The Artist Film programme has travelled to 2ANNAS all the way from the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Germany and assembles some of the most intriguing filmmakers currently working on the borderline between the film world and the art market.
While Katie Davies presents a 500-year-old border ritual in England’s northernmost town, Sun Xun reflects on the last Year of the Dragon, 2012, in vivid animated images with references to Huxley and Magritte. Wojciech Bąkowski, winner of the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen, questions the relationship between language and image. In “Blue and Red”, Guangzhou and Bangkok merge into a fictional city depicted in fascinating night-time images that tell of the people’s resistance against the regime. And Bjørn Melhus dramatises Ayn Rand’s menacing rhetoric of unrestrained capitalism in over-the-top science fiction scenes with dance interludes. The films in this programme provide a compelling overview of the current state of media art.
Curator Lars Henrik Gass, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival director
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE PAST DRAGON YEAR, Xun Sun, animation, China, 2014, 9'
This short film originates from Magritte’s painting “The Spontaneous Generation” which means all creatures develop from nonliving objects… The body carries the soul.
BLUE AND RED, Zhou Tao, experimental, China, Thailand, 2014, 25'
From the man’s complexion lit by natural light, to the crowd bathed in the colour of night; from Guangzhou square stained blue by LED billboards, and the anti-government protesters revelling all night in Bangkok square...
SOUND OF MY SOUL, Wojciech Bakowski, experimental, Poland, 2014, 13'
Synthetic, animated figures coexist with elements of realistic images, diverse landscapes meet each other, music tracks of different origins and moods overlap and collide with real sounds of the human environment.
JUST MY OWN, Alena Tereshko, experimental, Russia, 2014, 6'
A woman is dangling a leg, hugging and looking at it as if it was a child. She represents a mother and a child at the same time. Our body is our home and nature, and it is also something strange, sometimes hostile.
FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE, Bjørn Melhus, experimental, Germany, 2014, 15'
The current global ideological paradigm shifts towards new forms of religious capitalism is scrutinized by confronting ideas of novelist Ayn Rand with evangelical contents of US-American mainstream movies.
THE LAWES OF THE MARCHES, Katie Davies, experimental, United Kingdom, 2014, 16'
A depiction of the ancient border tradition of the Common Ridings all along the border of England and Scotland. These ridings are about marking and commemorating the past with as much relevance today as when they began in 1500.
Films are screened in the original language with English subtitles.
More information http://2annas.lv/en/partner-screenings/oberhausen-artist-film-2015/