Artist film and video
30 April – 5 May 2009
Lichtburg Filmpalast
Elsaesser Str. 26
46045 Oberhausen
Germany
Eija-Liisa Ahtila (Finland), Victor Alimpiev (Russia), Josef Dabernig (Austria), Amit Dutta (India), Robert Frank (USA), Saskia Holmkvist (Sweden), Ezra Johnson (USA), Susan Turcot (Canada), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), Sun Xun (PRC), Christoph Girardet and Matthias Mueller, Heinz Emigholz, Bjørn Melhus and Julia Oschatz (Germany) are some of the artists whose new film and video works will be screened at the 55th Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.
Oberhausen, an event that has championed avant-garde films from its very inception and continues to do so today, has over the past few years grown into a place where film and art meet, where art curators can talk to filmmakers, where both film festivals and galleries find interesting new work for their programmes.
In 2009, the festival programmes include an in-depth look at South East Asian filmmaking and video art: “Unreal Asia”, curated by Gridthiya Gaweewong, artistic director of Bangkok’s Jim Thompson Art Centre, and Bangkok-based critic and curator David Teh, who is also a director of ChalkHorse Gallery, Sydney. “Unreal Asia” will feature works by Dinh Q. Le (Vietnam/USA), Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), Rirkrit Tiravanija (Thailand), Johan Grimonprez (Belgium/USA), Chris Chong Chan Fui (Malaysia), Lin + Lam (USA) and many others.
“Unreal Asia” is a thematic programme of short films and video art from South East Asia and elsewhere, exploring the side effects, symptoms and traumas of the region’s post-colonial period. As ‘national cinema’ gives way to the hybrid perspectives of video culture, official history and myth are compromised. The codes of film are being re-tooled to regenerate oral history, to confront the unquiet ghosts of global conflict and state terror. A panel discussion, “Unreal Asia: Video in the Global Village”, will complete the film programme.
Other highlights include the most extensive retrospective of the works of legendary Japanese film director, photographer and video artist Matsumoto Toshio ever presented outside Japan, and a programme dedicated to the Russian artist duo Factory of Found Clothes (Gluklya and Tsaplya), including a performance developed especially for Oberhausen.
Panel discussions on topics like “The Spectre of the Avant-Garde” and “Copyright and the Moving Image Online” complete the festival line-up; panellists include Julieta Aranda (e-flux), Paul Domela (Liverpool Biennale), artists Brian J. Frye, Andrea Geyer and Bjørn Melhus, Mike Sperlinger and Diedrich Diederichsen.
Dates:
30 April – 5 May 2009
Venue:
Lichtburg Filmpalast
Elsaesser Str. 26
46045 Oberhausen
Germany
Programme:
Accreditation:
Online at www.kurzfilmtage.de, deadline: 6 April 2009
Press contact:
Sabine Niewalda
Press Office
Grillostr. 34
46045 Oberhausen
T +49 (208) 825-3073
niewalda@kurzfilmtage.de
