24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
The Bed and the Street
director: Mike Hoolboom, Heather Frise
original title: The Bed and the Street
country: Canada
year: 2018
running time: 5 min.
synopsis
Protests against austerity measures, read as an expression of resistance to the state, are intermingled with an expression of intimate consonance. A demonstration of connection, this essayistic collage blurs the boundaries between private and public as it reflects on the politics of co-existence.
"What if the revolution started at home, in the micro-politics of hand to hand, of our kitchen life, our bedroom life? If we said no to the old models of family, could we bring together bed and street?" M. Hoolboom, H. Frise
biography
Mike Hoolboom (1900) is a leading figure in Canadian experimental film and video who previously worked for the CFMDC distribution company and as artistic director of the Images festival. In 2003, the Ji.hlava IDFF honored him with a retrospective of his work, and last year the festival showed his most recent film Spectator (2017).
Heather Frise (1900) is a Canadian filmmaker, educator, visual artist and a founding member of the Access to Media Education Society.
more about film
| director: | Mike Hoolboom, Heather Frise |
| producer: | Mike Hoolboom, Heather Frise |
| sound: | MIke Hoolboom |
other films in the section
Delving for a brief moment into an everyday scene, we see various movements at various speeds and experience microstories representing the familiarity of the street. The classical technique of analytical slowing down different parts of the image at different speeds is used to capture an otherwise invisible phenomenon.
“Sometimes in a flash you become aware of the fact that time does not matter.” M. Manchevski
The End of Time
Milcho Manchevski
Cuba, United States / 2017 / 5 min.
section: Fascinations
Czech Premiere
Fragments of a body chiseled from darkness carve out a study of a nude female figure, sensual at specific moments, and in places disappearing into digital darkness. A lyrical treatise on intimacy and secrecy and an implicit polemic with a voyeuristic gaze create a longing for constrained completeness.
"I dissect the perception and the mental state that arise while being watched, penetrated and examined and the experience of the viewer, involuntary being forced to follow the gaze of the camera." T. Kjellmark
Inside
Tove Kjellmark
Sweden / 2018 / 10 min.
section: Fascinations
East European Premiere
Desire without its object is like an image made unrecognizable by cutting out its parts; by scratching away part of the visible image, the image becomes a hole sliced into a pained body, fumbling about for what is missing, seeking physical contact and tangible proof of co-existence.
""Exhumation" is my interpretation of the reports of Dali's death mask recently. I worked to physically peel back layers of representation to reveal disintegrated memories of figures that once were." D. McIntyre
Exhumation
Daniel McIntyre
Canada / 2018 / 8 min.
section: Fascinations
Central European Premiere
A compilation of behind-the-scenes footage shot while filming various Filipino films, including those of Lav Diaz and Erik Matti, creates a sense of quiet tension. In the style of slow narrations and in-depth observation, the film builds a dystopian sci-fi narrative of human avatars controlled by applications but is also a commentary on the various forms of contemporary Filipino cinema.
“They say once a filmmaker becomes a parent, that person stops making films. The Remote Daddy Framework is a way for me to go out of the house to document in spurts of three hours to repurpose and make" J. Torres
We Still Have to Close Our Eyes
John Torres
Philippines / 2019 / 13 min.
section: Fascinations
European Premiere
Wandering on the edge of darkness, the camera records grainy objects and pulls hesitant signs of the searched-for refuge from the darkness. By carefully working with light, the filmmaker sketches a unique place bathed in silence and uncertainty, on the back of specific depictions of buildings and landscapes.
“The theme explored in my work is that of ‘journeys’ – both physical and metaphysical; alluding to isolation of the individual and isolation of place.” SJ. Ramir
In This Valley of Respite, My Last Breath...
SJ. Ramir
Australia, New Zealand / 2017 / 5 min.
section: Fascinations
World Premiere
The algorithmic break-down of images of a stone colonnade creating hallucinatory patterns contrasts with the peaceful dusk among the old hallways and colonnades of Cambodia’s Buddhist temple of Angkor Wat, through which barefoot monks slowly walk, copying their daily rituals.The geometric fragmentation into a flicker composition consisting of mathematically precise cuts and rhythms works well in relation to the architecture and represents a provocative violation of the natural harmony of the place and building.
