Kran Film is presenting a selection of films by its members produced from 2010.  Out of 9 short films we are screening 7 Belgian premiers by filmmakers from Lebanon, USA, Egypt, Belgium and Denmark. The programme which will be on screen at Bozar on 22 and 23 June is divided in two categories: documentary/narrative and art/experimental.  Although different in approach, all the films in a critical way observe social, political and cultural actualities and their local expressions in Greenland, UK and Armenia, either in Alexandria, Brussels and Cairo, touching upon issue of memory, otherness, migration, art, economy and personal history.

Programme

I – 22.06. 2012, at 20pm

Total duration of the programme: 79min

1. Echoes (Belgian premiere) by Ivalo Frank

2010, color, sound, 24’, HD

Honorable mention at Los Angeles International Film Festival 2011
the Best Documentary – London Underground film festival 2011

English spoken, English subtitles

2. Side Walk by Binevsa Berivan

2011, color, sound, 17’

Kurdish and French spoken, English subtitles

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3. Fifth Column (Belgian premiere) by Vatche Boulghourjian

2010, color, sound, 22’

Cannes Film Festival competition 2010:

3^rd award Prize by the Cinéfondation, La Sélection

Armenian spoken, English subtitles

4. Blue Dive (Belgian premiere) by Mostafa Youssef

2011, color, sound, 16’

Selection: Film Festival Rotterdam 2012

Arabic spoken, English subtitles

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II – 23. 06. 2012 at 20pm

Total duration of the programme: 65min

1. The Corridor (Brussels premiere) by Sarah Vanagt

2010, color, sound, HD, 6’45”

Award: 1st at the Courtisane Film Festival – Gent in 2011

english spoken

2. Sound from the Hallways (Belgian premiere) by Lasse Lau

2012, color, sound, 25’

no dialogue

3. Populus Tremula (Belgian premiere) by Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida

2010, 16mm, silent, 9’

Selection:  Rotterdam Film Festival 2011

4. Rice city (Belgian premiere) by Sherif El Azma

2010, color, sound, 19’

Arabic spoken, English subtitles

5. Disco (Belgian premiere) by Raed Yassin

2010,  color, 5’35”

no dialogue

Films

22.06. 2012, at 20pm

(79 min)

Echoes (Belgian premiere)

by Ivalo Frank

2010, color, sound, 24’, HD

Honorable mention at Los Angeles International Film Festival 2011
the Best Documentary – London Underground film festival 2011

ECHOES is a film about the American presence in Greenland, about abandoned airbases and radar stations from WWII. It’s also a love story about two people who have met in the stunning landscape of history, in the sounds of drum dance and music.

Echoes captured a kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of the vast and unnervingly beautiful east Greenlandic vista, with the decaying remnants of mankind’s greatest moral and ideological struggles – and utilizes the wonderfully unique visual and aural representations of Greenland as a canvas on which to paint the echoes of history and time.

Side Walk

by  Berivan Binevsa

2011, color, sound, 17’

This is the story about Mémo, a Kurdish immigrant living with his wife in the basement of a Brussels house. To avoid eviction from Belgium, Mémo remains secluded in his basement, peeping on passers-by through the window and waiting for his wife to return.

In this dance of feet walking in front of his basement window, Mémo finds himself witness to stories and daily dramas without having the opportunity to take a stand.

Fifth Column (Belgian premiere)

by Vatche Boulghourjian

2010, color, sound, 22’

Cannes Film Festival competition 2010:

3^rd award Prize by the Cinéfondation, La Sélection

Set in the Armenian quarter of Burj Hammoud, Fifth Column tells the story of a young boy, Hrag, and his unemployed father. A poignant scene of the film shows the boy begging an old shoemaker in a decrepit shop to give his father back his job. However, the old craft of making shoes is no longer in demand… The tools used for making shoes are contrasted with the gun the boy carries – instruments of creativity being replaced by the instrument of death.

Fifth Column stands out for its haunting portrayal of cultural and economic desolation and hopelessness. It explores the problem of a new generation that can no longer understand the importance of heritage; it explores the meaning of culture as it impacts both individuals and the community to which they belong.

