Festival for Contemporary Art Product (“Visual Games”, Varna)
Film and video programme

The Cinema in Fresnoy - Speech with an Accent, France

LATER
Eric Orio // film, 16 mm, black and white, 10 min, 1998
Stuck in an action, which he is unable to control, the character of the film does not cease to advance toward a point, which is moving away to infinity, a destination, which is unapproachable forever. With its repetitions, touching the bottom, scrutinizing the same images again, the film spins in a spiral from continuous concentric circles, repeating themselves and invariably leading to the abyss. The final effect resembles a projection of the Sisyphus myth, adapted to the cinematographic process. The agony of the repetitions... And this movement essentially turns into an end in itself, as if the simple fact of moving forward is a way to exist, while the character and the film mutually ruin and hurt themselves. The film hiccups, rebels, refusing to advance forward or to finish, going stuck in the maze, from which it can hardly get away. This is a film about the image and its origin, a film in motion, which seeks to discover itself despite its inevitable destiny to disappear.

MISSING TIME
Laurent Grasso // video, 2002
Laurent Grasso: At the beginning, during my stays in North France, I was a little bit embarrassed by the abundance of futuristic architecture. I tried to make a list of the places, which reminded me of a scenery of a science fiction film. At the same time I was looking on the internet for information about forms of extraterrestrial life and I wished to connect the image to this architecture with the fantastic stories, told by people, who experienced encounters with UFO. One of these stories gave the name of my project: “Missing time”. All the stories, that I had been collecting, bespoke about real experiences among strange objects and extraterrestrials.
Missing time is a linear inter¬ruption in the notion of time for the human individual. The latter is kidnapped by extra terrestrial creatures for a period, which belongs to another system of time and space, which is the reason why he is not aware of his kidnapping. Totally by accident, during a hypnotic seance, for some of the kidnapped, fragments of those experienced journeys arrear.

ADMOSH
Eric Pellet// film, 16 mm, 6.30 min., 2004
Our work begins with the human face” said Ingmar Bergman. Cinema and face, getting to know the human face, caused by an epiphany of the image, this is what Admosh is about. It is about approaching this face with the assistance of the cinematographic matter, to examine it through the materiality of the image - a light, to the extent that this closeness transforms the perceptions.
The faces that are recorded are the faces of Chechenians, political refugees, who have found asylum in France. Some of them are called Adam. Adam in their language means “human”. Admosh, in plural, means at the same time the people, the nation, the humanity. I think that during the time, when it suffers a slow genocide, predetermined as an endless war, it is urgent to restore the image of this nation without a face.

TOTEM
Maider Fortune // beta digital, video, 10 min., 2001
Fed by the deep interest toward movement, her work examines the moment of the nascence of the gesture. Beyond the expected effectiveness of the action and making, the body seeks the space of a gesture, in which the question is no longer to create, but to assume a shape, to maintain a porous corpse. The principle of motion, which makes up each shape, reveals an instability, slipping out of control, final opening of the grasp. The hidden corners and cracks in the body silently shape the inner, hidden body, a matter that is expected to evolve, which transfers its shape in a series of everlasting occurrences. In this line performance, there are hardly perceptible notions, sensitive to the fluctuations of the infinity, which picture an imaginary world, verging on the fantastic.

CHAMONIE
Valerie Mrejen// film, 35 mm, 13 min., color, 2002
"The idea about "Chamonie" came from the serial "Filmed portraits" (2002), in which I asked my friends and acquaintances to share any of their memories: standing in front of the camera, everyone shares a short and concise story of an event, reduced to the essence. The language used is semi-descriptive: all stories are told with the same tone, no matter whether they are tragic, comic, trivial or incredible. Each close-up is presented as a scene. "Chamonie" is to some extent a fantastic video version of "Filmed portraits".

STORIES OF THE STAIN I
Marie-Laure Cazin // film 35mm, sound DOLBY SR, color, 10 min., 2003
Story:
At the day of the 1st of May manifestation, 2002, two men entice Christine into a Parisian apartment. Hidden in the darkness of their shelter among the manifestation crowd, their solitude is being pierced by the interference of the noise outside. The men try to satisfy their desire, but Christine, an embodiment of the enticement, is made from an un¬stable matter, which does not obey the laws of the physics, staging our everyday life...

TERRAIN FOR SEDUCTION
Greg Smith // a series of 5 performances and a video installation, 20 min., 2004
The neighborhood in Rube, where I live, comprises primarily of two-storey houses with sloping roofs, arranged in quite thick rows. The larger part of it is a simple suburb for middle-class people. There are not many opportunities for entertainment and going out in the evening. The place is very quiet. But the people are generally friendly, it is often the case to greet a stranger on the street and it is practically impossible to get out of a shop without being seen off with a bunch of wishes.
My project develops in two stages. The first is a series of night performances in the neighborhood in Rube; the second consists of separately shot scenes of these performances, as well as excerpts from them processed in a studio.

NIGHT LANDSCAPES
Henry Salla // film, 16 mm, 11 min., 1999
"Night landscapes" is a film, developing among a constant scenery, shot on a 16 millimeter film in Rube in 1999. It is a work with a complicated composition, in which two men share their life experience. Deni, a young French soldier, who recently came back from the Balkans, tells with a striking innocence about the brutal severity of his studies and about his role as an executioner, as a "blue helmet", obliged to look for and kill people, occupying key positions. Jacques, the owner of a tropical aquarium, presents to us the harsh reality and the hardships of a life, spent by the breeding pools, surrounding his home. Passing from the one to the other, we discover the common features, characterizing the two men who do not know each other, but share identical experiences of stress and solitude.

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