VISTAS Ill /

Programme selected by visiting curators from European film archives and film festivals.

IS IT TIMELESS?

The Gratinated Brains of Pupilija Ferkeverk

Karpo Godina, Yugoslavia (Serbia), 1970, DCP (shot on 35 mm), colour, 12', no dialogue/english subtitles

A collage of scenes, shot in different natural light and the iridescent hues of the weather, featuring a group of acknowledged artists. Every scene carries an individual tendency and a tremendous desire for freedom.

The film was selected by the Slovenian Cinematheque.

33 Yo-Yo Tricks

P. White, USA, 1976, 16 mm, colouri, 8', no dialogue english/slovenian subtitles

P. White’s experimental short delivers exactly what its title promises: Yo-Yo champ Daniel Volk performs thirty-three of his most intricate, dazzling tricks with the bouncing toy, showing off his dexterity in mesmerizing slow motion. At once minimalist performance piece, motion study and ironic seventies suburbia time capsule, this film made its way into the Arsenal’s collection by way of the Whitney Museum’s New American Filmmakers travelling program in 1978 and remains one of the lesser seen, more obscure works in the archive.

The film was selected by Urlich Zimeons (Arsenal Berlinale, Forum Expanded).

Prélude 10 (Analysa)

Maria Kourkouta, France, 2011–2012, 16 mm, black-white, 8', no dialogue

A long panoramic sequence constructed from images captured at the end of Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island (New York City), this film is a tribute to the Greek musician Lena Platonos and the culmination of a series of visual experiments with static and moving images.

The film was selected by Mariya Nikiforova (Light Cone Paris).

Kempinski

Neïl Beloufa, France, 2007, DCP, colour, 14', english/slovenian subtitles

Kempinski is a mystical and animist place. People emerge from the dark, holding fluorescent lamps; they speak about a magical world. “Today we have a space station. We will launch space ships and a few satellites soon that will allow us to have much more information about the other stations and other stars.” Their testimonies spark confusion and contradiction: a second reading is necessary to fully understand what is going on in this unique blend of fiction (sci-fi) and ‘real’ documentary. The scenario of ‘Kempinski’, filmed in various towns in Mali, is defined by specific rules: interviewed people imagine the future and speak about it in the present tense. Their hopeful, poetic and spiritual stories and fantasies are recorded and edited in a melodic way; ‘Kempinski’ thus cleverly challenges our exotic expectations and stereotypes about Africa.

The film was selected by Marina Kožul (festival 25 FPS Zagreb).

In 8 Minutes around the World

Andrej Lupinc, Slovenia (Yugoslavia), 1990–2000, digital format, colour, 9'38''

The documentary video patchwork includes shots from various places around the world that the filmmaker visited while working as a cameraman at the Slovenian public TV station in the span of ten years. The diversity of aesthetics is shown through a compilation of shots from different continents. The stable rhythm that runs through the whole video unifies all the different scenes and breaks the seeming symbolic differences. The video would work as an ideal visualisation of Levi-Strauss's anthropological theory developed in his book Race and History. The featured song by the Slovenian rock band Buldožer, “Svaki čovjek ima svoj blues (Every Person Has Their Own Blues)”, now works on a global level and concerns different cultural groups, so it is no longer a critique immanent exclusively to Western society.

The film was selected by SCCA-Ljubljana, Station DIVA

Street Film Part 5

Robert E. Fulton, USA, 1977, digital format (shot on 16 mm), black-white, 13’, no dialogue

Robert Fulton does some incredible things with time-lapse photography, which imparts a surreal staccato movement to mostly moonlit beach scenes in Brazil. Wind-blown palms, wet pavements and sewer grates, surf and sand (some seen from an airplane) create fantastic abstract patterns as they flicker across the screen.

The film was selected by Ivan Ramljak (independent curator, selector of Rotterdam festival)

Screening in the presence of the filmmakers and guest curators.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Karpo Godina (1943,Yugoslavia/Serbia) is an essential figure of Yugoslav cinema. He infused the radical “Black Wave” of the 1960s with an irrepressible expressive freedom squarely targeted against all forms of repression. For more than 30 years, the half-Slovenian, half-Macedonian filmmaker has been moving breathlessly between fiction and nonfiction in his avant-garde shorts of the 1960s and ’70s and his feature films of the 1980s and ’90s.

Andrej Lupinc (1961, Slovenia/Yugoslavia) was a member of the Laibach group from 1980 to 1984. During this period, he created several independent video projects under the pseudonym Keller. Since 1983, he has been working as a cameraman and director of photography and has been a permanent collaborator in the ŠKUC-Forum video production. He also made some video/films based on his rich experiences of travelling around the world, mainly accompanying theatre groups and television team.

Maria Kourkouta (1982, Greece) is a filmmaker, editor and producer. After her short film Return to Aeolus street in 2014 (Arte Prize for Best European short film at Oberhausen FF), she co-directed in 2016 her first feature film with the poet Niki Giannari, Spectres are haunting Europe (Best international documentary at Jihlava's FF). She has been an active member of the french artist-run film laboratories L'Etna and L'Abominable for more than ten years.

Neïl Beloufa (1985, France) is a French-Algerian filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist. His multifaceted practice addresses themes of geopolitics, technology, urbanism, and ideology through layered projects that combine video, sculpture, social participation, and often dynamic processes like sensor activation or algorithmic control. He levies his systems to interrogate social atomization and contemporary power structures in the age of information.

Robert E. Fulton (1939, ZDA–2002, ZDA) worked as an aerial cameraman and director of photography on various documentaries, including those of his friend Robert Gardner. His enigmatic, labyrinthine films are full of a defiant poetics. Fulton was an acrobat and an agitator, mixing images and ideas to create unusual superpositions that convey a highly personal sense of lyricism. His cinema is that of the adventurer, revealing to us the dazzling landscape of a new world.