Dieter Roth. Solo Scenes. 1997-98

A memorial mourns as time passes

An inspiring 75min DIY documentary film on new art and the young artists behind it. It was all filmed on the heat of live action of the first NOVA Contemporary Culture Festival, July and August 2010 in São Paulo, Brazil.

To be in Venice and see the architecture of New York, to perceive in a painting by Tintoretto the birth of animated images, to look at the burlesque Cretinetti as the ancestor of montage - so many shifts, displacements, and striking telescopings that Philippe-Alain Michaud proposes in this film dedicated to him. To follow this art historian, curator of the cinema collections at the Centre Pompidou, is to go from the oriental carpet to the film, or from the first fireworks to the cinema. And everywhere the animation of the images - projections of Antony McCall, or of Paul Sharits, Column without end of Brancusi, Pasolini's Accatone - everything moves! Under the tutelage of Aby Warburg, the great art historian of the early twentieth century, precursor of iconology and image comparison, to whom Philippe-Alain Michaud was the first in France to devote an important essay, eleven images are placed on the table to describe the singular journey of this art historian.

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.

The innovative and influential British filmmaker Derek Jarman was invited to direct the Pet Shop Boys' 1989 tour. This film is a series of iconoclastic images he created for the background projections. Stunning, specially shot sequences (featuring actors, the Pet Shop Boys, and friends of Jarman) contrast with documentary montages of nature, all skillfully edited to music tracks.

Vickie and Zhenya are identical twins in the process of transitioning. They live in the small city of Norilsk in the far north of Russia. Their entire life is condensed into the space of their small room. The film is constructed as a methodological manual for the creation and arrangement of a living space, and the placement of various objects there. The room of Vickie and Zhenya is examined as an ideal example of the intimate private space capable of authentically reflecting its hostess. The film is based on a video-letter that Vickie and Zhenya sent to their friend Valya. Vickie and Zhenya got to know Valya at the clinic where they underwent their sex reassignment. Since then, Valya has been their constant—though invisible—witness of their life. They report to Valya on all the changes they go through in the process of their transfiguration into Beautiful Ladies.

A remarkable walk through the life and work of the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), one of the most important creators of the 20th century, revolutionary of arts, aesthetics and pop culture.

In the present work, the artists appears lying on his back, his eyes mostly closed, dreamingly listening to a walkman that plays, a recording of 'The Best of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground'. The artist can hear the music through his earphones, but as viewers we are only privy to the sound of his voice that whispers the melody. As we listen to the hypnotic interpretion of the familiar songs - as emblematic for pop music history as 'Psycho' is for film - we are forced to mentally 'reconstruct' the remaining orchestration, instrumentation and vocals. We must attempt to reassemble something we already know to be a fact by negotiating the sticky mess of interpretation, meaning, and memory.

An unnamed passer-by is forced to trace a circular route inside an abandoned tram station, facing loss and time. The broken walls act as a channel, transmitting fragmentary, blurred and analogical memories. 

A kinetic prayer and structuralist intervention. Shot entirely on an iPhone 11 in a desolate Midwest laundromat, 108 spin documents the mechanics of impermanence. The film shifts from heavy turbulence to suspended repetition—not as a path to completion, but as a study of the loop itself. Featuring a layered soundscape, the work asks the viewer to stare into the rotation until the noise becomes a mantra.

Bits and blocks are the home of the Super Vario Birds who are dancing to the 8bit symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven.

IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.

In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).

Guy Ben-Ner, one of Israel's foremost video artists, gained international recognition with a series of low-tech films, starring his family in absurdist settings carved out of their intimate spaces and their everyday surroundings. Many of his videos are inspired by screenplays for films, folktales and novels. Analyzing these literary and cinematographic passages allows him to exploit the conventions of film narrative: how to tell a story, captivate an audience through a tale, sustain a degree of tension and entertainment, and so on. At the same time, he corrupts the magic of fiction by openly showing us the entrails of everything he records, without worrying about revealing the tricks of the trade. A large part of his filmic oeuvre features a conglomeration of cinematic and literary references which the artist quotes, adapts or interprets. Ben-Ner self-referentially links the great themes and their literary, cinematic and artistic realization.