ExScreen 007: KLEX Screening @
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
KLEX presented a screening programme with a collection of works from its archive at the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (Sungai Long Campus). The event was hosted by The Centre for Immersive Technology and Creative/ CITC and Multimedia Division/ MD at UTAR.
http://www.utar.edu.my/econtent_sub.jsp?fcatid=16&fcontentid=28031
Total Run Time: 64 minutes
LIST OF WORKS:
NO SIGNAL DETECTED (2014), 3:00 min, Péter Lichter, Hungary
Rhythmical combat of digital and chemical decay.
GONG XI FA CAI PT. II (2013), 3:30 mins, Andrew Stiff, Malaysia
Gong Xi Fa Cai, Part 1 & 2, is a two part exploration of a small town during the Chinese New Year celebration. Filmed in Mantin Negeri Sembilan, the focus is on the shop house infrastructure of the town, as a backdrop to the celebrations of the Chinese New Year. GXFC Pt.2 captures the colours and patterns that form the overall visual infrastructure of Mantin. The beauty of towns such as Mantin lies in its textures and colours. The colours are present in all festivals, including the New Year celebrations. As ‘modernisation’ grips Malaysia, and South east Asia, we are in danger of losing the heart of our towns and cities, as has been seen many times in the West.
BEAUTY EVAPORATES (2011), 4:00 min, June Kyu Park, Korea/USA
Beautiful and haunting images of burning and melting celluloid films. The films and the history of its medium seem slowly vanishing into the air. A visual ritual to pay respect to the analogue medium that has contributed a lot to artistic expression in modern human history.
REMAINS (Omakage) (2010), 6:00 min, Maki Satake, Japan
My parents and grandfather took a lot of photographs and videos in my childhood. I am searching for the world in the interstice of the record and the memories.
PRESSURE III (2013), 2:15 min, Rui WANG, China
It has always been a struggle trying to make my way through life. The unforeseeable future, changing environment, financial instability, and precarious relationships I hold seem to plague my mind at all times. The anxiety these issues cause build an emotional pressure inside of me. The video presented is a physical interpretation of this invisible pressure and the release I crave.
LULAI (2014), 6:30 min, LIM Chee Yong, Malaysia
This video is about a group of Bajau Laut and Bajau Darat people from Mabul island, off the south-eastern coast of Sabah, East Malaysia. They have no nationality and are unremarkable from world population statistics.
LOTUS.ELEPHANT (2013), 4:50 min, POW Lai-Xiang, Malaysia
The Lotus live in the silt but not imbrued; Elephants, holy and noble. A couple of mother-son, wear gas masks in a barren land. The fear in uncertainty and a yearning for purity and peace is revealed.
16 x 9 CAPSULE (2014), 6:40 min, Wuttin Chansataboot, Thailand
“16×9 Capsule” shows fragments of time and incidents taking place at particular locations around Bangkok. Camera observed different situations in various conditions, ranging from trivial moments in an ordinary day to crucial circumstances in political history of Thailand. Metaphorically, each place used as background in the video is defined as a receptacle of temporal matters, exploring a Buddhist concept saying that everything keeps rising, standing and cessation. They eternally and inevitably change. Only memory remains as an evidence of their existence.
MEMORY AND RITUAL IN FRAME DIFFERENCE (2012), 8:40 min, Jason Bernagozzi, USA/Malaysia
Memory and Ritual in Frame Difference is a work that was produced during an artist residency in Malaysia, which was sponsored in part by KLEX and Multimedia University. This work is a meditation on the complex relationships between ritual and public space at the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In a space shared by both devout hindus and tourists, the frame difference processing allows the viewer to focus on action and change within the recording. Electronic insights of body vernacular happening in mediated time.
BETWEEN REGULARITY AND IRREGULARITY (2012), 7:50 min, Masahiro Tsutani, Japan
The filmmaker improvises and through a conversation with himself, he has a chaotic worldview evocative of the firing of nerve cells, clustering sounds of convulsiveness. Finely‐detailed images filled with light that has been synced to sound. Nature creates the glow of light and the beauty of a shape lying between regularity and irregularity. Sounds and images with a granular texture. These things grasp the depths of the brain.
