The invisible is often perceived as a threat: An intangible outside which forms in hiding - horror scenarios, dangerous potentials. On the other hand, being invisible can mean security and being safe from harm. The five films of the program investigate this close relationship between visibilities and securityies in very distinct ways. They investigate visibility and the need for protection in collective and personal constellations, engage with political formations that slowly emerge from the unseen, undefined states of unease and vision as an instrument of power.
The Year 2003, footage from TV-archives, the future president of Turkey speaks to his folk. Gender - an intimate memory, second grade, the schoolyard in Üsküdar. An everlasting catchy tune from a "happy yoghurt" advertisement, the TV was always on,.anyways. How many pixels does it take to tell the invisible relations of a story?… >>>
In the summer of 2018, Miguelito, aged 17, collects bodies of heartbroken, desolate, unconscious men in Callao, Peru. Situated somewhere between coming of age story and zombie apocalypse, a tale of love, desires and insecurities unfolds. Schmaltzy like a love song sung at the beach at sundown – unnerving like the empty streets of dystopian end times.… >>>
Fortitude Ranch was founded in 2013 by Drew Miller. Miller, a retired Air Force colonel, worked at the Cold War Strategic Command and the Department of Defense. His specialization is in the threat of bioengineered global pandemics and impending societal collapse. I wanted to see Fortitude because it sounded like the McDonalds of prepper communities--a nationwide chain of subterranean retreats available to any paying member. No questions asked. Steven René is the Chief Operating Officer of Fortitude Ranch. He's in charge of sales and management at the West Virginia location. He started the job in September 2019. This film is a portrait of the ranch and a look at the daily life of the man who moved there to start a new job and new life. (Jenny Perlin)… >>>
UNTITLED SEQUENCE OF GAPS uses the form of an essay film to approach trauma-related memory loss via reflections on light outside the visible spectrum – on what is felt but never seen. The artist's voice considers violence and its workings, class and queerness not through representation but from within. Footage in which public visual memory stands in for personal remembrance exists alongside sequences recorded via infrared imaging and scenes captured under ultraviolet light or microwave radiation. What are the effects of the invisible and the power inherent in shifting violence beyond visibility? Ghosts appear from holes ripped into time by an unremembered childhood, and a recently abolished witch-burning ritual in the artist's rural home town serves as a foil against which to question the politics of visibility.… >>>
Through the lens of a long range thermal military camera A LACK OF CLARITY investigates an industrial hazard landscape. The all seeing camera pans, tilts, zooms and attempts to pull focus on the unaware wanderers, gamblers, drinkers and selfie takers of the surveilled streets. An aimless nocturnal wandering through the strongly lit and populated city opens up a fragmented connection between the lighting of Paris at the end of the 17th century and the potential surveillance of the hazy dreams of the protagonist. While watching the surveilled city in a limbo state of awakeness and dreams the insomniac voice reflects upon the acceleration towards totalitarian surveillance happening around him.… >>>