Impakt Highlights in Varna, Bulgaria   The Impakt Highlights will be screened on Tuesday 26 June, 21.30 hours, in an Open Air screening on the Beach of Varna. Product Festival The Festival of Contemporary Art “Product Festival” will take place from June 20th to June 30th 2007. It is designed as a cultural portal where the ideas of authors to be developed, shared, discussed, and nurtured in workshops, lectures, discussions and performances. The Festival is separated into three streams: visual performances; art-video and movie formats art; theoretical stream. The intension of the Festival is to ease the acceptance and perception of new cultures, new visions, and new way of exhibiting art. Every Year there is another main focus on a special issue, this year “Borderliner” is the subtitle of the festival. The festival is organised by KERA, a group of artists and cultural operators based in Varna – a major seaport on the Bulgarian Black Sea. The Impakt Highlights program: Impakt is the annual festival for ideosyncratic and innovative media art in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Most of the works in the selection of Highlights were derived from the so-called Panorama program. Each year, this programme offers an overview of the most remarkable new productions by young artists from all over the world. Furthermore, various titles were selected that formed part of the ‘specials’, such as a film from the retrospective of German filmmaker Matthias Müller, the screening version of one of the pieces in the ‘Chasing the sublime’ exhibition and a hilarious corporate instruction film that was part of the presentation that the Found Footage Festival gave at Impakt. Also two of the winners of the Impakt Awards are included in the program. The Impakt Highlights are a state of the art selection of nowadays-alternative visual culture. Specialized Technicians Required: being Luis Porcar Manuel Saiz UK 2005 (2 min) Luis Porcar, a well-known Spanish dubbing actor, speaks about his work of dubbing the voices of Hollywood actors into Spanish. He explains to the camera that the artist Manuel Saiz asked him to shoot this video with the aim of requesting a famous actor to dub Porcar into English again. Apparently this famous actor agreed to cooperate. Play Matthias Müller & Christoph Girardet Germany 2003 (7 min) A montage of found footage images of audiences shapes a captivating dramatic arc. The film creates an uncanny effect, since our imagination can read fathoms deep into the faces of the people in the audience. What I’m looking for Shelly Silver USA 2004 (15 min) A woman sets out to photograph moments of intimacy in public space. She takes her camera to the streets of NYC, and since so much of the social has moved to the Internet, she starts approaching people through a profile on an Internet dating service. In this ad she states, “I am looking for people who would like to be photographed in public revealing something of themselves.” Uyuni Andres Denegri Argentina 2005 (8 min) She wants to leave. He feels safe there. The barren landscape of the Bolivian town of Uyuni is cut by a transmission of Peruvian radio. The tense situation of Latin America is in the violence of the wind. (ex aequo winner Golden Impakt Award 2005) Kosmos Thorsten Fleisch Germany 2004 (6 min) The mystery of the crystals under closer examination. What is it that makes them possess magical powers as claimed by mystics through the ages? By growing crystals directly on film their mystical qualities shine straight to the screen. (ex aequo winner Silver Impakt Award 2005) Summer Lightnings Victor Alimpiev Russia 2004 (3 min) Victor Alimpiev is without a doubt one of the most promising Russian artists of the moment. His work is hard to catch in words, because Alimpiev succeeds like no one else in expressing things with images and sounds that could not be expressed in any other medium. Alimpiev offers a glimpse of a world that is situated somewhere above our own. For the duration of the work, we share an intense moment of extraordinary beauty. Sublime in the truest sense of the word. Sportstugan Heilborn & Nillsson Sweden 2005 (13 min) Henrik gathers some of his friends at a summerhouse by a lake, deep in the forest. How will these city folks cope with nature? And how will they react to each other, way out in the wilderness? Ze komen Manon Bovenkerk The Netherlands 2003 (3 min) The invasion of extraterrestrial spacecraft seems to herald the beginning of a classic fifties science fiction film. In this case the storyline is not so clear however. What is cause, and what is effect? Are those bunny girls really aliens? History of the World Part 11 Herman Helle The Netherlands 2004 (6 min) This animation by Herman Helle is as short as it is dramatic. With materials like clay and household refuse the attack on the World Trade Center is sketched from the perspective of the victims. Rogue State Dave Griffiths UK 2003 (3 min) A list of vetoed UN resolutions was hand-inscribed onto DV tape using a magnetic quill. Interpreted by the digital apparatus, these data produced lawless sonic and visual explosions. (ex aequo winner Silver Impakt Award 2005) Believe (Chemical Brothers) Dom & Nic UK 2005 (4 min) This video offers an unnerving and blackly humorous glimpse of a mind at the end of its tether. “Believe” shows us scenes from the life of a young man whose job at a car factory becomes increasingly untenable as he starts to catch glimpses of a mechanical creature that seems to be following him. It only takes a second Found footage festival USA 1996 (4 min) An insurance company ‘s safety video that plays like a micro budget slasher film. |
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