SOLI (2013), 10:00 min, Adrienne Marcus Raja, Malaysia/Canada
Soli follows the sun, symbolized by an enigmatic figure, Sole, as he explores the city and illuminates the lives of a series of lonely people. In a sequence of largely silent vignettes, it contrasts the blackness of their uncertainties with the bright light that investigates and illuminates them. Inspired by the image of Sol Invictus on the face of a Roman coin, symbolically lighting the darkness of self-destruction that we have in our own self and the pressure that forces us to make decisions in our lives.
ExScreen 006: KLEX Screening @
School of Media Arts & Design, Linton University College
KLEX presented a screening programme with a collection of works from its archive at the School of Media Arts & Design, Linton University College. The event is co-hosted by The Creative Practice Research Cluster and The Legenda Education Group.
Total Run Time: 57 minutes
LIST OF WORKS:
NO SIGNAL DETECTED (2014), 3:00 min, Péter Lichter, Hungary
Rhythmical combat of digital and chemical decay.
GONG XI FA CAI PT. II (2013), 3:30 mins, Andrew Stiff, Malaysia
Gong Xi Fa Cai, Part 1 & 2, is a two part exploration of a small town during the Chinese New Year celebration. Filmed in Mantin Negeri Sembilan, the focus is on the shop house infrastructure of the town, as a backdrop to the celebrations of the Chinese New Year. GXFC Pt.2 captures the colours and patterns that form the overall visual infrastructure of Mantin. The beauty of towns such as Mantin lies in its textures and colours. The colours are present in all festivals, including the New Year celebrations. As ‘modernisation’ grips Malaysia, and South east Asia, we are in danger of losing the heart of our towns and cities, as has been seen many times in the West.
EMERGENCIA (2011), 9:55 min, Yuri Pirondi & Ines von Bonhorst, UK
Emergencia is a performative video inspired by the allegory of Plato’s Cave of where a group prisoners that have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The prisoners watch shadows projected on the wall by people passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. They mistake illusions for reality, believe only shadows on the wall. One of the prisoners managed to free himself from the chains, and once out of the cave he had a terrible shock. Socrates narrated the light and new found freedom experienced by the prisoner, his first reaction to reality is pure astonishment, and fear of the unknown.
PRESSURE III (2013), 2:15 min, Rui WANG, China
It has always been a struggle trying to make my way through life. The unforeseeable future, changing environment, financial instability, and precarious relationships I hold seem to plague my mind at all times. The anxiety these issues cause build an emotional pressure inside of me. The video presented is a physical interpretation of this invisible pressure and the release I crave.
FOR PEACE, PARADOX (2013), 8:00 min, Kalila Snow JAN, China/Malaysia
The video contents a paradox story which appears to be “unpleasant”. It denotes messages that “peace is a state of mind” and world peace is and will be constructed by inner peace of the individual.
MEMORY AND RITUAL IN FRAME DIFFERENCE (2012), 8:40 min, Jason Bernagozzi, USA/Malaysia
Memory and Ritual in Frame Difference is a work that was produced during an artist residency in Malaysia, which was sponsored in part by KLEX and Multimedia University. This work is a meditation on the complex relationships between ritual and public space at the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In a space shared by both devout hindus and tourists, the frame difference processing allows the viewer to focus on action and change within the recording. Electronic insights of body vernacular happening in mediated time.
MIST (2012), 3:50 min, WONG Eng-Leong, Malaysia
‘Mist’ is a music video with black and white images merging into one another, as a memorial to remember the important political demonstration in the country, where many were in hope for a change in Malaysian politics.
BETWEEN REGULARITY AND IRREGULARITY (2012), 7:50 min, Masahiro Tsutani, Japan
The filmmaker improvises and through a conversation with himself, he has a chaotic worldview evocative of the firing of nerve cells, clustering sounds of convulsiveness. Finely‐detailed images filled with light that has been synced to sound. Nature creates the glow of light and the beauty of a shape lying between regularity and irregularity. Sounds and images with a granular texture. These things grasp the depths of the brain.