Stoned
Seoungho Cho
United States / 2013 / 11 min.
section: Fascinations
Central European Premiere
The filmmaker arranges 59,049 personal photographs (out of the long-term project) from 2002 and 2003, all of them created in the post-9/11 atmosphere, into repetitive geometric compositions to form a changeable structure of infinite possibilities for interpreting memories. Set to a musical composition inspired by Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Comet at Yalbury”. German-born filmmaker Thomas Mohr (1954) lives in the Netherlands. In his work, he seeks out new ways of generating images. Originally, he was drawn to abstraction; today it is digital photography. The Jihlava IDFF previously showed his film Gedankenstrich(e) (2014), in which he arranged images into regular grids to evoke a journey and pilgrimage across a landscape of text.“What d o we remember, what d o we forget and what d o we really learn? Based on 531,441 pictures taken in 30 years I’m exploring how our memories transform into experience.”
Impact-9.2
Thomas Mohr
Netherlands / 2016 / 10 min.
section: Fascinations
World Premiere
An anthology of rituals, masks, skin paintings, and other decorations, captured from up close in Ile-Ife, the legendary holy city of the Yoruba, who live primarily in southwestern Nigeria but also in some parts of Latin America and who consider the god Obatala to be the creator of Earth and of human bodies.
"I understand my cinematic practice as an inquiry into modes of experience and as a gesture of channeling. One of them could be the state of devotion and possession by spiritual and cosmic forces. " S. Wiedemann
Obatala Film
Sebastian Wiedemann
Nigeria, Brazil, Colombia / 2019 / 7 min.
section: Fascinations
International Premiere
An old seamstress’s recollections are woven into a dreamlike postcard in which the sea carries away a house, God takes in a child, and the burden of life shines through into a blindness in which the most sensitive organs are the hands that meticulously work the loom."The Thread that connects all, from energy to matter, from energy to idea, from idea to symbol, from light to story, from photon to silver halide, from silver grain to moving image, living image. It's a film about dream and reality, about life and dead. Connected through a wool thread." P. Bulgarelli
The Thread
Pietro Bulgarelli, Pablo Polanco
Chile, Costa Rica / 2017 / 5 min.
section: Fascinations
European Premiere
Strictly working with the film material inside the camera, Tuohy updates slowly forgotten approaches to create a collage of architectural geometries. The monolithic nature of the image blurs the outlines of the buildings as the film frame disintegrates into grids cutting through the layers of the image in multiple exposures. The buildings depicted represent the cultures of the three main ethnic groups of Malaysia.
"This film is dedicated to Paul Clipson and Robert Todd, both of whose works were specifically on my mind while filming this film in Malaysia in 2016." R. Tuohy
Blending and Blinding
Richard Tuohy
Australia / 2018 / 11 min.
section: Fascinations
European Premiere
The texture of minerals meticulously stacked one on top of the other emphasizes solidity but also the changes wrought by time. Some of the patterns are absorbed by others; undestructiveness is lost in transparency. The animation of the earth’s non-living surfaces and subsurfaces condenses geological transformation that in real time take millions of year.The gap between stones slowly grows, a rock is transformed as if were an organic body, a fault is quickly covered in another layer, the original colour is absorbed to create new matter.
SOU
Tatsuto Kimura
Japan / 2012 / 10 min.
section: Fascinations
East European Premiere
This stereoscopic 3D film explores field of vision by slicing the visible image into sections of time and space. The centrifugal images of movement are combined in surreal compositions in which the seams disappear and reappear in moving illusions.
"Stereoscopic films make sense if they make non in mono2D. ROTARIO provides the same film to each eye but with a one frame delay. The spinning carousel unfolds its depth in the spectator's vision only." B. Speidel
ROTARIO
Björn Speidel
Germany / 2017 / 8 min.
section: Fascinations
International Premiere
