Urban Research - Private Affair


directors lounge monthly screenings private affair urban research Thursday, 26 January 2017 at 21:00 In the times of public intrusion into the private sphere, right wing populists and religious fundamentalists threatening the freedom of expression and diversity, and conservative politicians pressing for control and surveillance, the expressions of private life become a political affair again. Related to the slogan of 1968 "The personal is political", the here presented films talk about personal or private affairs in relation to the public sphere and the urban space. Many of the Urban Research films submitted in 2016 are dealing with private stories, that are related, in one way or the other, to the urban space and expressing the importance of freedom and solidarity for the divergent, the subversive and the liberal mind. The films present the small stories with high artistic aspiration, the nuanced views and the subjective diversity, which are even more important at times when populist positions start to replace distinguished sentiments in culture and politics. A fine selection of Urban Research films shown at 48h Neukölln in addition to a brand new film by Penny Lane. And, films by Petra Lottje, Vladimir Turner, Rob Santaguida, Anna Okrasko, Doris Schmid, Salise Hughes, Eleonore de Montesquiou and Ezra Wube. Urban Research presents a diversity of films connected with architecture, urban space and landscape from documentary to experimental, and will create an interesting visual dialogue about urban space in film. Links: Directors Lounge: http://www.directorslounge.net Urban Research 2016

Urban Research is a film and video program curated since 2006 by Klaus W. Eisenlohr during the Berlin International Directors Lounge festival. Urban Research encompasses explorations of public space, reports of the conditions of urban life and interventions in the urban sphere realized by international film and video artists using experimental, documentary, abstract or fictive forms. The films of this Urban Research selection revolve around visions of the future city, recent and current movements and developments that take their expression in public spaces, urban studies and metaphoric images dealing with urban life. The mix of experimental and more documentary styles complement each other and create a diversity of connected ideas about urban life. Program

urban research 2017 private affair
Petra Lottje Kein Trübsinn - No Gloom 2015 DE 0:46min Containing Orson Welles' quote from “The Third Man"(1949): "Don't be so gloomy. In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance." Even referring to today's time, this is a cynical way to look at the world. Separated from the original footage, I concentrate on this one sentence, shot at the parking deck of Neukölln-Arkaden, placed in a Berlin of discussions about refugees and with a link to Italy, to Italys former radical Dictator Mussolini who again referres to the Borgia as rulers from a deeper past. Adding today's Italy, that we carry in our heads, be it from a holiday be it from the news.
Vladimir Turner Funeral 2016 CZ 10:00 After a lengthy stay in the Most brown coal mining district, one can easily became affected by this landscape and actually starting to like it. Even being aware that this tortured, strange and unearthly beauty is the result of decades of brutal and ruthless influence of economic interests of the state and mining companies, and today of some strange landowners. Aside from the landscape there is also the author and the performer appearing in the film. In front of the camera I am partly improvising scenes and inventing postindustial land- art installations and performances, creating them and struggling with the consequences of these situations, freed from causalities and stereotypes. I am both a real and a fictional character, who performs some kind of imaginary funeral celebration for the dusty location and for this cursed Ore Mountains landscape. The original concept of an eco-activist film mutated into a surrealistic collage of ambivalent, instructional scenes and tableaux vivants, just slightly indicating my critical and sentimental commentary on the ways we are treating the landscape.
Rob Santaguida Goran 2014 CA/DE 0:38min The work that unveils the views of Goran Gostojic a young man with special needs who lived in Novi Sad about the nuances echoed in between joy and desperation, between fear and courage, between personal understanding and public understanding. This film reconstructs a narrative spoken by Goran through such intimate camera approach. The questions prompted by an unknown individual which we could guess came from the perspective of Roberto Santaguida as a filmmaker captivates us in absorbing Goran's stories about his family, friends, and activities. We affect the reality just as the world affects our personality; the work is an investigation upon self and the world around us. Camera angles record the conversations in a manner of conjoining the contradiction of two experiences between Goran and the cameraperson lead our eyes to scour an aspect of Novi Sad, an administrative town shaped by the dynamics of past conflicts that still affect the town's existence today.
Anna Okrasko One Woman Party 2014 PL/DE 5:20min The footage of the One Woman Party (taken during the Dyke March Berlin 2014) is conducted by a poetic voice-over narration, sang by a group of women. These performers, constantly shifting between plural and singular voice, create a very intimate portrait of a community based on experiences of loss and abandonment. Their voices play in contrast to the reversed video (making women depicted in the footage walking backwards) and bring the forward movement, constructing a present time, which is looped forever.
Doris Schmid Projektionen 2011 DE 15:00 Manchmal lauern die grössten Geheimnisse im familiären Kontext: Ausgangspunkt war die Suche nach den Spuren meiner Grossmutter, 1919 in Berlin geboren und seit 1946 verschwunden. PROJEKTIONEN thematisiert das Verschwinden und die damit verbundene Anordnungsmöglichkeit von visuellem Material. Im Zentrum steht eine offene Rekonstruktion einer fiktiven Lebensgeschichte. Ein Dialog zwischen zwei, bzw. vier Personen bildet den roten Faden. Eine wesentliche Rolle spielen dabei gefilmte Video-Projektionen: Aneignungen von Innenräumen und Verknüpfungen von Geschehnissen, Mutmassungen und Möglichkeiten. PROJEKTIONEN führt von Berlin über die Schweiz nach Athen
Salise Hughes Tall Trees 2014 US 5:32min Tall Trees, is a film about a 1914 bank robbery in Sedro-Wooley, Washington. Nine photos from a scrapbook my father kept about his father Emrys Hughes, pictured with the gun tell the story of the fate of the robbers.
Eleonore de Montesquiou Remember 2011 RU/DE 10:00min On January 19, 2010, one year has passed since Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer and antifascist activist was shot dead with a bullet in the neck in the centre of Moscow. Anastassia Babourova, a freelance journalist working for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, who was with him, died of her injuries in hospital. There was a march to commemorate the murder of two defendants of human rights. It was the first, though severely constrained by the milice, march in Moscow. It was freezing and dark and we were all like fireflies, resisting in our little but stubborn way.
Ezra Wube At the Same Moment 2013 US 2:58min Stop action animation, paint on a single canvas. To make this animation, I painted scenes of my daily commute from memory and photographed them. Each frame was painted on top of the previous one, each scene triggering the following scene. I collected sounds from the places and environments I painted and edited them together with the captured frames to realize the piece.
Penny Lane Just Add Water 2017 US 16:31min This is the story of how a tiny, magical creature was transformed into a cultural phenomenon by inventor, marketing genius and complicated eccentric Harold von Braunhut. Full of fun facts (both charming and disturbing), this breezy, colorful short film is about a half-century of marketing directly to children, the force of nostalgia in pop culture, and an unlikely meeting of flim-flam and hard science.
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