Directors Lounge Blog

filme aus dem urban research programm bei:

urban sho(r)ts — die lange filmnacht

video screening

Samstag, 27.06.2009 
23.00 bis 3.00 Uhr
Passage Kino
Karl-Marx-Straße 131
12043 Berlin-Neukölln

Auszug aus dem Programm:
Im Zentrum der 48 STUNDEN NEUKÖLLN 2009 steht das Verhältnis Stadt-Natur-Mensch. Entsprechend bildete der Aspekt Urbanität einen wesentlichen Ansatzpunkt für die Zusammenstellung der diesjährigen langen Filmnacht. Von hier aus entwickelte sich ein gut dreistündiges Programm aus narrativen, experimentellen und dokumentarischen Kurzfilmen. Die Auswahl erfolgte, sowohl aus eingesandten Beiträgen, als auch aus einem Fundus von interfilm Berlin und dem Urban Research Programm.

Urban Research Contributions:
Thorsten Fleisch, Julie Meyer, Karola Schlegelmilch, Aline Helmcke, Klaus W. Eisenlohr

Links:
http://www.48-stunden-neukoelln.de/2009/de/ortinfo.html?p=291
Komplettes Programm (PDF 432KB)

Urban Research 2009

Directors Lounge at Z-Bar
cordially invites you:
Barbara Rosenthal – 33 existential videos
Thursday, 25 June 2009
21:00 Uhr

Z-Bar

BERG STR 2
Gartenstraße 2

10115 Berlin-Mitte


Barbara Rosenthal
humorous conceptual poetry-and.performance shorts
Including World Premiere of “Dead Heat”

Barbara Rosenthal’s work, on one hand many-fold and widespread over media such as performance, artists’ books, photography, installations and video, on the other hand shows continued commitment in her field and consistency over several decades. If you need proof that art can be genuinely political, even if the artist does not calling themself a “political activist”, or possibly even moreso because they do not, then look at Rosenthal’s work. The collection of her video work over 30 years, a part of which will be presented at Directors Lounge, may possibly be best compared with a witty book of aphorisms. It’s altogether irresistible, it’s thoughtful, and it’s funny, absurd, and at the same time, serious, absolutely. And that’s what she wants to be taken for.

More infos:
http://www.richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesBarbaraR.html

Artist’s Links:
http://www.emedialoft.org/artistspages/barbararosenthal.htm
http://the-artists.org/artist/Barbara-Rosenthal

Downloads:

German Press Release

English Press Release

Full Play List

Press Release:

Directors Lounge presents:
º*¨¨*º dagie brundert - summer in the polyverse º*¨¨*º

Thursday, 23 April 2009
21:00 Uhr

SCALA

Friedrichstraße 112b
(2nd floor - please note the change of location! Same building but different entrance!)
10117 Berlin

Personal show by filmmaker Dagie Brundert,
experimental film and video,
curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr;
with later songs of singer-songwriter
Jo Knox
—-

Summer in the polyverse
Super-8 films by Dagie Brundert

Dagie Brundert is presenting herself in bright, cheerful and philosophical ways, with a touch of irony that never feels bitter. “I am a hippie” she tells, and indeed, her films remind of the free spirited attitude of the Beatniks, who blended Buddha, Anarchism and an adolescent reach for freedom with the contemplation of everyday life. What is important? Nothing but the small things found or happening. With her filmmaker’s perspective and the micro-stories she is creating within, they become related to Everything and All, the “universe”. And as every super-8 film of her becomes a sunny univers, the evening will give us a glimpse of the summer in polyverse.
(Klaus W. Eisenlohr, more infos)

After the screening:
Jo Knox (Berlin), who contributed her song “Meshell” to Dagie’s brand new film “704” about the Los Angeles bus no. 704, will unpack her guitar, play, and sing.
http://www.myspace.com/jolately


*********************
www.dagiebrundert.de

www.wabisabisuper8.com

www.bandsonboats.com

www.canexit.com

*********************

Directors Lounge
http://www.directorslounge.net
http://www.richfilm.de

Thorsten Fleisch | 26th Mar|Scala 9pm

Personal show by film and videomaker Thorsten Fleisch

followed by a music performance of his band
Malende

On first sight, his films are very abstract and conceptual. Thorsten Fleisch is working directly with materiality, which can be as analogue and direct as skin impressions or crystals growing on the surface of film surface (16mm), or as digitally generic as a reciprocal math formula that creates 4-dimensional forms, inter-cut with 3 dimensional space and finally shown on the 2-dimensional space of video screen. Material in that sense could also be the electric discharges and their traces on photographic paper. Thus following his workflow, it becomes evident, the author is working with a hybrid combination of analogue and digital image processing. However, and as he tells me, the analogue, or better saying material processes are allowing him to also use chance operations and mistakes (like a light flair on film stock) during the working procedures, whereas with code (or programming) a mistake will just result in a script-error, which has to be eliminated scrupulously instead of being able to be integrated in the creative process.

Just by reviewing the titles of his work, such as “Blutrausch” (blood rush), “Videohaut“ (video skin) “Friendly Fire”, “Kosmos” (cosmos) and “Gestalt” we may realize, on the other hand, that something more is going on with and within the artist’s working process. Without any pathos and drama in his making of, Thorsten Fleisch is lingering (or, shall we say loitering?) on existential and creational themes: light through the literally on film grown minerals are producing a pictorial cosmos, or the blood drawn from his own body is creating a (maybe delirious) rush of images. Trying to put it into a nutshell, one could say, body, creation and space are the themes of his work.

