Panel 1, Day 2, 10:00-13:00, DMPL
Kersti Grunditz Brennan & Annika Boholm
A screening the feature film BLOD and sharing the BLOD Method – a case study for method development in films/research projects in the realm of experimental fiction film.
The presentation will provide examples of experimentation throughout the film process, ways to challenge fiction conventions, and methods to induce complexity in both story and production.
Michael Keerdo-Dawson
The Limits of Consent is an interactive fiction film with 9 possible endings. The film will be screened, and audience members will be able to chose a path through the film. The screening will be followed by a Q&A and talk by the director in which the method will be illuminated.
A screening the feature film BLOD and sharing the BLOD Method – a case study for method development in films/research projects in the realm of experimental fiction film.
The presentation will provide examples of experimentation throughout the film process, ways to challenge fiction conventions, and methods to induce complexity in both story and production.
Michael Keerdo-Dawson
The Limits of Consent is an interactive fiction film with 9 possible endings. The film will be screened, and audience members will be able to chose a path through the film. The screening will be followed by a Q&A and talk by the director in which the method will be illuminated.
Panel 2, 14:00–15:30, Foyer
Myrto Farmaki
Film Narrative as Moebius Ribbon Circuit: Psychoanalysis, AI and the assisted unconscious.
This presentation will consider psychoanalytic and AI technics as the facade and reverse side of a shared unconscious fabric, one that keeps being knitted as it generates both images and storytelling.
Adonia Bouchehri
Boucheri will share a performative lecture in which they draw on their practice-based research into filmmaking as a mechanism for negotiating reality and consciousness, imagination, and memory. To exemplify how narrative structure is used as a method to explore these concepts, they will be drawing on three works: Blind Yellow Sunshine (2022), Jello (2020), and Frozen (2018).
Vron Harris
How Is It Possible To Make A Film To Evoke A Character’s Internal State Of Mind?
A presentation and screening of the work in progress project.
The director will detail a working method in how to direct and film actors to achieve naturalistic performances, the slipperiness between the character and the actor and how this is juxtaposed and embedded within the form of the film itself and how this could be constructed.
There is a strong interest in the ideas of realism and symbolism in film, with the integrity of the long take juxtaposed with montage and a more highly edited approach, ideas of feminism and representation, the use of offscreen space and the possibilities of positioning the spectator as both passive viewer and active participant.
Film Narrative as Moebius Ribbon Circuit: Psychoanalysis, AI and the assisted unconscious.
This presentation will consider psychoanalytic and AI technics as the facade and reverse side of a shared unconscious fabric, one that keeps being knitted as it generates both images and storytelling.
Adonia Bouchehri
Boucheri will share a performative lecture in which they draw on their practice-based research into filmmaking as a mechanism for negotiating reality and consciousness, imagination, and memory. To exemplify how narrative structure is used as a method to explore these concepts, they will be drawing on three works: Blind Yellow Sunshine (2022), Jello (2020), and Frozen (2018).
Vron Harris
How Is It Possible To Make A Film To Evoke A Character’s Internal State Of Mind?
A presentation and screening of the work in progress project.
The director will detail a working method in how to direct and film actors to achieve naturalistic performances, the slipperiness between the character and the actor and how this is juxtaposed and embedded within the form of the film itself and how this could be constructed.
There is a strong interest in the ideas of realism and symbolism in film, with the integrity of the long take juxtaposed with montage and a more highly edited approach, ideas of feminism and representation, the use of offscreen space and the possibilities of positioning the spectator as both passive viewer and active participant.
Panel 3, 14:00–15:30 , DevLab
Nduka Mntambo
Mntambo will detail working methods in the production of a 3-channel audio-visual installation. The work aims to disrupt traditional cinematic norms, stimulate conversation, and uncover unique perspectives on time, memory, and urban life. Through the presentation of the short experimental works, "Prompts and Projections" (2017), "Store in a Cool Dry Place" (2016), and "If this be a city" (2009), the director aims to stimulate a dialogue between these works in a triptych format, fostering new insights from their combined presentation.
The films will be screened on the evening of Tuesday 11th July.
'Prompts and Projections' is a speculative exploration of memory, storytelling, and assemblages. It imagines a scenario where astronaut Edward Makaku Nkoloso and former Zambian World Female Boxing Champion Esther Phiri fall in love. The piece is a palimpsest, drawing inspiration from Suzan-Lori Parks' "365 Days - 365 Plays" and Italo Calvino's "Six Memos for the Next Millennium."
