This year Impakt will travel to Brazil where, in collaboration with the arte.mov festival, we will present a screening programme about mobility: On The Move. This programme will be screened in Belo Horizonte (November 14), Salvador (November 20),  Sao Paulo (23 and 25 November), Porto Alegre (December 12) and Belem (December). On The Move shows a selection of the best works that were entered into the Impakt Festival 2009 dealing with the freedom and joy of movement. From abstract patterns in the Parisian subway to border patrols that prevent loved ones from uniting. A free radical wanders through the Finnish landscape and a trip to the home-ground of classical beauty evokes a hallucinatory state of mind.

The arte.mov festival constitutes a series of actions throughout the year, but this years' main event will take place in Belo Horizonte, from 12 – 15 November. This fourth edition of the festival focuses on the emergence of “Imaginary Geographies” drawn by the dislocation patterns occurring in public spaces, societies or even nations, supposedly attributed by the crescent use of mobile-based media technologies.

For more information about the arte.mov festival, click here.

THE PROGRAMME:

Interstices - Michel Pavlou
(GREECE/NORWAY 2009, 3:00 min)

A series of scenes shot in the Paris metro, edited to the rhythm of the trains’ automatic doors. The kaleidoscopic effect of viewing through the windows of trains as they pass each other determines the geometry of the image. A composition of parallel and divergent vertical and horizontal movements: those of the camera but also of the trains and the scrolling publicity panels. Everyday traffic and urban rush are recurring themes in the work of Michel Pavlou, concerned with the investigation of film’s primary dimension: time. His films and videos move in the interstices of time and space, addressing the tensions between static and dynamic, present and absent, revelation and concealment.

Empire's Border 1 - Chen Chieh-Jen
(TAIWAN 2009, 27:00 min)

The new work, Empire's Borders (2009), is a film that opens showing the various and sundry checks that Taiwanese citizens must endure when applying for a U.S. visa for business, tourism, or family reasons. From there, it discusses how the empire employs all means at hand to penetrate every other area with its imperial mentality. In her interview with Chen Chieh-Jen, Amy Cheng writes that Empire's Borders I goes on to reflect on the internalisation of imperial consciousness within Taiwanese society. In one sense it coaxes out the thinking embedded and internalised in their consciousness, while in another, the acts of writing and speaking about it are the beginning of a movement to "eliminate imperialist mentality." In other words, for Taiwanese citizens this work has the effect of stripping away internalised imperialist mentality and enhancing self-awareness. For the Empire, it is a "foreign affairs" protest at its domineering attitude towards foreign relations.

Jalkeilla Taas -Maarit Suomi-Väänänen (aka Up And About Again)
(FINLAND 2009, 9:49 min)

Jalkeilla Taas (aka Up And About Again) is an experimental film about negotiating the road of life. Dreamlike and surrealist images depict a Datsun 100A car driving, covered in a thick layer of snow and ice, through a summer landscape. Something inexplicable has turned an otherwise ordinary day upside down. Pain is hidden.

Ketamin / Hinter dem Licht - Carsten Aschmann
(GERMANY 2009, 20:38 min)

"What kind of road have I chosen?" asks a voice. "Our Earth is beautiful" replies an old man from the void. In front of the sunset two boys are playing frisbee. Places and elements alternate. Through long and winding tunnels we take a trip to Venice. Gondoliers swinging their helm, meanwhile time passes by. "Ketamin" is a film about sounds, beauteousness, Art and Life without wrong comforts and bluff on their imminence.