By taking an even closer look, one may also discover that the filmmaker is focusing onto a third yet to mention aspect: It is the sensuality in images that triggers his interest both in his own and in the work of others. One may call it old-school, it sometimes takes as much as a couple of years for its execution, and it may be similar to the meticulously composing and editing of the early Stan Brakhage (classic avant-garde filmmaker who combined all kinds of lens and lens-less effects with camera images to visual compositions), but it is that quality of painstakingly controlling the composing and composition towards pictorial expression that creates the quality of his films. What is new and contemporary in his work, Thorsten Fleisch uses any kind of hybrid techniques, thus challenging the meaning of the “expression of material.”

I prefer old-school and handcraftship to cold calculated superficiality, it makes me read the work on different levels while at the same time enjoying its pure sensations. In fact, Thorsten Fleisch’s work has been screened widely in galleries and on festivals including Directors Lounge.

Thorsten Fleisch will be present and available for Q&A after the screening.
Following the screening, the band … will give play …

program starts at 9 pm
doors open 8 pm

See you at the Scala, Friedrich Str. 112 A, 1st floor

Directors Lounge • contemporary art and media

placebokatz:

hair-e in collaboration with directors lounge present:

proud flesh

film by jenny graf sheppared and chiara giovando

Sunday, 22 March 2009 / doors: 7pm/ screening: 8pm.

Proud Flesh
Two young filmmakers, Jenny Gräf Sheppard and Chiara Giovando, from Baltimore, Maryland collaborated on “Proud Flesh”, a film shot in the Badlands of South Dakota located in the American West. The film will be presented by Jenny Gräf Sheppard in person, who like her colleague, also is a musician. She will play on Saturday March 21, the night before the screening, at Kuntstraum Richard Sorge Berlin.

“Proud flesh” in medical terms is the wild and excessive flesh that is growing, if, in a deep wound, the skin tissue is so damaged it cannot cover the wound by growing back fast enough. It mostly happens, when skin tensions caused by body movements prevent the tissue from closing and healing. (A reason why doctors nowadays tend to stitch the smallest skin cuts.)

The film starts with a gunshot and the movements of an older woman, who is wounded on her upper leg, struggling to walk through a landscape of the West until she finds a small town. Violence, guns, blood and loneliness, all are ingredients of the common genre Western, however, and without breaking the settings of original, historical backdrops, place and costumes, carefully collected from local sources, the film sets out into a totally different direction than the adaptations of Hollywood Western drama we know of. Neither is it a funny parody of that genre.

Rather, the (mostly) silent human interactions in the movie are staged in more abstract, ritual ways invoking reflections on the symbolism of the characters instead of the psychology of drama. The title “Study of Ritual and Time” ­ and with it the work of Maya Deren, early avant-garde filmmaker ­ may come to mind. Like Deren, by using female main characters and abstracted acting, and unlike Deren, who later travelled to Africa for ritual studies, the filmmakers successfully try to have their own take onto American myths by setting the film into the historical time of their own homeland, and how it can be cinematically revoked, today. “What are the things that we see in our story as American women and how do we want to tell it?” says Chiara (“Into the West” by Brent McCabe, LINK) and Jenny adds: “I’ve always been interested in picturing women in that condition (of the John Ford Western, KWE), and an older woman that position Š picturing older women in the traditional young, male role.”

The wounded, Native American Indian-looking woman in the film, after encountering different situations of near death, ritual and alienation, will finally find her alter ego in an older female home-settler. By doing so, it seems, the two authors try to reach out back into time in order to heal what has been the deepest wound of the proud American move for freedom and individual independency, while “the Frontier” was pushed towards the West.

Another filmmaker may come into mind, a German director, whom the two authors may possibly not know of: Ulrike Ottinger. With abstract acting and ritual, or dream-like scenes of European and Asian tales, she made her mark in German contemporary film history. Like her, the makers of “Proud Flesh” are able to balance the abstract ritual-like acting on a high and light-spirited level, throughout their debut film altogether: It is fun and surprising to watch.

The evening at GDK will be the German premiere and Jenny Graf Sheppard will be present for Q&A after the screening.
(Klaus W. Eisenlohr / Directors Lounge, March 2009)

GDK Galerie der Künste
Potsdamer Straße 98
D-10785 Berlin

Bus: M29 /M48 /M85 bis Potsdamer Brücke

more at richfilm.de

placebokatz:

Berlin Tonight Fri 13th

On the occasion of the celebrations of the 2nd anniversary of Loris, Klaus W. Eisenlohr will present  a video selection of Urban Research, a program at Directors Lounge media art festival that has collaborated on several occasions with artists of the gallery.

Videolounge: Urban Research, curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr | 13th March 2009 | 7pm

Loris - Berlin

Jessica and Chaim d´Avigdor “Die Furcht Des Koenigs” in  world premiere february 14 10pm

Photo: Director Jessica d´Avigdor

Die Stunde der Matronen in world premiere Die Mühe ist ein Karussell, dessen verborgene, Leben spendende alte Weise, sich, mit den eigenen Händen und voller Geduld, allein zu Grabe trägt - gedankenlos und treu im Begriff, das Beste zum Schlimmsten zu wandeln. Hin und her, hin und her, aus guter und günstiger Natürlichkeit. Und keiner weiß, in diesem Meer von Umherstreifenden, den Vorbeifliegenden zu applaudieren, die beflissentlich ihr Tagwerk verrichten – satt undflügelschlagend bergab, zu dem, wonach so viele verlangen. So viele und so oft verlangen… Und am Ende ist nicht mehr dahinter, als den Vorbeifliegenden das Füllhorn aus dem Schoß zu nehmen. Die Stunde der Matronen a film by Stea Andreasson & Juergen Eckloff created 2007-2009 using pictures by G.Dore produced by Die Sibirische Zelle   february 14 10 pm

photo: Director Juergen Eckloff