VIDEOEX 2003
 
VIDEOEX 2003
    INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTALFILM & VIDEOFESTIVAL ZURICH
   
19  Friday 19. September, 7.30 pm
20  Saturday 20. September, 7.30 pm
21  Sunday 21. September, 7.30 pm
     

PLAY gallery for still and motion pictures is pleased to present on September 19th, 20th, 21st 2003 the winners of the competition together with a selection of the international program of the 2003 Videoex Festival (May 16-25).

VIDEOEX is an experimental film and video festival held every year in Zurich, Switzerland in mid May. The VIDEOEX festivals’ purpose is to promote experimental video and film work.
The festival started in 1998 and it includes an international and a Swiss competition. For the 2003 edition more then 1200 works from 50 countries have been submitted for the interna-tional competition. Beside the competitions the festival presents each year different retro-spectives and special programs. In the year 2001 retrospectives of Bruce Conner, Pat O'Neill and Nam June Paik where presented. The 2000 edition included a special section dedicated to Japanese works with retrospectives on Ito Takashi, programs of 16 & 8mm Japanese experimental films, and two programs with new motion graphics and digital productions. In 2003 the retrospective was dedicated to the late Stan Brakhage. Two programs with films by him were shown.

A highlight of the VIDEOEX 2003 was the central program with the theme „Urban Lights“. Well-known curators from various different metropolis around the globe (Craig Baldwin from San Francisco, Yann Beauvais from Paris, Kaspar Stracke from New York and Mike Hoolboom from Vancouver/Toronto) put together works exclusively for the festival, which in one way or another convey a feeling for what makes up their city. The program was concerned with the question whether we still need cities or not. Have cities lost their cultural significance? Are they only centres of trade and consume (also cultural consume)? Are those places that used to be the metropolis, not only by their size but because they produced new cultural meanings, obsolete? Is the compressing of people, influences, ways of thinking, which was able to create new strings of thoughts and positions, no longer necessary?

The 2003 jury of the International Competition was made up of Yann Beauvais (Paris), Susann Buchan (London), Kaspar Stracke (New York). Following works were awarded: First prize went to „White Balance“ by François Bucher. Three special prizes ex aequo went to:
" From the Home Front" by Asil Bothuhn, "Rock in the Video Age" by Niclas Dietrich and
" Unternehmen Paradies" by Volker Sattel. The winner of the Swiss competition was: „Black Milk“ by Max Philipp Schmid and Beat Brogle.
     
Calendar    
 19th   Friday 19. September, 7.30 pm  
  Current   Brian Doyle, USA 2001, Video - 6:00
Filmed a year before September 11th during the “2000 Yankees Ticker Tape Parade” Current is an impressive metaphor of the collective paranoia which permeates the American culture so profoundly.
Brooklyn artist Brian Doyle’s films are semi-fictionalised documentaries, which reveal haunting realities just beneath the surface of our recognition. His award-winning videos have been shown on television, in film festivals, and galleries throughout Europe. Doyle studied at Florida State University and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. He works with various media, including installation and photography.

Replay (bis)   Lamia Joreige, RL 2002, Video - 9:12
Repetition for the reconstruction of the past and as the attempt to free oneself of it in order to make possible new storytelling. The pictures seem to be reminiscences of the past. The filmmaker’s childhood spent in Beirut, which has been destroyed during the civil war, is contemplated in a poetically personal way. One last long take represents the path to thoughtfulness, the hour of prayer.
Born in 1972 in Beirut, Lebanon, Lamia Joreige immigrated to France in 1983, where she studied graphic arts. She also went to the Rhodes Island School of Design in the USA. She now lives and works between Beirut and Paris.

Apocalyptic Man   Sebastian Diaz Morales, MEX 2002, Video - 22:30
A murderer’s confesses not his crime, but his suffering after it. It is not physical suffering, but emotional. A vast, bottomless and frightening pit separates his soul from his already estranged body. The story is based on the novel “Los siete locos” by the Argentinean author Roberto Arlt.
Sebastian Diaz Morales was born in 1975 in Argentina. He studied at the National Academy of the Fine Arts in Amsterdam His videos and installations have been shown all over the world.