SOLI (2013), 10:00 min, Adrienne Marcus Raja, Malaysia/Canada
Soli follows the sun, symbolized by an enigmatic figure, Sole, as he explores the city and illuminates the lives of a series of lonely people. In a sequence of largely silent vignettes, it contrasts the blackness of their uncertainties with the bright light that investigates and illuminates them. Inspired by the image of Sol Invictus on the face of a Roman coin, symbolically lighting the darkness of self-destruction that we have in our own self and the pressure that forces us to make decisions in our lives.
ExScreen 005: GENIUS LOCI: Contemporary Japanese Experimental Film & Video
Guest Speaker: Koyo YAMASHITA
Date & Time: Tuesday, 1 September, 2015 @ 8:30pm.
Venue: Lostgens’ Art Space, No. 8, 3rd Floor, Jalan Panggong, 50000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
https://www.facebook.com/events/416136141919520/
KLEX ExScreen series presents to you contemporary Japanese experimental film and video from the prestigious Image Forum Festival from Tokyo, Japan! Featuring works by Mikio OKADO, Saya ITO, Hirofumi NAKAMOTO, Hideki KAWAHARA + Maya NUKUMIZU, Ryo ISHIKAWA and Shunsuke HASEGAWA. Festival director and curator Koyo Yamashita will present the programme in person! Come meet Yamashita-san! See you there!
Koyo YAMASHITA has been festival director of Image Forum Festival since 2001. He is the programmer of Theater Image Forum in Shibuya, Tokyo since 2005, and has been guest programmer/curator for many film and media art festivals and film events in and outside Japan, such as: Transmediale (Berlin), Norwegian Short Film Festival (Grimstad), Seoul New Media Festival Festival (Seoul) and more. He has served as jury for many international film and art festivals such as Hong Kong International Film Festival, Cannes Director’s Fortnight and Rotterdam International Film Festival.
LIST OF WORKS:
HIEROPHANIE, Mikio OKADO digital/2002/9 min
The island of Gunkanjima is completely abandoned. Buildings once lit with fires and lights of daily life have turned into concrete gravestones. One night, a sudden spark illuminates each room one by one. The filmmaker records this almost ceremonial happening with fixed camera, then uses digital effects to match the luminous fluxes in this requiem for the unknown building. The title means “secret ceremony”.
Mikio OKADO: Born 1979 in Tokyo. Graduate of Image Forum Institute of Moving Image, Tokyo University of the Arts. Has won several festival awards with HIEROPHANIE.
SOLDIER SCHOOL, Saya ITO video/2012/color/14min
A boy is sent to a military school to be brainwashed to be a super-soldier. An dark absurd animation film which wryly reflects on the pre-war totalitarian regime of Japan.
Saya ITO: Born 1989 in Sapporo. Graduated from Hokkaido University of Education. Her POETRY IN MOTION(2011) has entered into Chofu Film Festival Short Competion and her co-directed film STEAM IN MOTION has won a prize in the same festival.
THE QUIET VISITOR, Hirofumi NAKAMOTO digital/2011/12 min
A large number of crabs that a man has gathered at the seashore crawls out of a suitcase and spread out, over the carpet, the desk, the bed and the washbasin in a hotel room. The very quiet artificial place is suddenly invaded by crabs, and its cleanness and comfortableness becomes vulnerable.
Yoshifumi NAKAMOTO: Born 1986 in Yokohama. Graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts. His film SILENT PASSENGERS (2012) has been invited to short completition of Berlin International Film Festival.
I SEE YOU YOU SEE ME, Hideki KAWAHARA+Maya NUKUMIZU digital/2013/5min
The girls, under unjust attack, transform, multiply, and fire up. No one knows which one of the girls is Alice, nor for the Queen, No one knows which had started the battle. For that matter, they do not know if there is any point in the battle. A drawing mandala that thrusts itself with affection and reflection. While the presence of the texture of the paper leaves very strong impression in this film.
