Program

BOCAMINA / PITHOLE by Miguel Hilari

BO 2019, 22 Min., OmeU

AUSTRIAN PREMIERE

Host: Claudia Slanar

Potosí, the colonial mining town. At the pithole, faces of the workers leaving the mine. These faces, turned into still images, are looked at by children. Images of other times? Miguel Hilari summarizes the colonial history of Bolivia and its reverberation in a very young generation in strictly composed photographic images.

„I am interested in the movement of people from one space to another. Spaces in between fixed borders, constant changes in identity and tensions between generations.“ (Miguel Hilari )

Miguel Hilari (*1985) is based in La Paz. His documentary films deal with migration, work and indigenous identity. They have been screened and awarded internationally. He regularly collaborates as producer and editor on projects by his peers and teaches cinema at the public university.

Filmography:

• Bocamina (22 min, 2019)
  
• Compañía (60 min, 2019)
• El corral y el viento (55 min, 2014)

Production by Casa Nacional de Moneda

LA MER DU MILIEU / MITTELMEER by Jean-Marc Chapoulie in collaboration with Nathalie Quintane

FR 2019, 73 Min., OmeU

LA MER DU MILIEU features footage found on the internet taken from webcams on the edges of the Mediterranean basin. From beaches, tourism offices, hotels, surfing clubs, weather stations, and private cameras – this is a film about the Mediterranean of today. A sea-faring adventure played out through the correspondence between two friends stationary at their computer screens, we see the writer Nathalie Quintane and the director Jean-Marc Chapoulie navigate the Northern and Southern Mediterranean coasts. A voyage across a sea of words that strike the very images themselves and question some of the incoherent facets of life today.

Jean-Marc Chapoulie is a video artist and filmmaker, he is also curator of exhibitions. He proposes, under the name of Alchimicinéma, sessions with a hybrid form, at the same time conferences and performances, projections and installations of films gathered over time.

Nathalie Quintane is a poet and a writer. Most of her books are published by the editor P.O.L.

EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL ECOLOGIES by Ralo Mayer

AT 2018, 43 Min., OmeU

Space and ecology share a long common history in fact and fiction, in popular culture as in science. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the film is patched together from popular movies, biographical elements, footage from Biosphere 2 and other experiments, AI-generated images, and countless other sources. The intertwined storylines are told through three protagonists: the astronaut, the robot, the alien.

“Ecology in outer space, far from our home planet, is literally unheimlich – uncanny, or better: unsettling. After 10 years of research about Biosphere 2, I met E.T. & we discussed Haraway in a Redwood forest.” (Ralo Mayer)

Ralo Mayer’s work delineates “ecologies of contemporary history” linking past futures and present-day speculations. Based on extensive research, he interweaves objects from space exploration, ecology, or the Science Fiction of everyday life into multilayered narratives and translates these into cross-media ensembles between installation, film, text, or performance. His work has been presented at international exhibitions, festivals, and conferences, and won several awards.
http://was-ist-multiplex.info

CHINESE PORTRAIT by WANG Xiaoshuai

CN 2018, 79 Min., OmeU

AUSTRIAN PREMIERE

What if you were a passer-by in Beijing streets, a peasant hoping for the rain to fall, a steelworker in disappearing factories, a tourist on a packed beach, a construction worker after an earthquake, a fisherman repairing his fishnet or a dancer waiting to get on stage?
A personal contemporary portrait of a country, a population and a society by Wang Xiaoshuai.

„In his new documentary the Chinese master director Wang Xiaoshuai narrates in an unusual way of his country. In long-lasting tableaux, many of them group portraits, CHINESE PORTRAIT (which in the original has the even better title “My Camera”) shows people, landscapes, buildings and unfolds an enormous range of images far away from China clichés. Although the shots are almost static, Wang creates a dynamic portrait of his homeland.“ (Andreas Ungerböck, UNDOX-Host of CHINESE PORTRAIT)

