The 18th Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul
September 9–16, 2021
Since 2020, all of us are going through a period of crisis. Just like many other film festivals, EXiS faced unexpected challenges. Expanding to online territories, however, gave us countless chances to meet our new audience and these changes made us think about the future of film festivals. We know that there is no such a fine conclusion for these miscellaneous yet serious thoughts. Now we find ourselves picking up our masks to meet people and go sit in the theater alone keeping our distance. Although our daily lives are susceptible to change, we are holding the film festival once again ridden with anxiety, but with excitement as well.
This year, we are delighted to present 40 films from new and established artists in EX-Now, the main competition programs, including Shinya Isobe, Simon Liu, Luis Arnias, James Edmonds, Shun Ikezoe, Sybille Neumeyer, Wai Yin Yan, Dianna Barrie, Syeyoung Park, Junehyuck Jeon, Youngmee Roh, and many more talented artists.
EX-Choice includes curatorial programs, which focuses on contemporary moving images heavily based on CGI. Following a variety of subjects and concepts, we present works by Total Refusal, Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Boyong Kim, Forensic Architecture, Broersen & Lukács, Li Zhu, Eunsol Kim, Ji Hye Yeom, and many others. Another direction we will take in this year’s EX-Choice is to continuously explore experimental documentaries. The number of recent feature films, including those of Ute Aurand, Allison Chhorn, Joshua Bonnetta, Fern Silva, Cong Feng, and many others will be screened.
The Indi-Visual section of programs invites four artists, Ellie Kyungran Heo, Mihye Cha, Salomé Lamas, and Laura Huertas Millán, and presents their essential body of works. For EX-Retro, the ongoing program dedicated to important figures in experimental film history, we have selected and screened Stan Brakhage’s films since 2014. This year, we prepared Vancouver Island Films, known as Brakhage’s latest photography series. Also, we bring Jerome Hiller’s finest works that reveal the magic of ordinary surroundings. In Asia Forum, our program considered as research on distinct features of Asia’s moving images, recent artistic moving images from Japan, including Araki Yu, Goshima Kazuhiro, and Tomotosi, will be screened.
Furthermore, we are launching a new program called EX-Live to examine the aesthetic relationship between performance and moving images. This year we will show Nigel Rolfe’s distinguished works as well as recent performance artists’ films.
All programs will be screened in theaters in Seoul and some of them will be available to stream online on the festival’s website as well.
About EXiS
Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, a.k.a EXiS, was founded in 2004 by Moving Image Forum in order to screen experimental films and contemporary moving images that explore the unknown forms and territories of cinema. We value artists’ films made with an original vision that take challenges and aesthetic adventures. We are one of the few places in Asia that still screen works of many important artists who work with celluloid film.
EXiS Office
6th Floor, 74, World Cup-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea (04004)
T +82-2-3141-1841 / exisfestival [at] gmail.com