Blue Dive (Belgian premiere)

by Mostafa Youssef

2011, color, sound, 16’

Selection: Film Festival Rotterdam 2012

As Selim, a diver bewitched by the sea, dies on a hospital bed, and as Mokhtar, a failed painter, contemplates on the color of death, Dalia, a nearby nurse, remembers her father’s drowning. Set in the Mediterranean Alexandria, this is a story of a brief encounter which compares death to the sea and life in contemporary Egypt.

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23.06. 2012, at 20pm

( 64,78 min)

The Corridor (Brussels premiere)

by Sarah Vanagt

2010, color, sound, HD, 6’45”

Award: 1st at the Courtisane Film Festival – Gent in 2011

For 5 days Sarah Vanagt 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 warmly, with greetings, songs, strokes, childhood stories, poems, and laughter, until the donkey entered the room of Norbert, a man who lost his ability to speak.

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 got in the way. 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.

Sound from the Hallways (Belgian premiere)

by Lasse Lau

2012, color, sound, 25’

With his latest film Lasse Lau revisits history at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and challenges concepts of historicism and museology from a time of the early 20th century when history was still seen as universal, and man believed in its abundant truth, to times where several histories challenge each other for the semblance of reality. The film in addition documents the atmosphere in one of the must classic and visually dense and unique museums in the world before it becomes history.

“The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.”

(From Walter Benjamin “On the concept of history”)

Populus Tremula (Belgian première)

By Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida

2010, 16mm transferred on DVD, silent, 9’

Selection:  Rotterdam Film Festival 2011

Populus Tremula originates from artistic research into Swedish “Match King” Ivar Kreuger (1880–1932), whom The Economist in 2007 called “the world’s greatest financial swindler” and who was the founder of Svenska Tändsticksaktiebolaget (the Swedish Matchstick Corporation), today called Swedish Match. Both factory locations have been active since the 19th century, and while the manufacturing process is now almost fully automated, beyond the removal of human labor, it has changed little since the early 20th century.

While the film follows the linear progression of match manufacture from timber to shrink-wrapped package ready for export, a series of superimposed textual interventions point to the ability of both capital and the nation-state to legislate and assert the monopoly capitalist’s desire to not only exploit natural resources but to appear to surpass the power of nature through myth.

Rice city (Belgian premiere)

by Sherif El Azma

2010, 19’

In an old-fashioned apartment, in an atmosphere of tension and unease, located somewhere between the real, the uncanny and a state of dream-like delirium, suggestive symbolism and insinuations fester in dark corners of rooms where Rice City unfolds. A self-conscious young woman, anxious, haunts the corridors; we encroach on a young black man lounging in his bed, building a city from blocks; an older man played by Count Federico de Wardal, recounts a story of selling rice to his friend, who appears as a ghost. A tight lipped scene around a dinner table, with its ripples of tension spilling beyond the bounds of this exquisitely shot film noir featuring an equally beautiful soundtrack, transfixing, full of suspense.

Disco (Belgian premiere)

By Raed Yassin

2010,  5’30”, VHS, silent

“Disco tells the story of the artists’ father, a disco-addict and a fashion designer who leaves his family to find work abroad, eventually becoming a film star in the Egyptian horror industry. This quickly spirals into a fiction, however, in which the father becomes Egyptian film star Mahmoud Yassin (who shares the director’s family name). The interplay of image and text explores a generation’s fascination with celebrity, forging a story about abandonment, voyage, longing, and stardom.”

info

A selection of short radical films and commentaries  – around the themes of anti-capitalism, protest, conflict and uprising  – will explore the medium’s potential to contribute to social-political change.  The day’s debate will be initiated by Oliver Ressler’s introduction to his films including What Would it Mean to Win? and What is Democracy? which you can watch here: http://www.ressler.at/what_is_democracy_film/

The programme includes shorts by Gary Anderson, Benj Gerdes, Neil Gray, Sacha Kahir, James Rowlins, Alexis Milne, Jordan McKenzie, Jessica Mautner, Fabienne Gautier, Irina Botea, Jacopo Natoli, Nisha Duggal. Discussions will be led by Esther Leslie (Birkbeck University of London), Martin O’Shaughnessy (Nottingham Trent University) and Gary Anderson (Liverpool Hope University/Free University of Liverpool).

