Kran Film Collective

PREMIÉRE: Elevage de poussière / Dust Breeding by Sarah Vanagt

Elevage de poussière / Dust Breeding
A film by Sarah Vanagt
52′ / 2013
PREMIÉRE: 16 May 2013, Beursschouwburg / Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, 7 pm
+ 17, 18, 19 May, 7 pm + artist talk: 17 May, 8.30 pm

What is the value of images as objective testimonies of a conflict? Can we believe what we see? In her new work, Sarah Vanagt turns her attention to an important chapter in recent European history: the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The artist examines obstacles to reconstructing a war that is nevertheless well documented. She has started from a simple movement of the hand – a pencil being rubbed on a sheet of paper placed over an object – and adapted this “revelatory” rubbing process to the courtroom. The film Élevage de poussière / Dust Breeding offers a penetrating account of her exploration. Measuring the gap between the facts, the material proof of these facts, the images that represent them and their interpretation, she attempts to decipher the secret language formed by traces of war. Sharpening her eye until it becomes a microscope lens, Vanagt reveals a landscape of details inviting us to look at things differently.

Filmed, directed & produced by Sarah Vanagt, edited by Effi Weiss, sound editing by Maxime Coton, sound mix by Rémi, coproducer Cyril Bibas (CVB)
Produced by Balthasar.
Coproducers: Centre Vidéo de Bruxelles (CVB) – Michel Steyaert, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, deBuren, Wiels.

The Wave: screenings and expo

In The Wave the archaeological gaze of the viewer is set in motion: a mass grave from the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) opens and closes itself. In 2011 Sarah Vanagt and Katrien Vermeire placed a camera above the spot where nine victims were buried after their execution by Franco’s supporters in June 1939. On day one of the excavation, a digging crane gently loosened the top layer of soil, until the archaeologists came across a skull with a bullet hole. Then the archaeologists continued their work by hand. The skeletons appeared, then disappeared, as if a strong wind blew that removed the sand and uncovered death, a primal truth.

directed by Sarah Vanagt and Katrien Vermeire, edited by Inneke Van Waeyenberghe, sound by Larry Sider and Gary Sanctuary. Produced by Balthasar, coproduced by Michigan Films.

17 April: Cegesoma, Brussels
18-19 April: Courtisane, Gent
21 April: Dossin Kazerne, Mechelen
18-28 April: IndieLisboa, Lisbon
18-22 April: European Media Art Festival, Osnabruck

2-30 June: Expo The Wave (film + photos), Argos, Brussels

The Wave and 4 other films by Sarah Vanagt in Paris

Artists in Focus: Katrien Vermeire & Sarah Vanagt
Centre Pompidou, Festival Hors Pistes, Paris
27 January 2013, 16h

THE WAVE – Sarah Vanagt & Katrien Vermeire
Belgium / 2012 / 20 min.

LITTLE FIGURE – Sarah Vanagt
BElgium / 2003 / 15 min.

FIRST ELECTIONS – Sarah Vanagt
Belgium/ 2006 / 15 min.

HISTORY LESSON – Sarah Vanagt
Belgium / 2003 / 5 min.

THE CORRIDOR – Sarah Vanagt
Belgium/ 2010 / 7 min.

THE CORRIDOR

THE CORRIDOR (2010) a film by Sarah Vanagt will be screened at Festival des Films de Femmes de Creteil, France, 30 March – 8 April 2012

CONTOUR ON TOUR IN 2012

From 21 March till 11 July 2012 Contour will present moving image in De Loketten in the Flemish Parliament. The exhibition ‘Contour On Tour’ offers a panorama of video art in Flanders.

The curator, Hans Martens, selected existing works of art by, amongst others, Michaël Borremans, Wim Catrysse, Anouk De Clercq, Hans Op de Beeck, Nicolas Provost and Sarah Vanagt. Dennis Tyfus and Bart Stolle are showing a new creation.

A production of Contour Mechelen vzw in cooperation with Argos Venue: De Loketten of the Flemish Parliament, Ijzerenkruisstraat 99 – 1000 Brussels Mon-Sat: 10:00-17:00 (closed on Sunday, bridging days and holidays)

info

The Wave

THE WAVE (2012), Printroom Rotterdam
PrintRoom as Daumenkino of the IFFR
26 January – 5 February
with: The Flip Collection II

Sarah Vanagt (BE) and Katrien Vermeire (BE): The Wave
In “The Wave” the archaeological gaze of the viewer is set in motion: a mass grave from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) opens and closes itself.

Opening January 27th, 8 – 11 pm

A presentation of flipbooks by over 50 artists, designers, photographers and filmmakers as a collaborative side programme of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

In addition to showcasing these specially selected flipbooks for this year’s edition of IFFR, PrintRoom co-produced three flipbooks that share an historical slant either in subject matter, source material, or from personal experience. The evening’s presentation will also include a screening of corresponding films by the three makers.

Little Figures at Demonstrations. Making Normative Orders

Little Figures

a film by Sarah Vanagt
at
Demonstrations. Making Normative Orders
Frankfurter Kunstverein
20.01.2012 – 25.03.2012

Press preview: 19 January, 2012, 11:00 am
Opening: 19 January, 2012, 8:00 pm

The Corridor at the Parnu Film Festival

THE CORRIDOR
a film by Sarah Vanagt
winner of the 1st Prize at the Courtisane Film Festival in Gent
on 4 and 10 July at the 25th Pärnu Film Festival, Estonia (4-24 July, 2011)

The Corridor, 7min, 2010

For five days Sarah Vanagt and cinematographer Annemarie Lean-Vercoe followed a donkey during its weekly visits to old people in nursing homes in England. From home to home, from room to room. Time and again the donkey was welcomed with open arms, with songs, gentle strokes, childhood stories, poems, and laughter. It was only when the donkey entered the room of Norbert, a man who had lost his ability to speak, that an altogether different encounter took place..

Even though Vanagt initially followed the donkey‘s steps in search of reminiscences brought about by the animal’s mute presence, she came home with an altogether different film. While editing, the film became shorter and shorter, as if the words that had accompanied the donkey’s visits became a distraction. What is left is perhaps a bas-relief disguised as a painting, disguised as a film.

The donkey visits to residential homes are an initiative of The Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth, England.

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)

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.

Courtisane Film Festival, Gent, Belgium
Balthasar