'Store in a Cool Dry Place' is a collaborative project with Jyoti Mistry, initially presented at the "When Tomorrow Comes" exhibition. This piece explores apocalyptic narratives and societal collapse, challenging traditional single-screen epic narratives of the 'end of times'. The film documents the rituals of coffin-making in three African cities - Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, and Accra - and projects video fragments and city imagery offering a nuanced approach to the apocalyptic theme.
'If this be a city' delves into the poetics of space, urbanity, and longing. It presents a restless man in a high-rise building, tormented by the city's noises and his own memories. The narrative uncovers the man's struggles through the voice of a doppelgänger, revealing the oppressive silence within his room.
Maverick Motion films
Turning to Birds is our latest project. It is a series of short films based on Cli-fi texts, co-authored with algorithms, sculptured into narratives and imaginary memories. Turning to the Birds started as an artistic research experiment, that built on both science fiction and machines learning capacity, to transport us into possible climate futures.
A Q&A with the team will further explore the climate themes which inspired the film. It would also look at the technology used in creating and executing each part of the project, some of which was filmed across continents in the global lockdown. We’ll then take an in-depth look at our creative process.
Daksha Patel
Patel will outline the process leading up to the creation of the experimental film In Pericula: At Risk (2022). The film was the outcome of a residency in the Anatomy department and Life Science Museum at King’s College, London between 2019-2021. The director will describe the development of their methods, which evolved out of the objects and materials I encountered during the residency, and a workshop delivered with students.
Mntambo will detail working methods in the production of a 3-channel audio-visual installation. The work aims to disrupt traditional cinematic norms, stimulate conversation, and uncover unique perspectives on time, memory, and urban life. Through the presentation of the short experimental works, "Prompts and Projections" (2017), "Store in a Cool Dry Place" (2016), and "If this be a city" (2009), the director aims to stimulate a dialogue between these works in a triptych format, fostering new insights from their combined presentation.
The films will be screened on the evening of Tuesday 11th July.
'Prompts and Projections' is a speculative exploration of memory, storytelling, and assemblages. It imagines a scenario where astronaut Edward Makaku Nkoloso and former Zambian World Female Boxing Champion Esther Phiri fall in love. The piece is a palimpsest, drawing inspiration from Suzan-Lori Parks' "365 Days - 365 Plays" and Italo Calvino's "Six Memos for the Next Millennium."
'Store in a Cool Dry Place' is a collaborative project with Jyoti Mistry, initially presented at the "When Tomorrow Comes" exhibition. This piece explores apocalyptic narratives and societal collapse, challenging traditional single-screen epic narratives of the 'end of times'. The film documents the rituals of coffin-making in three African cities - Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, and Accra - and projects video fragments and city imagery offering a nuanced approach to the apocalyptic theme.
'If this be a city' delves into the poetics of space, urbanity, and longing. It presents a restless man in a high-rise building, tormented by the city's noises and his own memories. The narrative uncovers the man's struggles through the voice of a doppelgänger, revealing the oppressive silence within his room.
Maverick Motion films
Turning to Birds is our latest project. It is a series of short films based on Cli-fi texts, co-authored with algorithms, sculptured into narratives and imaginary memories. Turning to the Birds started as an artistic research experiment, that built on both science fiction and machines learning capacity, to transport us into possible climate futures.
A Q&A with the team will further explore the climate themes which inspired the film. It would also look at the technology used in creating and executing each part of the project, some of which was filmed across continents in the global lockdown. We’ll then take an in-depth look at our creative process.
Daksha Patel
Patel will outline the process leading up to the creation of the experimental film In Pericula: At Risk (2022). The film was the outcome of a residency in the Anatomy department and Life Science Museum at King’s College, London between 2019-2021. The director will describe the development of their methods, which evolved out of the objects and materials I encountered during the residency, and a workshop delivered with students.
Panel 4, 15:45–17:00, Foyer
Phillip Warnell
This paper relates the uneasy rapport between filmmaking and crimemaking in a world increasingly obsessed with the crime scene, yet rarely willing to call into question the conditions of its emergence. Analysing a constellation of three of my recent films using Domietta Torlasco's 'Time & the Crime' as a key reference, it explores the space where casting interview and crime testimonial are indiscernible and can be received as either discarded testimony or audition as witness. I draw specifically on archives, namely the auditions and screen tests for Ben and Josh Safdie’s Good Time (2016) and a photographic collection at the Warburg Institute, London, migrated into the project. Intimate Distances (2021) explores the methodology of esteemed casting director and street scout Martha Wollner, who developed direct cinema with Albert Maysles in the 1960’s. She embarks on a casting around the streets of Queens, New York – on a fictional search for an ex-offender and failed auditionee drawn from the Good Time archive - seeking his younger self, prior to a 30-year jail sentence for murder. Additional experimental works, The Whole Nine Yards and Whatever Make the Car Move (2023) shape further Good Time audition testimony, combining elements of AI as a mis-recognition device, images of unknown statues, dance, musical composition and on-screen text to narrativize audio auditions. Together they transpose the precarious, life-threatening and extreme living circumstances of those whose future incarceration was practically inevitable into redacted, cinematic materialisations.