Hideki KAWAHARA: Born 1985 in Okayama. After working in an animation studio, KAWAHARA worked on various commercials and music videos as a freelance animator.
Maya NUKUMIZU: Born 1982, Kyoto. Since 2005 NUKUMIZU works internationally as an artist, whose works’themes concern fighting girls and fear.
UNDERCURRENT, Ryo ISHIKAWA digital/2011/5 min
Objects and light passing cyclically as if watching a view from a window in a train provide dreamlike sense to the viewer. Double, triple exposure using a projector and hand processing also gives a special effect of light in this film.
Ryo ISHIKAWA: Born 1984. Currnetly makes film and installation projects. Also organizes film events such as Small Format and !8.
VANISHING CIRCUIT, Shunsuke HASEGAWA digital/2014/13 min
A man who watches human behavior from outside of a body is connected to a woman with a different consciousness inside the body via a “circuit.” Their monologue inhabits a monochrome everyday, and becomes an impersonal “perspective” looking out at the world. Half a century has passed since Chris Marker’s La Jetée a film made from still photographs, and digital masking effects have given birth to a strange world of intermingled moving and still images.
Shunsuke HASEGAWA: Born in Tokyo in 1989. Entered Musashino Art University after graduating from Kawaguchi Art School of Waseda University. Studies moving images with a focus on cinema. Vanishing Circuit has been officially selected in Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2015.
IMAGE FORUM established itself in the current form in February 1977. However its original activity started in 1971 under the name of “Underground Film Center” to screen and distribute experimental/independent/alternative films and videos. Image forum is a non-profit organization and receives no grants from national or local governments. The running cost is solely covered by admissions to the cinematheque programs and festival, rental fee of the collected films and video, and tuitions for the film- and video-making school. Katsue Tomiyama is the representative of Image Forum. Image Forum organizes an experimental film and video annual festival named Image Forum Festival. Image Forum Festival, initiated in 1987, will celebrate 19th in 2005, Japan’s biggest and most significant showcase of avant-garde, experimental films and videos all over the world. Directors are: Hiroyuki Ikeda and Koyo Yamashita. Image Forum owns a screening room with a capacity of 35 seats and produces weekend cinematheque programs (in principle, the programs change on a weekly basis). The programs consist mainly of new works of independent film and video, both domestic and international. The works shown here vary from short/feature-length experimental film/video, documentary film/video to animation. Image forum runs Image Forum Institute of Moving Images and offers one-year courses and summer workshops to grow young film and video artists. The one-year courses start in April. The faculty consists of several full-time instructors (all film/video artists and critics). Image Forum has a film and video collection of about 1000 titles (most of the works were shown at cinematheque programs) and circulates them throughout the country to various institutes, museum and cine clubs. The collection is open to international scholars and festival directors. Many of the collected films and videos have been presented at international festival and cinematheque programs. Image Forum founded Daguerreo Press, Inc. in 1980, a profit body for publicizing Image Forum, a monthly journal of experimental / independent / alternative visual communication media. Image Forum features reviews, essays and interviews as well as the Japanese translations of critical essays which first appear in international publications Daguerreo Press’s other activities include: theatrical release of experimental and art film (Quay Brothers, Pat O’Neil, Alexander Sokurov), home-video releases (‘Visions of Light’, Meredith Monk, Quay Brothers, Jan Svankmaejr, Don Herzfeldt), co-productions of retrospective programs (David Cronenberg) and organize screenings and managing Theater Image Forum, an two-screen art house cinema in Shibuya, Tokyo.
Website: www.imageforum.c.jp
ExScreen 004: Dasein Academy of Art
Date & Time: 29 May 2015, 2-4pm.
Venue: Dasein Academy of Art, Kuala Lumpur
KLEX ExScreen series shown “Sunshower” programme at Dasein Academy of Art on 29 May 2015. Our festival director-curator presented the programme in person. Aside from that, 4 selected videos are shown at the Dasein Gallery. Thank you for participating KLEX artists: Andrew Stiff, Rui WANG, Péter Lichter, Jason Bernagozzi, LIM Chee-Yong, Azharr Rudin, CHEW Win-Chen (Okui Lala), Adrienne Marcus Raja, Jimmy Hendrickx and WONG Eng-Leong.
