ARTISTS’ FILM INTERNATIONAL, PART V

2 dec 20203 feb 2021

As Bonniers Konsthall is temporarily closed, we offer you to view the last part of Artists Film International 2020 online on our website. There are a total of six films available and they will be screened here until the 3rd of February.

Artists’ Film International is a network of art institutions from around the world, first established in 2008 by the Whitechapel Gallery, London. From a selected theme, each participating institution chooses a film from an emerging artist. In 2020, more than twenty art institutions will participate - from Los Angeles and Buenos Aires in the west to Kabul and Mumbai in the east. The theme for 2020 is "Language".

  • Amina Dryabee
  • Ergin Çavuşoğlu
  • Francesco Pedraglio
  • Leticia Obeid
  • Vika Kirchenbauer
  • Yao Qingmei

Amina Dryabee

Determinism and Free will, 2019
Selected by CCAA, Kabul, Afghanistan
Duration: 3 min

In the film Determinism and Free Will Amina Dryabee investigates the concept of destiny in relation to free will. What power do we have to influence our own lives? It is an issue with particular resonance for the director herself, a female artist working inAfghanistan. In the film, we follow a hand writing and erasing a few sentences on a piece of paper. A symbolic act, manifesting the possibility of writing our own history or future.

Ergin Çavuşoğlu

Desire Lines/Tarot & Chess/, 2016
Selected by Istanbul Modern, Turkey
Duration: 29 min

Desire Lines/Tarot & Chess/ is inspired by Italo Calvino’s novel The Castle of Crossed Destinies which examines how meaning is created, no matter if it is through words or images. In Ergin Çavuşoğlus film, the characters, just like in the novel, cannot speak to each other. Instead, they communicate with tarot cards, the images encouraging symbolic interpretations which are seen, by some, as prophetic.

Francesco Pedraglio

Scripting anticlockwise (6 constellations), 2017
Selected by GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy
Duration: 10 min

In the film Scripting Anticlockwise (6 Constellations) we follow a camera as it rotates anticlockwise and shows a series of abstract pictures, which could be considered some sort of symbolic language. A narrator interprets what we see and puts the pictures into a linguistic context, as if to illustrate that it is through language that we define our world.

Leticia Obeid

Janus, 2015
Selected by Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Duration: 2,5 min

Leticia Obeid’s film gets its title from the Roman god Janus, who according to mythology had two faces: one that saw into the future and the other the past. In Obeid’s work, life is portrayed as the written words of a book where the pages are flipped back and forth, as if the god Janus himself sat and leafed through the pages of our life stories.

Vika Kirchenbauer

YOU ARE BORING!, 2015
Selected by NBK, Berlin, Germany
Duration: 14 min

YOU ARE BORING! examines the ambivalent relationship between “looking” and “being looked at”. As a viewer we meet actors who, in the language of marketing, offer us various extraordinary experiences. With her work, Vika Kirchenbauer wants to draw attention to how our bodies are increasingly commodified, not least by the experience industry.

Yao Qingmei

Sanzu Ding and its Patterns: Hypotheses on the Origin of the Hammer-Sickle Sign, 2013 –present
Selected by Para Site, Hong Kong
Duration: 20 min

Professor Yao is a fictional character, in the guise of an authoritarian academic, created by artist Yao Qingmei. In this fictional documentary, a group of archaeologists have found
an ancient “Sanzu Ding”, a Chinese urn with strange symbols reminiscent of the communist hammer and sickle. Professor Yao presents her hypotheses about the origin of the symbol and how it has evolved over time.