Fraser Cornall
‘How the collision of Existential philosophy and Structural Film can affect the meaning of the image?’.
Exploring two Art Cinema Films, Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1962) and La Notte (Antonioni, 1961), thematically concerned with existence. Two Structural Films, nostalgia (Frampton, 1971) and Remedial Reading Comprehension (Owen Land, 1970), visually concerned with the strangeness of existence.
Alejandra Rodriguez-Remedi
Rodriguez-Remedi research focuses on Chilean writer-director Raúl Ruiz's (1941-2011) use of speculative bricolage in the making, teaching and theorisation of his film and video practice. Ruiz was a noted and prolific exponent of experimental fiction filmmaking, from the New Wave grittiness of The Tango of the Widower (1967) to the exilic, piratic wanderings of his 1980s works to the neo-baroque, semi-biographical meta-narratives of Night Across the Street (2012).
This paper relates the uneasy rapport between filmmaking and crimemaking in a world increasingly obsessed with the crime scene, yet rarely willing to call into question the conditions of its emergence. Analysing a constellation of three of my recent films using Domietta Torlasco's 'Time & the Crime' as a key reference, it explores the space where casting interview and crime testimonial are indiscernible and can be received as either discarded testimony or audition as witness. I draw specifically on archives, namely the auditions and screen tests for Ben and Josh Safdie’s Good Time (2016) and a photographic collection at the Warburg Institute, London, migrated into the project. Intimate Distances (2021) explores the methodology of esteemed casting director and street scout Martha Wollner, who developed direct cinema with Albert Maysles in the 1960’s. She embarks on a casting around the streets of Queens, New York – on a fictional search for an ex-offender and failed auditionee drawn from the Good Time archive - seeking his younger self, prior to a 30-year jail sentence for murder. Additional experimental works, The Whole Nine Yards and Whatever Make the Car Move (2023) shape further Good Time audition testimony, combining elements of AI as a mis-recognition device, images of unknown statues, dance, musical composition and on-screen text to narrativize audio auditions. Together they transpose the precarious, life-threatening and extreme living circumstances of those whose future incarceration was practically inevitable into redacted, cinematic materialisations.
Fraser Cornall
‘How the collision of Existential philosophy and Structural Film can affect the meaning of the image?’.
Exploring two Art Cinema Films, Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1962) and La Notte (Antonioni, 1961), thematically concerned with existence. Two Structural Films, nostalgia (Frampton, 1971) and Remedial Reading Comprehension (Owen Land, 1970), visually concerned with the strangeness of existence.
Alejandra Rodriguez-Remedi
Rodriguez-Remedi research focuses on Chilean writer-director Raúl Ruiz's (1941-2011) use of speculative bricolage in the making, teaching and theorisation of his film and video practice. Ruiz was a noted and prolific exponent of experimental fiction filmmaking, from the New Wave grittiness of The Tango of the Widower (1967) to the exilic, piratic wanderings of his 1980s works to the neo-baroque, semi-biographical meta-narratives of Night Across the Street (2012).
Panel 5, 15:45–17:00, DevLab
Andrea Pagnes
Poetics of Relations: A Manifesto on Performance-Based Filmmaking
Since 2006, Andrea Pagnes (he/him) and Verena Stenke (she/her) have been working as VestAndPage in the ambits of performance art, performance-based film, writing, and temporary artistic community projects. Their contextual art practice is conceived psycho-geographically in response to “thin places”, social contexts, natural surroundings, historical sites, architectures, and urban ruins. Their Poetics of Relations examines notions of temporalities, memory strata, communication, human frailty, trust in change, endurance, pain sublimation and risk-taking. With a poetic approach to the human body and a focus on universal human experiences, they deploy moving images, seeking unconventional forms of storytelling and non linear narratives. Transcendental cinema and magic realism inspire their performance-based filmmaking practice.
Thalia Hoffman
Hoffman share the making of my latest film "A handmade tale" as a performative lecture and screening of film excerpts. The film "A Man Made Tale" explores the relationships that unfold in the ecosystem of the Yatir Forest, between trees, weather, animals, plants, and human beings. The work looks at the forest as a political metaphor for the Zionist presence in the local landscape. The Yatir Forest is the largest man-made forest in Israel, spanning over 40,000 dunams (10,000 acres) and populated by about four million oak and cypress trees. Located at the southern edge of the Judean Desert, the forest was planted relatively recently, in the early 1960s, but the settlement of Yatir is mentioned in the Old Testament, and people have apparently populated the area at least since then. The forest is a lively place, though several years after it was planted it became clear that it was not self-sustaining. The life span of the planted pine is about one hundred years, and the rainfall in the area is not sufficient for young trees to grow among the planted trees. Maintaining the Yatir Forest thus requires continual reforestation.
