or journalistic?
Curated by Alfredo Cramerotti and Simon Sheikh. Artists in the first chapter include: Sammy Baloji, Yael Bartana, Eric Baudelaire, Anita Di Bianco, Douglas Fishbone, Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy, Graziela Kunsch, Lamia Joreige, Michael Takeo Magruder, Renzo Martens, Katya Sander, SLUM-TV, Hito Steyerl and Walid Raad/The Atlas Group.
ECHOES selected for the London Underground Film festival
ECHOES by Ivalo Frank – is a film about the American and Danish military presence in Greenland see through abandoned airbases and radar stations. It’s also a love story between two people who have met in the stunning landscape of history, in the sounds of music.
ECHOES has been selected for the London Underground Film Festval, which takes place at the Horse Hospital in London, December 2011
http://www.londonundergroundfilmfestival.org.uk/
SARAH VANAGT gives a talk at the Dutch Doc Days
Talk by Sarah Vanagt about her film Boulevard d’Ypres during Dutch Doc Days
Utrecht, 11 June, 3 pm
www.dutchdocaward.nl
Boulevard d’Ypres
Documentary, 65 min., 2010
colour, French, English, Dutch spoken
The Boulevard d’Ypres in Brussels, with its large and colourful Mediterranean stores, offers glimpses of the Tales of One Thousand and One Nights. Urban development is now driving out these shops selling couscous, dates and olives. It is this turning point in the history of her own street that Vanagt uses as a starting point for a “microhistorical experiment”. Vanagt turned one the already empty stores into a film studio, and invited her neighbours – a mix of new inhabitants, undocumented immigrants, asylum-seekers, and shopkeepers – to come and tell a story, a fairy tale.
Her approach is inspired by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, one of the initiators of “microhistory”. This branch of history attempts to uncover power relations in society by focusing on details, and on the mental universes created by the men and women in the street. In Boulevard d’Ypres, the histories are ‘fictionalised’ by use of the third-person voice: ‘he’ replaces ‘I’. Thus, a mythical dimension is added, as if these tales are becoming part of an oral storytelling tradition. Before the street changes into something new, before the empty store turns into a restaurant, a fitness centre, or an art gallery, the old store-house temporarily functions as a place of memory. The shop, the street, and the storytellers all find themselves at a point zero of history.
Produced by Balthasar vzw in co-production with Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Argos, Centre Vidéo de Bruxelles (CVB)
Supported by : Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF) & Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC)
NEW PUBLICATION: Films and video works by Sarah Vanagt
Title: Sarah Vanagt. Film and video works (compilation 2003-2010)
2 DVD’s including the following films and video loops: Little Figures, History Lesson, Money Exchange, Resurrections, First Elections, Silent Elections, Boulevard d’Ypres, The Corridor and Baby Elephant + a booklet with texts by Anke Bangma, Lars Kwakkenbos and Muriel Andrin.
Published by Balthasar, 2011.
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The DVD edition can be ordered by sending an email to: sarah@vanagt.com.
Price: 18 euro + delivery cost (1,5 euro for Belgium, 3,5 euro for Europe)
IVALO FRANK winner of Best Shorts 2011
Winner of the Award of Merit in the Best Shorts Competition in the US
From the official press release:
Ivalo Frank has won a prestigious Award of Merit from the Best Shorts Competition. The award was given for Ivalo Frank’s experimental documentary ECHOES, which takes place on a little island in Greenland where we meet Anna Kuitse and her husband. The film takes the viewer on a hypnotic journey through remnants from the Cold War and the Second World War left in the midst of breath-taking nature. ECHOES features exceptional story line, location, visuals, sound and main characters.
“It was very important to me, to work not just with the sounds and beauty of the Greenlandic landscape, but to also combine this with some of humanities more brutal past”
The best Shorts Competition recognises film professionals who demonstrate exceptional achievement in craft and creativity, and those who produce standout entertainment or contribute to profound social change.
Denmark 2025
17 min. 2009
In 2008 the British Council launched the European element of its global climate change programme, “Challenge Europe”. This is a three year project aiming to accelerate change to a low carbon future. The project brings together young people who want to make a lasting impact on climate change. It enables them to improve their knowledge of climate change issues and provides them with a platform to develop innovative and practical projects to reduce carbon use.
