This Is an Emergency/Notfall
(…) always in the focus of events: a camera is shooting her death (occured on February 19th, 1988)… >>>
- Duration: 5 Min.
- Director: Kain Karawahn
With the addition of a video section to the Kassel Dokfest in 1989, formats were established that still characterize the profile today. The SHORT & SWEET program collects innovative and experimental, but also artistic-musical works into an entertaining program, which in the early years was also intended to generate an interest in “difficult” formats among the engaged audience. Over time, SHORT & SWEET has developed into a trademark of its own, finding a permanent place at the Kassel Dokfest.
The anniversary year is a fitting occasion to examine the now 33 programs and to put together a program of “classics.” We went into the Dokfest archives, sifted through quite a few VHS tapes and “re”-discovered many works. A selection had to be made: The focus is on works that question the video format, mostly in a very short form. The possibilities of the medium for image and sound are explored with acumen and wit, even into the depths of the Internet. And of course Super 8 is not to be missed.
(…) always in the focus of events: a camera is shooting her death (occured on February 19th, 1988)… >>>
After the clash of traditional music and minimal music (“Kniespiel I”) and their synthesis (“Ostinato und Variation – Kniespiel II”), the third installment of the KNIESPIEL-trilogy engages with the similarities of minimal music, traditional music and rock music. Three music-styles which can be representatives for respective lifestyles and worldviews even.
Picture: © Claus Blume 2023
… >>>Video Danse Art: Empty city, the dancers move through the premise rapidly in stasis, perhaps intending to escape the claustrophobia of loneliness. A videochoreogram that casts its magic by offending against all laws of movement and perception.
Dance-Choreography: Sarah Denziot
What at first seems to be an ironic commentary on gymnastic exercises turns into a disturbing, traumatic depiction of the alienation between head and body. The main characters, acting in a locked room, are several non-existent people and individual body parts, produced by the author's head and body, a mirror and a video camera.… >>>
Qrt only really starts to live on Friday evening: the weekend begins! When he finally gets through it by 6 am Monday morning he will probably have to relax the rest of the week.… >>>
A weather forecast as a satire on our faith in the information society.… >>>
"You ever want something, that you know you shouldn´t have, that more you know you shouldn´t have it, that more you want it. And than one day, you get it, and it´s so good to you." (Bjørn Melhus)… >>>
The video is based on episodes from my diary. Everything actually happened like that and was transposed in a computer game situation for the video, in which every action is linked to parameters. Movements and emotions and possibilities are reduced to stereotypes, but the text from the off contrasts it with the desire for “real” life, with unpredictability and wonder. (Eva Könnemann)… >>>
An old man is sitting with his granddaughter on a bench in a city square. He suddenly collapses with a heart attack and falls to the ground. While he falls, the images slow down; each image seems to freeze, evoking its own echo and building up into a panorama. It begins a trip, shot with "time-slice" camera, through the ordinariness of a city to the birth of a new man.… >>>
MEIN VORSCHLAG: FRIESENBAD promotes the construction of an outdoor pool in the middle of downtown Cologne. An insurance company wants to build a new office building on Friesenplatz. A courageous young woman fights for an alternative: which would change life in the city: the Friesenbad.… >>>
The title tV-Raum plays on the so-called V-Mann, who represents a grey area between the realities and who’s movements are liquid. Accordingly, in tV-Raum reality and fiction converge. (Peter H. Forster)… >>>
The video is formally oriented on the visual language of commercial porn productions. But instead of conventional man-woman pairings, the sex takes place with furniture alone. The setting is a cheap furniture store. The protagonist of the video is initially assaulted by the sofas and beds on display while shopping for furniture, but the initial rape turns into seduction. Inconspicuous backdrops suddenly become energetic protagonists, harmless noises turn into screams of pleasure. In this way, the ritualized mechanics of copulation are turned into the absurd and the tension between consumption, sex and voyeurism is thematized.… >>>
Black ball meets red insides of filled balloons. The dance on the roller as an experimental arrangement of the splashy kind. In the end, the question arises whether the cog in the wheel of synchronization does not simply remain a question of perception.… >>>
All citizens are under general suspicion. By the new laws, Germany becomes a prevention- and surveillance state. A visualization of adopted and pending regulations means to show, what the present and the near future Germany will look like.… >>>
What do Madonne, Massive Attack and Angela Merkel have in common? “Friedrich Nitzsche” might Clemens Kogler’s answer to this question be. By way of a tool called Phonovideo, made of a vinyl player, a video mixer and printed vinyl, he animates images of the previously named in real time while a male narrator goes through the consequences of Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal second coming. (Claudia Slanar)… >>>
MY BBY 8L3W is a video collage about women who present the relationship with their pets on YouTube. The women simultaneously speak the same phrases, which swell into a polyphonic chorus in the video.… >>>
A young woman searches the Internet for spirituality and inner balance. She dives deeper and deeper into an absurd world of screensavers and desktop backgrounds until she becomes one with the mysterious operating system "OS Love". A contemporary tête-à-tête between man and computer.… >>>
"Please agree to the terms and conditions to be part of the community," says the Big Data crystal ball as it immerses you in positive affirmations and hyper-personalized ads, "all for your own benefit, of course." You are an inexhaustible source of energy. Feel your body get heavy and relaxed and just say "Yes!".
An experimental film about current technologies that seduce us to sacrifice our privacy in the hope of an optimized life.
Why is the Canadian Embassy sponsoring a film festival in Hesse? This mystery wants to be investigated more closely.… >>>
HULLABALOO gathers clips from coming-of-age movies from the 80s to today and deals with the chaos and all the excitement around teenage. The title is borrowed from the track used by the musician Miaux.… >>>
There are mushrooms under me, there are microbes under me, it's vibrating, it's crazy! Look, light or mushroom storm?… >>>