Great Balls of Fire   Leon Grodski, USA 2002, Video - 6:30
While Grodski attempts to make sense of the past 48 hours using his camera he meets Jimmy in the streets of New York on September 12th: “excuse me, what’s your opinion on the WTC? – Great balls of fire!” This entertaining contribution on September 11th balances on a knife’s edge.

White Balance (To Think is to Forget Difference)   François Bucher, USA 2002, Video - 32:00
“ Who is we?” The answer is clear immediately: those, who show things in a favourable light, which means their own light as privileged people, as people with power. Xenophobia and the corrupted power of images are aspects of this criticism of society, made up of pictures and sound material of different forms of the media and film material of September 11th.
Columbia artist François Bucher, living in New York, exhibited in international group and solo shows. His videos were shown at many festivals. He attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, was awarded a residency at La Cité des Arts, Paris and is a founding member of Valdez magazine.		  
 
 20th   Saturday 20. September, 7.30 pm  
  In the City   Mike Hoolboom, CDN 2002, Video - 10:00
“...then I knew it was over.” This alphabetic composition made of found footage and material made by the filmmaker is a humorous self- and general perception of the urban chase after individual happiness: food, sex, breaking-up in restaurants, relationships and affairs.
Mike Hoolboom lives in Toronto. He is an author and a very productive filmmaker. He was part of the Videoex 02 jury.

From the Homefront   Åsil Bøthun, N 2003, Video - 3:16
This cinematic portrait slowly changes into a still life. Is the idyllic life of a housewife a Nature Morte?
Å sil Bøthun born 1971 in Oslo, Norway. After university education in Norway and Winchester School of Art Åsil he has taken part in various collective exhibitions in Norway and Sweden and has been displayed in a few exhibitions. She teaches at Oslo University College faculty of Art and Drama since 2002.

Wie ich ein Höhlenmaler wurde – in Kurzfassung   Jan Peters, D 2001, 16mm - 20:00
An entertaining diary: problems of orientation, record cosmonaut, underexposing, acute attacks of jetlag, prehistoric exclusion of the herd and cave painting as a service in return for food. These are just a few rhetoric excursions into the world of metaphysics.

Unternehmen Paradies   Volker Sattel, D 2002, 16mm - 59:00
A portrait of a city. The capital city, reawakened to life, longs for representative power centres and clings to the control of its reinstated position. The history of the turbulent, “stone” Berlin is shown in its urban, developmental interventions. Are new buildings able to create a common identity for the two parts of town? Which contours will shape the future face, which ones will be forgotten in the state archives? The economic empires and politics, construct an answer, but the people of Berlin, so it seems, remain unquestioned. And hence “Unternehmen Paradies” ends with a distorted reflection.
Volker Sattel was born in 1970 in Germany. He studied at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg. He has made various films, which have been shown at festivals, on television and in exhibitions. He has also won prizes for his work. Sattel works as a filmmaker, cameraman, locationscout and photographer		  
 
 21st   Sunday 21. September, 7.30 pm  
 

Trois petits chats   François Vogel, F 2003, 35mm - 6:05
A game between words and pictures, which distort and mix each other. Space as an entity loses its contours and borders to which it is subjected in perspective reality. François Vogel tries to break through the limits of the representation of a three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional image, or rather a two-dimensional medium.
François Vogel graduated from art school, in France in 1993. Since then he has made various short films and installations. Vogel has also exhibited his photographic work in France. Currently he works for a film company.

Cubica   M.Ash, A 2001, Video - 4:00
Cubica is a completely abstract computer animation. The application programmed by M. Ash is based on the rule system of the computer game Snake. In one moment we have a distanced overview, in the next we take up a subjective position. This alternation is bound to the tradition of the game. Chris Jankas electronic sound composition moves cubes through impulses. With an increasing number of impulses they push into the third dimension, as if they where looking for an escape route out of the imaginary cube.
M. Ash was born 1977 in Austria. He studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he also lives and works.