Schedule Registration 10.30 for 11am start with Oliver Ressler followed by panel discussion. 1pm break for lunch (NC is near lots of city centre eateries) Film programme and discussion continues through to 6pm, socialising, networking and drinks at bar through to 7pm.

To book a place visit the Nottingham Contemporary website:

http://ncradicalaesthetics.eventbrite.com/?ebtv=C

RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt project is based at Loughborough University School of the Arts.

This years General Assembly is now taking place in Berlin -

Kran Film members will be attending the Berlinale for another 4 days please join us if You’re also here!

Best Kran Film Board

Like every year Kran Film General Assembly is going to be held during Berlinale, Berlin Film Festival, which last from 9 to 19 February, 2012.
The General Assembly will be held on 11 February, at a location in Berlin, that we will notify you about later on.
General Assembly will overview activities in 2011, programme for 2012 and propose new Kran Film members!

a film by David Pushkin
at
Movement Research, Brooklyn, New York

Wednesday, 1 February, 2012
Program begins at: 8:00pm
South Oxford Space
138 South Oxford Street
Brooklyn, New York

Iron Bridge Pictures, filmmaker David Pushkin and collaborator Tyler Fairbanks present their film, “Edie and Penelope Newcomb” (14min) at Movement Research in Brooklyn, New York. The film explores the relationship between a mother and daughter. The mother (Edie) is suffering from memory loss. The daughter (Penelope) is both a care provider and antagonist. Edie shares her “lack” of memory as a way to uncover insights into the more eternal aspects of living.
The film will screen as part of the Open Performance series of Movement Research: http://movementresearch.org/performancesevents/openperformance/schedule.php

The program begins at 8pm and includes three performances and the screening. A discussion will follow.

Info

For more info on the University of Greenland please check http://www.ilisimatusarfik.gl/

With his latest film Lasse Lau revisits history at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and challenges concepts of historicism and museology from a time of the early 20th century when history was still seen as universal, and man believed in its abundant truth, to times where several histories challenge each other for the semblance of reality. The film in addition documents the atmosphere in one of the must classic and visually dense and unique museums in the world before it becomes history.

“The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.”
(From Walter Benjamin “On the concept of history”)

Lumiar Cité
Rua Tomás del Negro, 8A
1750-105 Lisboa, Portugal
Wednesday to Sunday, 3pm to 7pm

The film is co-produced with Seen Films
Seenfilms / and supported by the Danish Arts Council and DCCD.
See more at: www.maumaus.org

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 General Assembly will be held on February 11th at a location in Berlin, that we will notify you about early next year.
General Assembly will overview activities in 2011, programme for 2012 and propose new Kran Film members!

Distributed by Deckert Distribution

Directors

Gianfranco Pannone, Valentina Monti, Andreas Pichler, Marzia Mete, Antonio Bellia, Elisa Bolognini

Silvio, One of us, shows the current political mood in Italy and troughout some portraits investigates the phenomenon of how far Berlusconi and his politics mirror Italy. The film was jointly filmed by five Italian filmmakers in the period around the regional elections of March 2010 asking themselves: who are the people that continue voting for the centre-right in Italy and thus supporting Berlusconi?

http://www.miramontefilm.com/en/in-development/one-of-us.html

released Feb 2011

Twenty-five-year-old Humaira lived through the Taliban regime, but she now puts on lipstick for the camera, in a self confident way. She studied journalism and started her own radio station, Radio Sahar, back in 2003. Humaira will take us into her world that doesn’t just reflect the current representation of Afghanistan but also powerfully conveys  humour, hopes and poetry.

A group of prostitutes in Rio de Janeiro who fight to obtain rights and reduce stigma, create a clothing label that quickly invades Brazilian fashion shows

http://gnt.globo.com/gntdoc/Noticias/GNT-exibe-documentario-inedito-sobre-a-criacao-da-grife-Daspu.shtml

Six teenagers from Kampala, Uganda, talk about education and how it can change their life.

http://www.ugandacalling.it/

An original portrait of the writer Antonio Delfini using animation and archives.