The revelation that beauty can be manufactured industrially has been well-established since the founding texts by designer Henry van de Velde of the Art Nouveau. However, he believed in the aesthetic of the human spirit operating the machines. But the button-pressing genius is a problematic character veiling questions of resources, outsourced physical labor and the privilege of contemplative consumption. It also takes itself too seriously. What happens when the machine itself, autonomously, together with other machines, becomes ecstatic and starts to paint, compose, or rhyme? When even hard drives and archives start to rustle and beam? Astonished, we deconstruct and revel in artifacts at the same time, admire printed chinoiseries and sung Japonism, listen to hits from scratched records, opera arias from noisy tapes, and listen to the poetry of a text-fed AI. (Jan Künemund)
To this day, the Mediterranean is a popular vacation destination for many Europeans. Based on the first verse of a 1950s folk song, the film questions the idealized image of the Mediterranean as a place of longing. Can we still look at the Mediterranean naively and without bias today? What is beyond perception and who's perspectives on the Mediterranean are in- or excluded in the public perception?… >>>
Premiere:
World Premiere
- Director: Aleksandra Kolodziejczyk, Karl Wratschko
The “Compania Marionette Carlo Colla & Figli” is one of the oldest and most famous puppet theaters in the world. The Milan workshop of the group houses more than 3000 dolls. Each has an individualized face, a body and recognizable features, which makes them unique. DITEGGIATURA documents in reverse chronological order the workshop visits of a year, follows the rituals of a community that has come together to accompany the life of anthropomorphic objects. The text on which the film is based, spoken by actress and director Sivia Costa, was written by an artificial neural network.… >>>
Premiere:
German Premiere
Nominated:
Goldener Key
- Director: Riccardo Giacconi
HYSTERESIS weaves Robert Seidel's projections of abstract drawings with queer performer Tsuki's energetic choreography into a dense, transformative fabric. The resulting Muybridgeian silhouettes, baroque textures, and bursting painterly structures fluctuate between the second and third dimensions, unfolding free-floating gestures that unhinge the laws of nature. By using machine learning to convey these transformative representations, the film intentionally corrupts AI strategies to reveal a frenetic, delicate, and extravagant visual language of hysteria and hysteresis - in this historical moment, with its unique AI capabilities, in which all of human history collapses to a single point in the present.… >>>
The film formulates a postcolonial answer to the chinoiserie as visual depiction of Chinese culture. The starting point is 18th century wallpaper in 'Harewood House', an English manor house that the filmmaker visited. Exotic artefacts such as Chinese wallpaper were a crucial part od the taste culture rural English nobility had, it was a safe way of dealing with the foreign. By exploring the foreign and thereby constructing its own, modern British identity took shape during the heyday of maritime trade. ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DREAM connects its research with four monologues. Through the four positions, shaped by different life experiences, the historical design objects appear in ever new perspectives.… >>>
Premiere:
World Premiere
- Director: Clare Chun-yu Liu
A man prepares his lunch package in the kitchen. He has decided to visit the Brion Tomb, a monumental funeral complex designed and built by Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa on behalf of Onorina Brion Tomasin. It was intended to honor the memory of the late and beloved relative Giuseppe Brion, founder and owner of the Brionvega company. Packed in a dotted plastic bag, he walks through the cemetery, looking with great care at the details designed by the Venetian architect, while in his silent head echo the precious words spoken by the architect at a conference in the summer of 1978.… >>>