This is the film made by the Danish 1. year ambassadors, and Director Rie Hougaard Landgreen asking the crucial question: Can Denmark become carbon free nation by the year 2025, interviewing among others Kirsten Halsnæs, Thomas Færgeman, Henrik Lund and Kathrine Richardson
LASSE LAU winner of the Fokus Videokunst Festival
Winner of the 2011 competition at the
Fokus Videokunst Festival, Copenhagen
Kunsthallen Nikolaj is the organizer of the 1st edition of the Fokus Videokunst Festival in Copenhagen. Among curated programs the competition drew 154 films. 10 Films where nominated and 3 winner was announced at an award screening and ceremony May 5th. The festival jury consisted of the Gallery owner Jesper Elg from V1 Gallery, the international video artist Eva Koch, film director Martin Strange-Hansen, and last the Nikolaj Kunsthal director Elisabeth Delin Hansen and curator Andreas Brøgger.
Among the 3 winners was Kran Film member Lasse Lau with his 2008 film Pine Nuts. Pine nuts´ is set in a Park in Beirut that nearly 20 years after the end of the civil strife still hasn’t officially reopened its gates to the public. Some says that the new pine trees that were planted there in the nineties still have to grow themselves mature before the park eventually can reopen.
The two others winners at the competition are Danish Rose Eken; http://roseeken.dk/ and Swissborn Olaf Breuning
SARAH VANAGT winner of the courtisane film festival
Winner of the 2011 competition at the
COURTISANE FILM FESTIVAL Gent
The 10th edition of the Courtisane Festival for film, video and media art closed on Sunday 3rd April 2011. At the award ceremony, the festival jury − Marina Kozul (HR, organiser/curator), Adam Pugh (UK, curator/writer/organiser) and Vincent Meessen (BE, visual artist/curator) − announced the Belgian and international winners. The prize for the best Belgian work was awarded to Brussels based filmmaker/visual artist Sarah Vanagt (°1976) for her latest video, The Corridor (2010). It’s the second time Sarah Vanagt is a Courtisane Festival laureate, in 2007 she won the Belgian competition with First Elections.
“We appreciated the film’s proposal to re-evaluate the relationship between humans and animals on a political level…In doing so, it questions notions of domesticity and humanity, bestiality and consciousness…”, stated the jury on the film.
Fund raising for a documentary film by D. S. Pushkin
New York, NY – New Kranfilm member launches fund raising for a documentary film
“The Hawks Nest Tunnel” (working title).
D
avid S. Pushkin said his film “will be a comprehensive look at the Hawks Nest Tunnel and its relationship to the current issue of industrial regulations. … One of my goals is to help keep good safety laws in place and to remind governments to enforce those laws.”
At least 764 workers (possibly more than 2.000) died as a result of the tunnel’s construction between 1927-1932, and according to historians, more than two-thirds of them were black. This was the worst industrial disaster in the history of the US and Union Carbide was guilty of an “industrial mass-killing” that foreshadowed the Bhopal disaster.
For more information on the project go to:
www.hawksnestmovie.org
All That Fits: THE AESTHETIC OF JURNALISAM
Curated by Alfredo Cramerotti and Simon Sheikh
for Quad, Derby, UK
Exhibition in 3 Chapters:
The Speaker: 28th May-19th June 2011
The Image: 22nd June-10th July 2011
The Militant: 13th-31st July 2011
Throughout time people have been compelled to record and share ‘news’ from cave drawings to citizen journalism. Aesthetic Journalism is an exhibition that explores the seemingly incompatible components such as aesthetic experience and political activism; community events and private investigations. The exhibition puts forward the idea that art and journalism are not separate forms of communication, but rather two sides of a unique activity; the production and distribution of information.
Artists include, among others: Sammy Baloji, Eric Baudelaire, Renzo Martens, Katya Sander, Hito Steyerl and Walid Raad/The Atlas Group.
QUAD Extra Spaces (corridors/screens)
Extra gallery spaces
‘NEWS! New Event World Spectacular’
curated by Lauren Mele and Hannah Conroy.
Aesthetics of Journalism miscellany and short film works, including BFI Mediatheque’s new Special Collection of 20 films selected by QUAD and BFI curators on the theme of the exhibition.