Faces
Date: May 18th, 2009, 7 p.m. - within the context of Experimental Night
Location: Top Kino [Info]
Tickets: 7 EUR (regular), 6 EUR (concessions) – Comboticket Experimental Night (Faces + International Competition 5): 8 EUR
Guest programme curated by Gerald Weber (sixpackfilm).
Mirrors of the soul, breathtaking facial landscapes, places of emotion and empathy. It wasn’t just the feature films that discovered the human face early on and consequently turned it into the preferred object for the camera. Also in film and video-art the face has always been considered a popular motif.
The approaches that come together in Faces couldn’t be more diverse: from the structural short film montage of Kren and Schmidt jr., the near motionless portrait that turns out not to be motionless at all (vom Grüller/Goldt), the precise and humorous montage of advert-gems (Kubelka) to painted and computer generated animations (Lassnig/Bruckmayr) and the observing of people in ecstasy and highest concentration (Russell/Dijkstra). One thing is true for all of these: faces tell stories.
Following the performance there will be a discussion with the present filmmakers.
49/95 tausendjahrekino
Austria 1995, 5 min, language: German
director: Kurt Kren
Tourists are filming and taking pictures of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. Kurt Kren’s film was exposed at a rate of two images per second. The sound consists of dialogues and noises from the film Der Verlorene (The Lost One) which was made by and starred Peter Lorre.
Dichtung und Wahrheit
Austria 1996/2003, 13 min, language: without dialogue
director: Peter Kubelka
A minimally corrected ready-made is what Kubelka had in mind – at the same time leaving room for further archeologist questions we cannot imagine at present. The film already contains the answers. (Peter Tscherkassky)
Eltern (Mutter / Vater) (Parents (Mother / Father))
Austria 1997, 6 min, language: without dialogue
director, camera: Friedl vom Gröller
In this work the situation of shooting film as experienced by the subject and filmmaker is most clearly visible in the loving and then hurt facial expression of the mother, who in the end disregards the filmmaker’s instruction and disappears from the picture. The variety in the characters’ reactions is made apparent by the way the father, who does not show his feelings, "sticks it out". While this is happening the viewer is left to deal with this discomfort by him or herself.
Selfportrait
Austria 1971, 5 min, language: English
director: Maria Lassnig
Lassnig, or more precisely her head, drawn with felt-tip pen, sings in English with a heart-rending Austrian accent about her life, her dreams, her eternal search for a male partner: "To look for the better half." But whenever one which is suitable with regard to color and shape appears, he calls her "weak" and "woman" in the same verse. (Maya McKechneay)
36/78 Rischart
Austria 1978, 3 min, language: without dialogue
director: Kurt Kren
This is the second portrait film Kurt Kren has made – multiple exposures of his face.
Mein Begräbnis ein Erlebnis
Austria 1977, 1 min, language: without dialogue
director: Ernst Schmidt jr. | with: Sara Suranyi
This film is a combination of body art, re-making and reconstructing a "film genre" from the early era of filmmaking (series Comic Faces, 1898, director: G. A. Smith): Making faces in front of the camera.
12 Uhr mittags - High Noon
Austria 1977, 4 min
director: Ernst Schmidt jr. | music: Wolfgang Ernst | with: Sara Suranyi
A person sticks it out for 24 hours in front of the camera. Every ten minutes a short clip was recorded, 8 frames per second (which is then projected at a speed of 24 f.p.s.). The tiredness of 24 hours in a time lapse of 4 minutes.
Polterabend (Hen-Night)
Austria 2009, 3 min, language: without dialogue
Director, concept, camera: Friedl vom Gröller
The setting is simple: a group picture with six elderly women arranged in two rows, everyone looks into the camera. One of them sniffs at a vial. The occasion for the film’s production was Kubelka’s upcoming wedding. Night before the Wedding shows friends’ reactions, which are expressed pointedly in their faces. Faces, as is well known, are able to tell stories. (Dietmar Schwärzler)
i deeply regret
Austria/Germany 2009, 3 min, language: without dialogue
director: Karø Goldt | voice: Maria Garcia Rojo
The video i deeply regret is about a failed chance of revenge and satisfaction. My video shows the attempt to liberate oneself from the victim's role by a fantasy of self-empowerment. In other words: After a long, long time someone fights back, while humming the theme song from Rocky. (Karø Goldt)
ich bin traurig (i am sad)
Austria 2003, 4 min, language: without dialogue
director: Didi Bruckmayr, Michael Strohmann | sound: Fuckhead
The video i am sad is part of a series of works on ”digital translations of reality” (D. Bruckmayr). Fuckhead – one of the band projects of cultural workers Bruckmayr/Strohmann – is one of these translation projects. The masculinity-charged raging of brachial heavy metal music runs – analogue to the technical processes of sound mixing – through the filter of another cultural form of expression: the opera and its melodramatic employment of voices, as well as the distant, cool, electronic creation of sound. The result is a bastard, a science-fiction being whose existence grows increasingly precarious. (Michael Loebenstein)
Black and White Trypps Number Three
USA 2007, 12 min, language: English
director: Ben Russell
The third part in a series of films dealing with naturally-derived psychedelia. Shot during a performance by Rhode Island noise band Lightning Bolt, this film documents the transformation of a rock audience’s collective freak-out into a trance ritual of the highest spiritual order.
Annemiek
Netherlands 1999, 4 min, language: English
director: Rineke Dijkstra
A young girl sings lip sync to her favourite song by the "Backstreet Boys". While the pop song deals with the insuperableness of Me and You and the longing for removing these limits, these feelings are mirrored in the facial expressions of the girl: between pose and naturalness, between truth and ideal. (Kunstmuseum Bonn)