Eyes Wide Open
To accompany this year's interfiction topic MINDMACHINES, this compilation focuses on the apparatuses that shape our vision, our thinking and our emotions. Taking as a starting point the age-old fascination for the anatomical spectacle of the eye, it explores a variety of mechanisms by which inner and outer images are brought about. The films offer nostalgic views into the imaginary spaces of analogue projection machines, they take us inside the neuronal wirings and firing synapses constituting human perception and challenge its limits with the rhythm and logic of digital image creations.
In Waking Hours
With the publication of the Ophthalmographia in 1632, the Amsterdam physician Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius sheds new light on the age-old question of how seeing works. His answer is an invitation to experiment: Enter with me into a darkened room and prepare the eye of a freshly slaughtered cow. He emphasizes that anyone may carry out this experiment, at home, "demanding little effort and expense." “And you, standing in the darkened room, behind the eye, shall see a painting that perfectly represents all objects from the outside world,” promises Plempius. In the short film IN WAKING HOURS we see historian Katrien Vanagt - who studied the Latin writings of this Plempius - cloaked in the skin of a 21st-century disciple of Plempius. Her cousin, filmmaker Sarah Vanagt, is there and captures how this modern "Plempia" meticulously follows her teacher's instructions. Thus, in a dark kitchen in Brussels, they become witnesses at the birth of images upon the eye.
- Belgien
- 00:18:00
- Director: Sarah Vanagt
- Production: Sarah Vanagt
- Photography: Sarah Vanagt
- Editing: Effi Weiss
- Music: Ernesto Nazareth
- Sound: Nina de Vroome, Philippe Ciompi,
- Year: 2015
Black
Simultaneously boundless and intimate, collective and personal, an ode to and an example of a cinematic experience that is becoming increasingly rare, the darkness of a movie theatre in the course of the projection of a 35mm film print.
- Belgien
- 00:05:00
- Director: Anouk De Clercq
- Production: Auguste Orts
- Photography: DeJonghe Film Postproduction
- Editing: DeJonghe Film Postproduction
- Music: No sound
- Sound: No sound
- Subtitles: en
- Year: 2015
Cloud Shadow
In 1984, for three weeks in May, a giant cloud shrouded the small town of Hüllen-Hüllen in darkness. One month later, the town was hastily abandoned; no verifiable explanation for the disappearance of the town’s residents has ever been given. The search that followed led investigators to a cave on the outskirts of town, where they discovered a large, homemade projection device, connected by mirrors and fitted with a wide array of lenses. When it was turned on it projected a series of images onto every surface of the cave. It was found that the images were engraved directly on the lenses of the machine. Along with the machine a sheet of paper covered in handwritten text was found. It was titled „Wolkenschatten“. The engraved images were preserved on 35mm slide film and archived together with copies of the text. The film combines text and images as a narrated slideshow for the benefit of those interested in examining this strange occurrence.
- Deutschland
- 00:16:37
- Director: Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
- Production: Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy
- Photography: Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy
- Editing: Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy
- Music: Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy
- Sound: Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy, Christian Obermaier
- Languages: de
- Subtitles: en
- Year: 2014
- Website
The Mirror System
Pictures escape from a dream. A curious forest made out of neurons where the young director wanders every night. A dream that brings together brain and cinema, memories and scientific experiments. She tries to understand the link which is being woven between Neuroscience and films. A journey to the heart of the Mirror System, the mechanism by which we feel empathy for the other, whether in the real world or on the screen.
- Schweiz
- 00:17:00
- Director: Eva Zornio
- Production: Alexandre Iordachescu
- Photography: Joakim Chardonnens
- Editing: Gabriel Gonzalez
- Music: Régis Jeannottat, Ana Cordeiro Reich
- Sound: Vasco Pimentel
- Languages: fr
- Year: 2015
- Golden Key
- World Premiere
moon blink
„Moonblink“ is a historical term for a specific kind of night blindness, supposedly brought about by the influence of moon light. Rainer Kohlberger's video piece of the same name consists of abstract sequences of horizontal lines and patterns of light and colour, exclusively generated by code. Confronting us with a series of thoroughly composed, intensifying phases, his mathematical images seem to lead us to blind spots, incoherences and unreliabilites of our own visual apparatus, while at the same time developing surprising plastic, hypnotic and sensual qualities.
- Österreich, Deutschland
- 00:10:00
- Director: Rainer Kohlberger
- Production: xx
- Photography: xx
- Editing: xx
- Music: xx
- Sound: xx
- Year: 2015
We Know We Are Just Pixels
Attributing human characteristics to inanimate objects, this video work finds Laure Prouvost's images forming a conversation amongst themselves. Discussing their existence and vulnerabilities, in relation to the viewer looking at them, the images want to be more than just pixels; they want to explore and exist outside of the machine upon which they are being played. Comments and moving images are juxtaposed; they come and go in a dazzling rhythm. As often in Prouvost’s films, the speed of images and text challenges the limits of perception, for it seems almost impossible for the human eye to catch every piece of visual information in the film. Eventually, the viewer becomes used to the rhythm and finally gives the images the attention they deserve.
- England
- 00:04:44
- Director: Laura Prouvust
- Production: Laure Prouvost
- Photography: xx
- Editing: xx
- Music: xx
- Sound: xx
- Languages: en
- Year: 2015