Nobunye Levin
SpilLover (2021) is a fragmentary cine-poem of feminist love praxis. It is comprised of a series of relational film fragments, assembled in dialogue with various films, songs and written texts about love, that were created using the film fragment as mode, where the fragment is also imagined as “enunciation” (Mignolo in Gaztambide-Fernndez, 2014): a film fragment is mobile, responsive, malleable and mutable. The film fragment as mode is about an on-going process of exploratory potentialities where the film fragment as artwork and knowledge reveals its open-endedness. SpilLover is a feminist exploration of moments of women’s lives strung together by their appetite for love. A consideration of appetite with respect to love is about an affirmation of love for love. It is an assertion of love: to be willful in love and be willing to love. But, appetite is also about a lack of appetite. It is about what you demand, refuse, insist on, and let go of. Love as “a series of propositions and objections” (Abbas, 2017); love as a political possibility for itself: an erotic move through power (Lorde in Sandoval, 2000). This is about a refusal of the innocence of love in order to consider it as a “practice of freedom” (hooks, 2006) and as a transformational space (Berlant, 2011) for feminist love praxis. In its sum the film is a tapestry of thought, sensation and feeling – produced through connection and departure amassed from various film fragments, to produce a fragmentary yet connected experience, an experience of affinity within difference.
Poetics of Relations: A Manifesto on Performance-Based Filmmaking
Since 2006, Andrea Pagnes (he/him) and Verena Stenke (she/her) have been working as VestAndPage in the ambits of performance art, performance-based film, writing, and temporary artistic community projects. Their contextual art practice is conceived psycho-geographically in response to “thin places”, social contexts, natural surroundings, historical sites, architectures, and urban ruins. Their Poetics of Relations examines notions of temporalities, memory strata, communication, human frailty, trust in change, endurance, pain sublimation and risk-taking. With a poetic approach to the human body and a focus on universal human experiences, they deploy moving images, seeking unconventional forms of storytelling and non linear narratives. Transcendental cinema and magic realism inspire their performance-based filmmaking practice.
Thalia Hoffman
Hoffman share the making of my latest film "A handmade tale" as a performative lecture and screening of film excerpts. The film "A Man Made Tale" explores the relationships that unfold in the ecosystem of the Yatir Forest, between trees, weather, animals, plants, and human beings. The work looks at the forest as a political metaphor for the Zionist presence in the local landscape. The Yatir Forest is the largest man-made forest in Israel, spanning over 40,000 dunams (10,000 acres) and populated by about four million oak and cypress trees. Located at the southern edge of the Judean Desert, the forest was planted relatively recently, in the early 1960s, but the settlement of Yatir is mentioned in the Old Testament, and people have apparently populated the area at least since then. The forest is a lively place, though several years after it was planted it became clear that it was not self-sustaining. The life span of the planted pine is about one hundred years, and the rainfall in the area is not sufficient for young trees to grow among the planted trees. Maintaining the Yatir Forest thus requires continual reforestation.
Nobunye Levin
SpilLover (2021) is a fragmentary cine-poem of feminist love praxis. It is comprised of a series of relational film fragments, assembled in dialogue with various films, songs and written texts about love, that were created using the film fragment as mode, where the fragment is also imagined as “enunciation” (Mignolo in Gaztambide-Fernndez, 2014): a film fragment is mobile, responsive, malleable and mutable. The film fragment as mode is about an on-going process of exploratory potentialities where the film fragment as artwork and knowledge reveals its open-endedness. SpilLover is a feminist exploration of moments of women’s lives strung together by their appetite for love. A consideration of appetite with respect to love is about an affirmation of love for love. It is an assertion of love: to be willful in love and be willing to love. But, appetite is also about a lack of appetite. It is about what you demand, refuse, insist on, and let go of. Love as “a series of propositions and objections” (Abbas, 2017); love as a political possibility for itself: an erotic move through power (Lorde in Sandoval, 2000). This is about a refusal of the innocence of love in order to consider it as a “practice of freedom” (hooks, 2006) and as a transformational space (Berlant, 2011) for feminist love praxis. In its sum the film is a tapestry of thought, sensation and feeling – produced through connection and departure amassed from various film fragments, to produce a fragmentary yet connected experience, an experience of affinity within difference.