John Smith
Thursday/14.may/21.00
Friday/15.may/19.00
Slovenian Cinemateque
The two programmes bring a cross-section of Smith’s extensive oeuvre and emphasise the filmmaker’s diverse exploration of film and video forms, but above all highlight his attention to the social environment through a bricolage of created and found images, which, in an often humorous address, repeatedly engage, surprise or awaken from distraction the gaze of their audience.
Miranda Pennell
Wednesday/13.may/21.00
Saturday/16.may/19.00
Slovenian Cinematheque
The practices of artist filmmaker Miranda Pennell are embedded in different forms of critical archival practice. She has produced a body of award-winning film and video work that explores forms of collective performance, whether dancers, soldiers or musicians.
Her most recent moving-image works use colonial archives as the starting point for investigations into the colonial imaginary. Pennell’s focus rests on the history of British aerial bombing in the Middle East and traverses a series of different archives.
Shunsaku Hayashi
Wednesday/13.may/19.00
Friday/15.may/21.00
Slovenian Cinematheque
Shunsaku Hayashi is one of the most unique and original filmmakers among the already peculiar and distinctive creators in the field of auteur animated and experimental films. Primarily a painter, Shunsaku-san gradually specialised in bringing his painting masterpieces to life. All we see in his films is created in an analogue way, by him drawing on a canvass or paper. And that is precisely his authorial charm. In the digital world surrounding us, Shunsaku persists in hand-painting and/or hand-drawing each individual frame, which he then photographs with a digital camera, scans and edits in After Effects. He thereby manages to preserve the texture of hand-drawn characters in a digital format.
BEEF
British experimental film programme
Thursday/14.may/19.00
Saturday/16.may/17.00
Sunday/17.may/21.00
Slovenian Cinematheque
I Inspired by the US avant-garde, British experimental film of the last century quickly found its own direction. The films in this program represent a fraction of these rich practices. Much of this work was created at the London Film-Makers’ Co-op and centres on the activity of making and procedural systems.
Vistas
Curated programme by the festival team
Thursday/14.may/17.00
Friday/15.may/17.00
Sunday/17.may/17.00
Slovenian Cinematheque
Vistas is an international programme of short films curated by the festival’s programme team that tries to present to the public the most resounding and innovative contemporary films on the international and Slovenian experimental scenes.
This year, we invited international representatives of film festivals and audiovisual archives to curate the Vistas III programme.
Cosmic collective:OM production
Sunday/17.may/19.00
Slovenian Cinematheque
V-F-X Ljubljana festival will premiere eight freshly digitised films made at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s by OM production, one of the most mysterious phenomena of the Slovenian and Yugoslav avant-garde film. OM production was not a traditional film collective but a fictional entity existing as a concept and a myth, embodied in performative projections of 8mm and 16mm films. Transcending the boundaries of film, its practice combined performance, sensory assaults and collective anonymity.
Becoming image
Tuesday/12.may/17.00
Slovenian Cinematheque
Becoming Image explores the blurring boundaries between lived realities and digital images, tracing the feedback loops between visual representation and algorithmic operations. Through short films, video art, and video essays, the screenings reveal how the construction of identities, experiences, and environments is increasingly governed by the image, and by the computational systems that produce it. The works gathered here ask what it means to exist in a world where visibility is conditional: where images do not merely reflect reality but actively determine what is allowed to exist and who is permitted to have a voice.
In collaboration with Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana.
What’s Cooking?
Curated selection of student productions
Wednesday/13.may/17.00
Slovenian Cinematheque
The student programme consists of a curated selection of the latest production in cooperation with ALUO and AGRFT, University of Ljubljana; School of Arts, University of Nova Gorica; and AVA – Academy of Visual Arts.
ACCOMPANYING PROGRAMME /
ACCOMPANYING PROGRAMME /
VR point/ IN PURSUIT OF REPETITIVE BEATS
Tuesday/12.may/16.00-21.00
Wed- Sun 13.-17.maj/11.00-17.00
+MSUM / Museum of Contemporary Art
In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats transports you back in time to the height of the rave scene in Coventry, 1989. This immersive experience places you in the shoes of rave culture pioneers, from tracking down an all-night illegal warehouse party to feeling the anticipation, trepidation, excitement, and euphoria of the Acid House movement. The VR adventure vividly brings to life the stories of promoters, police officers, pirate radio stations, and rave-goers, showcasing their rivalries and relationships that fueled a music and societal revolution.
NÂR x Loïc Verdillon x Nader Bahsoun: To the birds that will come next
Kino Šiška Katedrala Hall
Tuesday,12.may/21.00
Cinema concert and music performance
For the opening ceremony, NÂR will present a collaboration with Lebanese photographer Nader Bahsoun and French Filmmaker Loïc Verdillon, featuring 16mm film projections. A journey of wonder through the streets of Beirut and Southern Lebanon – the stillness of the sea, or perhaps the silence it lends us for a moment, its majestic way of taming the dragons in our chests and gently reminding us that behind the waves lies the sun – its light, its warmth, its power of transformation.
PROPULSOR: SCORE FOR THE SHIP GALEB
Saturday/16.maj/21.00
Kino Šiška Katedrala Hall
AV music performance
Propulsor was inspired by the history of Galeb, later remembered as a “ship of peace” and a “ship of friendship” in the context of Yugoslavia’s Non-Aligned Movement. Its story begins in the colonial projects of Fascist Italy and continues in the utopian search for a political alternative to the Cold War division. It is also a story about the Uljanik shipyard, a former driving force of Pula, whose history will vibrate in moving images, the pulsation of labour and the echo of a ship’s machinery.
Simone C. Niquile: duckrabbit.tv
Aksioma | Project Space
Tuesday,12.may/19.00
Exhibition Opening
duckrabbit.tv is a video installation that explores the political implications of contemporary vision technologies, questioning how computational photography, datasets, and rendered imagery often act as substitutes for what is real. The work centres on a confused and curious queer character: a digital reincarnation of the 1892 duck- rabbit optical illusion, popularized by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to illustrate the ambiguity of perception. Now revived in the age of synthetic vision, this character becomes a vessel through which the project navigates the trials and tribulations of self-discovery and CGI production.
From frame to sequence
Tuesday/12.may/16.00
Slovenian Cinematheque Café
Exhibition Opening
An exhibition of film loops created at the workshop of learningabout and experimenting with analogue colour film led by the artist Neža Knez. The workshop took place in the facilities of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, the Photography Programme. The shot and developed experiments on 16mm film were scanned and edited in a digital environment and are now exhibited as part of an installation of archival cathode monitors.
In collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts and Design University of Ljubljana.
Thanks: Klubvizija