Exhibition // LICHTER Art Award IV
The LICHTER Art Award reaches video artists and filmmakers around the world – from Collingwood to Hamburg! For the 8th edition of the award, which is endowed with 1.000 Euro, over 90 works were submitted.
The spectrum of chosen works – from animation and documentary films over film essays to fictional narratives – gives an insight into current trends of contemporary film and video art. In their range of variation and quality, the selected works demonstrate various tendencies. The immateriality of the Internet, as well as the hyper realistic presence of post-Internet aesthetics can be observed in many works. At the same time, each of the chosen works formulates an independent comment on social reality and current societal phenomena of our present.
The LICHTER film festival shows the five finalists’ works in a curated exhibition from the 3rd to the 8th of April in 2018. The award-winning artistic work will be announced as part of the formal opening in the “Zoo-Gesellschaftshaus”, which takes place on the 3rd of April at 7 pm.
The Finalists:
Nikita Diakur (R/D) // Ugly // 2017 // 11:54 Min.
Ugly is more than just a film. It was inspired by an internet story based in reality, which tells of an encounter between a native American chief and an ugly cat. Ugly will take you ona journey, it will make you dive into a world of images that will keep you in motion physicallyand mentally. The very elaborated computer-rendered images are a combination of puppeteering and dynamic computer simulation. Ugly presents a question: can we coexist in a world full of different social conflicts and adversities?
Nikita Diakur is a Russian born filmmaker based in Mainz, Germany. He studied at the Central Saint Martins College and at the Royal College of Art in London. His works have been screened internationally at festivals such as Prix Ars Electronica (Austria), Animafest(Zagreb), Annecy (France), Ottawa Animation Festival (Canada), OFF (Odessa) and Edinburgh International Film Festival (Scotland).
Jakob Engel (D) // Waiting for Record // 2017 // 15:15 Min.
Waiting for Record is a subtle peek behind the scenes of a theatre –into the life of Jamil Jalla. The cooperation with the Afghan filmmaker and actor paints the portrait of someone waiting. The stage within reach, he moves in-between two realities of identity. His present separates itself from the past ever more clearly, and alternatives pave new ways. Jakob Engel’s video work screens the dwelling in an interim as interplay between hesitation and hope, and illustrates, through the motive of daily waiting in uncertainty, a symptom of our era.
Jakob Engel (born 1988) lives and works as a freelance artist, film and theater maker, and musician in Hamburg. He studied visual artsat HFBK Hamburg and, in 2015, received the “Deutschlandstipendium”. His cinematic works could already be seen at various film festivals, as well as in institutions such as Hamburg’s “Kunsthalle”, and the “Mousonturm” in Frankfurt.
Martin Kohout (CZ/D) // Slides // 2017 // 22:50 Min.
Slides is a visual compilation of emotions and actions collected by humans with gadgets in no specific time or space. It could be set in the past or it could be set in the future. People searching for people. People observing people. People meet and have a conversation; spend some time together and eventually drift apart. All this happens in a space that sometimes appears to be real but most of the time it is virtual.
Martin Kohout’s video- and installation-works react to various life situations, the incomprehensibility of the contemporary world and the inability of individuals to find and keep their bearings in it. Kohout’s major themes are the medium of the internet and humanity’s self-reflection in global communication, which leads to conflicting experiences – intimacy and aggression, self-confidence and helplessness.
Martin Kohout, born in 1988 in Prague, graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts Prague _and _the Städelschule Frankfurt. His work is exhibited internationally. He lives and works in Berlin.
Ingel Vaikla (EST/B) // Roosenberg // 2017 // 29 Min.
Roosenberg is a building, a community, an encounter, captured in fascinating cinematic images. The camera sensitively and unobtrusively scans the walls and rooms of a Belgian monastery and captures the unique magic of this place. The daily coexistence of four sisters, their religious practice and their final departure always tell the story of modernist architecture. Ingel Vaikla tracks down the identity-founding connections between architecture and the people who live in it with a precise view and sensitivity.
Ingel Vaikla is a visual artist and filmmaker from Estonia. She studied photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts and film at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. She currently lives and works at the HISK Artist Residence in Ghent, Belgium.
Gerald Zahn (A) // Die Galerie / The Gallery // 2017 // 20 Min.
Hannah has been working in a large gallery for a year now. The video work Die Galerie/The Gallery gives us an unbiased insight into her everyday life. Listening to her often meaningless observations and yet intimate anecdotes feels like leafing through a strange diary – she unknowingly entrusts her counterpart with private thoughts. The unusual interplay of sound and image makes her emotional world appear, but Hannah remains an invisible spy. With wit and sophistication, Gerald Zahn provides an extraordinarily poetic portrait of everyday working life in the dazzling cultural scene.
Gerald Zahn (born 1971) works as a media and video artist in Vienna. He studied education, ethnology and communication sciences at the University of Vienna and completed an apprenticeship as a multimedia designer. His cross-media works are shown nationally and internationally.
Location:
Mal Seh'n Kino
Opening hours:
- Tuesday, 03rd April // 6:30 p.m. to 11 a.m.
- Wednesday, 04th April // 5:30 p.m. to 11 a.m.
- Thursday, 05th April // 09 a.m. to 11 a.m.
- Friday, 06th April // 09:30 a.m. to 15 a.m.
- Saturday, 07th April // 01 p.m. to 11 a.m.
- Sunday, 08th April // 12 noon to 11 a.m.