The Artists Cinema
This month we present a programme which has been rushed to you after screenings at Grimstad Kortfilmfestival.
The Artists Cinema is a UK commissioning programme organised by LUX and The Independent Cinema Office.
International artists are chosen to produce short films which then appear unannounced before feature films in UK. This exciting initive creates a window into the contemporary art world while at the same time giving artists access to a space and an audience they may not usually reach.
We are excited to present the latest commissions along with a couple of favourite films from past years.
The programme will be introduced by Benjamin Cook in person, Director of LUX, a UK-based arts agency which supports and promotes artists working with the moving image. http://www.lux.org.uk
The Anthem
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand, 2006, 5 mins)
An older lady performs a ritual channelling energy to the audience to give them a clear mind. The ritual will ensure that after the film ends, life in the outside world will be better.
Ausgeträumt
Deimantas Narkevicius (Lithuania, 2010, 6mins)
Addressing his fascination with naiveté, Narkevicius documents a small group of young Lithuanian boys who have just started a band, asking them questions about their vision of the future.
The Coat
Keren Cytter (Germany, 2010, 6mins)
The Coat depicts a dramatic love triangle between two brothers obsessed with the game of sudoku and a beautiful young woman. This film flirts with the cinematic dream, the idea of seduction and the visual representation of happiness.
The Last Days of British Honduras
Catherine Sullivan with Farhad Shamini (US, 2010, 6mins)
In this film, an interloper plunges into a chamber drama involving ‘locals’ that touches on notions of destiny and rebirth, Meso-American mythology and the supernatural, race and the legacy of colonialism.
A Love Story
Amar Kanwar (India, 2010, 5mins)
A miniature narrative in four acts where time becomes fluid. The film takes place at the fringe of an expanding Indian city, a world of continuous migration and therefore of continuous separations.
Pulmo Marina
Aurélien Froment (France/US, 2010, 5mins)
Against a uniform background of purest Yves Klein blue, a pale yellow jellyfish roils and bristles like a fragment of living lace, while a voiceover informs us of its baroque but brainless anatomy.
This Quality
Rosalind Nashashibi (Egypt, 2010, 5mins)
Shot in downtown Cairo the film comprises two halves: the first shows a woman looking directly at the camera. The second half shows a series of parked and covered cars. Each car suggests a sightless face, like a child covering his eyes.
Tomorrow Everything Will Be Alright
Akram Zaatari (Lebanon, 2010, 12 mins)
A late night online chat between two men leads to their reunion after ten years of separation. The film navigates against time with an unsettling use of communication, recording technologies and temporal gaps.
Special Afflictions by Roy Harryhozen
Bonnie Camplin (UK, 2006, 5min)
A surreal meditation on man’s hopeless relationship with his own consciousness. Four hapless sideshow figures gossip about their employer and ‘creator’ Roy Harryhozen who has altered them each with a ‘special effect‘ which has gone wrong and left each with an abject temporal affliction.
Greg Pope. 