„The land I live in has been undergoing tremendous changes within the last decades. These changes took place in my parents’ generation and the generation before them, but also during my time, as I witnessed them when entering adulthood. The idea of making this documentary is derived from my contemplations of life beyond the realm of feature films. One of the duties art bears, be it painting, documentary, or photography, is record; and many of the art works have kept their focus on the changes in our society. People and landscape preserved on film, represent the reality of time so vividly that they deeply fascinate us. With them, we will walk through time and History, as the glamour of the bygone era generated from images is beyond words. Image is without doubt the most effective form to all history. The faces and the land will be our doors to the reality of today and yesterday China. (…) I think nothing is too late. As time goes by, when we stand in the future and look back, I want to see my camera trying to present -as much as it could- my land. It will be a supplement to the reality, a slice of this era, and a slice of CHINESE PORTRAIT.“ (Wang Xiaoshuai)

Wang Xiaoshuai is a director, screenwriter, and producer. He has directed numerous internationally acclaimed films, including BEIJING BYCICLE (2001), DRIFTERS (2003), SHANGHAI DREAMS (2005), IN LOVE WE TRUST (2008) and CHONGQING BLUES (2010).

BAB SEBTA / CEUTA’S GATE by Randa Maroufi

FR 2019, 20 Min., OmeU

AUSTRIAN PREMIERE | The filmmaker is present

Host: Tsveta Dobreva

CEUTA’S GATE consists of a series of reconstructed situations based on observations made on the border of Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on Moroccan soil providing the scene for an intense trafficking of manufactured goods, sold at discounted prices. Every day, thousands of people work there – and risk their lifes.

„It is a place I have frequented since my youngest age, as my father was a customs inspector. Many people in my family work in this field, as well as in transit, import and export, and so on. I even remember us using goods from customs seizures. In 2015, I had the opportunity to stay at the Trankat Art Residency, where I spent a few weeks watching this « ballet » of individuals around the border of Bab Sebta (Ceuta’s Gate). This geographical setting gives rise to a particular experience of time: a kind of cyclical route, seemingly without end, back and forth between the edges of Moroccan territory and the so-called khzayenes (huge border warehouses/ commodities shops) of Ceuta. The dynamics of movement, the aesthetics of the passing through, the characteristic situations of waiting and the redundancy of gestures struck me from the start. It is this experience of observation from a distance that lies at the origin of the project. With this film, it is my intention to transcribe the particular tension present on this small territory separating Africa from Europe. I would like to raise the question of the passage between two continents from the perspective of everyday life, taking a critical view of capitalist society, which, however, finds itself defied by the most amazing strategies of individual resistance.“ (Randa Maroufi)

Randa Maroufi is a Fine Arts graduate at Tetouan (Morocco), Angers (France) and Le Fresnoy (France). She belongs to a generation that grew up in an era dominated by images. She collects them with as much eagerness as suspicion, and ceaselessly questions their veracity. She prefers to put her ambiguous fictions in the service of reality, and the field of her experimentation encompasses the occupation of public space and gender issues, of which she highlights the founding mechanisms. She is currently living and working in Paris, France.

DID YOU KNOW BLUE HAD NO NAME? by Elise Rasmussen

US/CA/CH/FR 2018, 7 Min., OmeU

Host: Minou Norouzi

DID YOU KNOW BLUE HAD NO NAME? explores epistemological aspects of “blueness” through various historical narratives, examining the relationship between the color blue and mountaineering, early photographic technologies, art history and how knowledge is ascribed and recorded. This essay-style film weaves together histories of blue alongside a narrative referencing (among others) eradicated feminist histories and indigenous knowledge systems, commenting on issues of [in]visibility, innovation, conquest and the contest.

„An overarching thread in my work is the examination of ways that history is recorded and how this reflects implicit power structures embedded in fields of cultural production and the world at large. I work primarily in photography, video and performance and my projects have a strong conceptual foundation, one that goes beyond the aesthetics of the medium. The discovery of lesser-known histories fascinates me and my practice involves intense research in an attempt to uncover stories overlooked or under recognized by the hegemonic record. I look for threads of intersection at which point I record my investigations through varying artistic strategies in an attempt to – reimagine a new narrative, creating works that address larger concepts related to notions of power, value systems and the relationship between the personal and political.“ (Elise Rasmussen)

Elise Rasmussen is a canadian filmmaker. She works primarily in photography, video and performance. Her projects have a strong conceptual foundation, one that goes beyond the aesthetics of the medium. An overarching thread in her work is the examination of ways that history is recorded and how this reflects implicit power structures embedded in fields of cultural production and the world at large.

