Iris Blauensteiner & Christine Moderbacher // Die Welt ist an ihren Rändern blau / The world is blue at its edges // 2021 - 14:30 Min.

The world is blue at its edges is about an uncertain life’s future and in many ways everything that speaks against life. Current and historic world affairs are portrayed in a dystopian fashion. Using found footage via youtube and other TV and web channels it deals with the covid pandemic, lockdown life, past and present police states, the iron curtain, migration and all the emotions that all these realities provoke. And all this from the perspective of an insecure, almost frightened mother-to-be. The world is blue at its edges had its world premiere at This Human World – International Human Rights Film Festival in Vienna.

Iris Blauensteiner is a filmmaker and author. Since 2004 she mostly worked as a script writer and director. Her latest films the_other_images, Rest and Sweat were screened at international festivals. In 2016 her first novel Kopfzecke was published and her newest novel Atemhaut was just published by Kremayr & Scheriau. She has received numerous awards. www.irisblauensteiner.com

Christine Moderbacher is an anthropologist and filmmaker. She currently is working on her postdoctoral research at the Max-Planck-Institut for social and cultural anthropology in Halle. For her documentary films A Letter to Mohamed and Red Earth White Snow and others, she won a number of national and international prizes. www.christinemoderbacher.com

Alice Brygo // Soum // 2021 - 30 Min.

On the outskirts of Paris, Inti, Jai and Pauline are looking for an empty place – a rift through which the “Trouble Generation” they embody could slip, between the laws of the old world and the uncertainty of the one to come. A portrait of our time that oscillates between documentary film, art performance and surrealism. While occupying a former bank and waiting for the expiry of the period from which they can legally assert their domicile, the three squatters furnish the place with their memories and performative games. From intimate documentaries to dreamlike fiction, their spiritual and identity journeys unfold as they search for their place in a fragile present burdened with legacies from the colonial past. Soum had its World Premiere at the 72nd Berlinale.

Alice Brygo graduated from L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in 2019 and is currently in an artist residency at Le Fresnoy. Her artistic practice moves on the border between documentary method, fantastic cinema and art installations. She explores the notion of uncertainty in times of fragility, challenging notions of survival and community building through encounters between social groups and symbolic detours.

Catherina Cramer & Giulietta Ockenfuß //
Unleash the Beast, Chapter 2. Hagenbecks Zoo // Installation // 2021 - 27 Min.

The video work Unleash the Beast (a series in 3 chapters) mixes elements of television documentation and fictional film. The combination of both formats breaks down patriarchal narrative forms and questions how history is made. The first chapter of the series tells the story of a female aquatic monkey whose path through life imagines an evolutionary story shaped by feminism. Unleash the Beast, Chapter 2. Hagenbeck's Zoo deals with questions of identity and transformation, as well as continuities of colonialism. The setting of the series is Mexico. In Chapter 2, the fictional protagonist, a water monkey, founds a political movement. The prose text A Report to an Academy (1917) by Franz Kafka and historical facts on the wild animal trade are mixed with improvised dialogues along with a critical view upon the company history of the Hagenbeck entrepreneurial family.

Catherina Cramer is an artist and filmmaker. She studied at the art academies in Münster and Düsseldorf. She received her master class certificate from Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster in 2019. Besides making films, her art is multimedial and includes performance, sculpture and environments. Her work has been exhibited in the Museum Folkwang, Essen; Kunsthalle Münster; Kunsthaus NRW Kornelimünster, Aachen; Kunstmuseum Solingen; Kasseler Dokfest; Kunstverein Kassel; V ART CENTER Shanghai; Stroboscope ArtSpace, New York; Dortmunder U., Dortmund and K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

Giulietta Ockenfuß is an artist and filmmaker. She studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and received her master class certificate from Rita McBride in 2017. In addition to filmmaking, her work includes painting and performance. Her work has been shown at: Robert Grunenberg Gallery, Berlin; Wiesbaden Biennale; Rosenberg Gallery, New York; Synnika Space, Frankfurt; Berghain Kantine, Berlin and the Julia Stoschek Collection Düsseldorf. Ockenfuß lives and works in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main. She is supported by the Hessische Kulturstiftung and the Kulturstiftung NRW.

Stéphanie Roland // The empty sphere // 2021 - 19 Min.

The empty sphere is an experimental documentary portraying a space object and its fall into the darkness of a space cemetery. A woman scientist reveals her attachment to this object and the absence of images documenting this mysterious place. As a reverse sci-fi journey, this essay mixes reality and fiction to guide us, like a stalker, to the outskirts of an invisible place.

Stéphanie Roland is a visual artist and filmmaker. Working between documentary and the imaginary, Roland makes films and installations exploring invisible structures, hyperobjects and deep time. After graduating from La Cambre and Hito Steyerl’s class at UDK Berlin, she completed post-graduate studies at Le Fresnoy – Studio National. Her work is regularly shown at international level, her projects have been included in exhibitions of major institutions such as the Louvre Museum, Benaki Museum, Botanique, Kampala International Art Biennale, Bozar and Wiels. Breda Photo, Belfast Photo Festival, Encontros da Imagem, BIP Liège, MOPLA Los Angeles and Unseen are among the festivals dedicated to photography in which she took part. In 2017, she was selected in the group exhibition of the Antarctica Pavilion for the 57th Venice Biennale. Her films have been screened in international festivals such as FID Marseille, Visions du Réel, ZINEBI, FEST New Directors / New Films and Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin, among others. Her second short film Podesta Island won the Alice Guy Prize at the 32nd FID Marseille. www.stephanieroland.be

Melanie Jame Wolf // Acts of Improbable Genius // 2022 - 18 Min.

Melanie James Wolf’s Acts of Improbable Genius explores the libidinal economy of comedy: who the complex machinery of desire permits to be funny, and who it does not. Shot in black and white, this two channel video is inhabited by two anachronistic archetypal comedian personas: Stand Up Ron and Pierrot the Clown. Both are played by the artist herself in a form which draws on Renate Lorenz’s notion of transtemporal drag. These two ghosts of humor-past perform the same stand-up-routine on an eternal loop. This glitching use of repetition produces a hauntological survey of what it is to be an entertainer whilst seeking to displace the myth of the Universal Everyman. The film celebrates the death of a certain kind of comedian: the mythologies he represents and the violence he redistributes. Whilst simultaneously paying deep respects to the complex labor of professional performers — usually rendered invisible as a part of the act.

Melanie Jame Wolf is an interdisciplinary artist. She makes works about power and flows of immaterial capital and examines these economies and entanglements. Coming from a background in contemporary performance, Wolf works mainly with text, sound, moving image, choreography and textiles. Wolf pursues an ongoing interest in analyzing the idea of performance-as-labor in artistic, popular entertainment, and everyday contexts. Her work has been presented at: HAU - Hebbel am Ufer; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art; nGbK; The National 2019: New Australian Art Biennial at Carriageworks; Festival of Live Art, Melbourne; VAEFF Film Festival, NYC; Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona; Schwules Museum, Berlin; Sophiensaele, Berlin; Münchner Kammerspiele; Arts House, Melbourne and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. www.savage-amusement.com