Besenbahn   Dietmar Offenhuber, A/USA/D 2001, Video - 10:00
The fragmentation of the continuum of perceiving becomes an aesthetic and visual event. An almost meditative experience of the formulation of the geometry of space and time. The starting point of this study is the perception of the city from the perspective of the motorised spectator.
Dietmar Offenhuber was born 1973. He studied architecture. From 1995 – 96 he was part of the Group Relais in collaboration with Manuel Schlicher and Gerda Palmetshofer. He works at the Ars Electronica Futurelab and teaches at both the FHS Hagenburg and the University of Art Linz. He works with animation, virtual environment and in exhibition planning.

Novanta   Gigi Tarantola, I 2001, Video - 13:00
On an everyday bus ride through the city we are accompanied by more or less comical figures. Neither the ticket inspector nor our bus driver seem to be completely harmless. How sensual can the encounter of a trolley and a Chevy van at a red traffic light be? An animation collage made up of drawings and fragments of skin, hair and textiles.

Stir Mesh akuvido   Hanna Kuts, Viktor Dovhalyuk, D 2002, Video - 4:49
Fascinating visual music, a remarkable experience: image and sound form an astounding integrated whole due to their congruence. akuvido transpose the structure of their musical model – both formally and as regards content / qualitatively – into their graphic language.
Hanna Kuts was born in 1971. Viktor Dovhalyuk was born in 1967. They both went to the Institute for New Media in Berlin and the Acadamy of Art in the Ukraine. They live in Berlin.

Black Milk   Max Philipp Schmid, Beat Brogle, CH 2002, Video - 4:00
A music video to the song of the same name by Knut & Silvy. Speed, interference on the picture, overlaps, horizontal stripes and monochrome backgrounds. A dancer, Silvy; skin and pixel: “Beating you out of my body.”
Max Pilipp Schmid was born in 1962. He studied history of art at the University Basel. He has worked as a stage designer and now teaches at the School of Design in Basel. His films have been shown internationally.

Wounded on the Bridge   Takehiro Tsugimatzu, J 2002, Video - 5:30
In contrast to “proper” films – according to Tsugimatzu – there is little space for imagination in trash-movies. It is not necessary for the spectator to add anything in his mind. Should there be any synchronisation of image and sound, then this is due to our own thinking. The images, showing among other things lamps, neon signs and cigarette machines have been filmed in the neighbourhood of the author and flicker along to a looped, funny, trashy soundtrack.
Takehiro Tsugimatzu was born in 1976 in Japan. He studied French literature at the Waseda University. Since 2002 he is at the Graduate School of Multimedia-Science at Waseda University.

Orbiting the Atom   Ian Helliwell, UK 2002, Video - 4:50
Electronic music and celluloid are quite rare these days! Super8 recordings of pictures were generated from a manipulated TV and then treated with coloured ink and bleached. The music, which was composed for this film, is synchronised with the five sections.
Ian Helliwell produces experimental music, Super8 films, installations, electronic instruments and light projections for concerts and club evenings.

Rock in the Video Age   Niclas Dietrich, D 2002, Video - 10:00
A perpetual shot showing the view of a street with trams and a block of flats. The different images – with elaborated picture interference, recordings with longer exposure or at different times of the day – overlap each other and were synchronised to the music. The video to Jan Jelinek’s music is reduced in its concept. Nevertheless a dramatic tension is created.
Born in 1974 in Schwerin, Germany, Niclas Dietrich studies Visual Communications at the University of Art in Berlin.

Play (Video Game Session), Level 2   Christophe Blanc, F 2002, Video - 4:30
With the imaginative deconstruction Blanc revives the first generation video games. He creates a mirror image of reality, which imitates not reality but the virtual.
Christophe Blanc experiments with television and its uses in super-ordinary life. Stolen or captured images; deconstructed video games; sound samples used as a prop for images; reality imitates the virtual now, rather than the opposite. “Virtual actuality” and “virturealness” give reality a whole new dimension

  
 
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