SEMRA ERTAN by Cana Bilir-Meier

TR/DE 2013, 7 Min., OmeU

Semra Ertan was born in Turkey, 1956 and moved to her parents to the federal republic of Germany in 1972. She worked as a construction draftswomen as well as an interpreter and wrote over 350 poems. 1982 Semra Ertan burnt herself in Hamburg to give a sign against racism in Germany.

Cana Bilir-Meier lives and works in Munich (DE) and Vienna (AT). She studied digital media/art and film and art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at Sabancı University in Istanbul (TR). She works as a filmmaker and artist in art and culture education projects. Her filmic, performative, and text-based works move at the interfaces between archival work, text production, historical research, and contemporary media reflexivity or archaeology. Her work has been shown at Public Art Munich (2018), documenta14 Public Program (2017), Kunsthalle Wien (2017), Diagonale (2017), Kassler Dokfest (2015). She has contributed to a publication at Sternberg Press (2015) and curated programs for Kassler Dokfest (2016-17), Fol Sinema Istanbul (2016) and Undox Vienna (2017).

ACROPOLIS by Eva Stefani

GR 2004, 25 Min., OmeU

Host: Minou Norouzi

ACROPOLIS explores the significance of a Greek national symbol in the creation of national identity and collective memory. In the place of a concrete, victorious memory, the film juxtaposes “another” memory, that of the senses, the memory of the body.
By drawing a parallel between the “sacred rock” and the female body, the film makes a comment on the timeless exploitation of the monument. At the same time it poses questions on the relationship of History and Pornography.

Eva Stefani  uses video and super 8 film to make observational documentaries and short visual poems. Currently, she is completing an autobiographical graphic novel. She is also editing her feature documentary ‘Days and Nights with Dimitra K.’

She works as an Associate Professor of History and Theory of Cinema, Faculty of Theatre Studies, University of Athens, and as a Visiting Professor at Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Griechische und Lateinische Philologie.

Selected Filmography: Manuscript (2017, 12’), Virgin’s Temple (2017, 3’), Incubator (2016, 8’), Ill Not Ill (2014, 19’), Dimitris Papaioannou (2012, 52’), The Return of E.C. Gonatas (2012, 38’), Bathers (2008, 46’), What Time Is It? (2007, 26’), The Box (2004, 11’), Acropolis (2001, 46’, 25’), Reveille (2001, 3’), Prison Leave (2001, 30’), Housemates (1998, 34’), Letters from Albatross (1995, 26’), Athene (1995, 36’), Paschalis (1993, 17’), Μoiroloi (1991, 17’), La Vie en Vert (1989, 16’), Gutters (1987, 12’).

ZUSTAND UND GELÄNDE by Ute Adamczewski

DE 2019, 119 Min., OmeU

AUSTRIAN PREMIERE | The filmmaker is present

STATUS AND TERRAIN tells the story of an escalation. Its point of departure are the so-called early concentration camps which aimed at the elimination of political opponents. Today these camps are largely forgotten. STATUS AND TERRAIN entangles three periods of German History to form a loose narrative, in which violence as a means of imposing power plays a pivotal role.

“The film itself is like the story it pursues alongside the establishment of the first camps under the National Socialists in 1933 on one hand, and the various forms and variations of commemorative culture right up to the present day of the NSU on the other: it is simple in its essential form and, with each and every minute of exploration that passes by, more complex, interwoven, confusing, richer and above all: more invasive. This way it is articulating something fundamental about the relationship between film and history. Siegfried Kracauer: “It can be assumed that each time span brings up a new image and the successive images produced this way layer up, covering the continuously expanding canvas. ‘”(UNDOX host Alexandro Bachmann on ZUSTAND UND GELÄNDE (STATE AND TERRAIN)

Ute Adamczewski works as a video artist and filmmaker. Her videos explore how the built environment reflects power structures within a prevailing order. Her work has been presented in numerous international exhibitions and festivals. STATUS AND TERRAIN is her first feature-length documentary.