Satellites
Satellites are companions, fellow travellers, but we tend to think of them as dependent and secondary. The periphery is a satellite and it depends on the gravity of the center, we say. But is it always clear who is depending on whome in this relation, and are we always sure where the center is? SATELLITES is about the relation between center and periphery as it has taken shape in the zones where we live and dwell. How strange to imagine how an extraterrestrial would make sense of all this. But there is only one world, and in this world everything has its reason and logic.
DUSTY NIGHT
Night falls over Kabul. Somewhere on the periphery a group of men shoulder large, archaic brooms and head towards the city. Seen in the headlights of the traffic that's passing them close-by the rhythmic movements of their silhouettes resemble a strange procession: are they street sweepers, grim reapers, or prisoners? Not everybody greets them with a happy face when the sweeping troop comes along, and nobody seems to have a clue about the purpose of their Sisyphean mission, sweeping the streets of a city in which many things are scarce, but certainly not sand and dust.
- Frankreich
- 20:00 Min.
- Director: Ali Hazara
- Languages: persisch
- Subtitles: englische
- Year: 2011
Two Islands
Jan Iljä's laconic short is about two repositories of New York City: a former waste dump on Staten Island, and a cemetery on Hart Island, in which the metropolis has buried her poor and her nameless since the 17th century. The whispered facts and the swaying water surrounding both sites create a vertigo that seems to come from far away.
- Finnland
- 05:18 Min.
- Director: Jan Ijäs
- Languages: englisch
- Year: 2012
Racetrack Superstar Ghost
RACETRACK SUPERSTAR GHOST is a no-comment study of the short encounter of two eras represented by two types of architecture. Right inside the oval shape of an unused horse track on the outskirts of Montréal, a temporary arena is being erected for a mega event. Then comes the hour of the floodlights, the fireworks and the super-size screen projecting the superstar into the night. The next morning both structures suffer from a hangover.
People's Passion, Lifestyle, Beautiful Wine, Gigan
Neil Beloufa's video pretends to be a hyper-real appetizer for the glass city of the future, in which work and leisure are in perfect unison and life is a never-ending party at which everyone likes to be seen. Things turn eerie when it dawns on us that we are watching an already existing reality and that the narcissism of those who speak seems to express their true feelings.
- Kanada
- 10:59 Min.
- Director: Neil Beloufa
- Languages: englisch
- Year: 2011
MOTOR
Something conspiratorial is going on behind the monotonous facades of a large apartment block. Ears are pressed against walls and curtains are hastily drawn. Through a suggestive mix of thriller and closed circuit TV, MOTOR takes us captive for a few minutes only to drop us into a night in which the flowerpots were on fire.
- Niederlande
- 09:00 Min.
- Director: Simone Bennett
- Year: 2011
Kreis Wr.Neustadt
A moped runs hot in the countless roundabouts of the district of Wiener Neustadt. We are seated on the pillion, steadfastly gazing out at the ever more bizarre objects filling the empty centers of traffic islands.
- Österreich
- 05:00 Min.
- Director: Johann Lurf
- Year: 2011
The Exchange of Perspectives is a Dangerous Game
Like most cities in China, Wuhan is sprawling. Raphaël Grisey has chosen two perspectives to approach it: A woman visits the once stately apartment of her childhood in the city center. During the Cultural Revolution the space was divided into several flats. The new tenants are friendly but know only little about the past. Only a sideboard and a stool seem to remember. On the periphery of the city, migrant workers and subsistence gardeners are sharing an undefined space for an undefined period of time. While one group is busy watering vegetables, the other toils away producing the bricks for the houses which soon will erase the gardens. The film's quality is the tranquility in the camera's observation, accentuated by eclectic narrative fragments gathered on the soundtrack. There is a touch of field study to it, but there is also something else, something hard to describe. Something like a ghost haunting the sites, recording everything without being able to reconcile the contradictions.
- Deutschland, China
- 33:00 Min.
- Director: Raphaël Grisey
- Languages: chinesisch, wuhanesischer Dialekt
- Subtitles: englische
- Year: 2011