ExScreen 003: Talk & Video Screening on Experimental Cinema @
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
Date & Time: 27 May 2015
Venue: Faculty of Applied and Creative Arts, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in Borneo, East Malaysia
On 27 March 2015, KLEX’s festival director and curator, Ms KOK Siew-Wai was invited as a guest artist-speaker at the Faculty of Applied and Creative Arts, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in Borneo, East Malaysia. KOK gave an introductory lecture on experimental cinema and presented a screening of her personal work in video art, and a KLEX screening programme. The event was received warmly by the film and art students at UNIMAS. KLEX would like to thank all participating artists in the screening programme: Péter Lichter, Andrew Stiff, LIM Chee Yong, Yuri Pirondi & Ines von Bonhorst, Phoebe Ching Ying MAN, Masahiro Tsutani, Rui WANG, Haruka Mitani & Michael Lyons, Winston Liew Kher-Cheng, Koji Tambata and Adrienne Marcus Raja.
Gerry Hemingway and Sarah Weaver: Concert, Workshop, Film Screening (ExScreen 002)
Date: Wednesday, 21 January, 2014
10am-1pm: Creative Music Workshop
8pm-10pm: Film Screening + Artist’s Talk + Solo Drum Audio-Visual Concert
Venue: FINDARS, 4th floor, No. 8 Jalan Panggong, 50000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
KLEX was honoured to host composers and musicians from USA, Gerry Hemingway and Sarah Weaver in January 2015. The duo did a concert at Toccata Studio on 20 January; and then a day of improvised music workshop, artist’s talk, audio-visual concert and film screening on 21 January. The film screening showed excerpts from Hemingway’s film “kernelings” and documentary of Weaver’s Telematic Music Concert. In the audio-visual performance session, Gerry incorporated his solo drumset with experimental films by visual artist Beth Warshafsky.
GERRY HEMINGWAY – Drum Set, Composer
SARAH WEAVER – Conductor, Composer
Collaborators for six years in a variety of contexts including premieres of experimental solo, large ensemble, and telematic works. This tour offers options of sets including solo drum set with pieces composed by both artists, multimedia pieces for drum set and video, film showings of recent large scale works, and education workshops in drum set and large ensemble experimental conducting.
CREATIVE MUSIC WORKSHOP @ 10am-1pm
Led by composer/conductor Sarah Weaver (US) <www.sarahweaver.org>
with composer/percussionist Gerry Hemingway (CH/US) <www.gerryhemingway.com>
*For those who’d like to participate in the workshop from 10am-1pm, please kindly email us your name and handphone number BEFORE 14 January to confirm your participation: [email protected]. Open to all ages, instruments, and ability levels. Explore creative music techniques in composition, improvisation, conducting, listening, and dreamwork. We will apply these modalities to create an ensemble piece together to play at the end of the workshop.
FILM SCREENING + ARTIST’S TALK + SOLO DRUM AUDIO-VISUAL CONCERT @ 8pm
In this session, Sarah will show a documentary of her Telematic Music Concert, in collaboration with NASA, the USA space agency. Gerry will show excerpts of his acclaimed film “kernelings”, and excerpts of audio-visual performance, “Behaviors 1 & Behaviors 2”, in collaboration with visual artist Beth Warshafsky. The session will end of several audio-visual performances and solo drumset pieces by Gerry and Sarah.
ABOUT “KERNELINGS”:
‘kernelings’ is a non narrative work which integrates sound and image as an experience, where these two elements serve each other in unexpected relationships ultimately articulating musical forms and visual poetry. Created by composer/percussionist Gerry Hemingway and culled and processed from a visual and sonic diary, the content touches many areas influenced in part by elements of the natural world. The first three sections, “mist”, “dust”, and “light” layer together images that on the one hand are driven by electro-acoustic and instrumental materials that offer sonic associations to the unfolding imagery and on the other hand offer connections to what we hear by what we see. Very often the sounds you hear are also visually somewhere in the frame, often a detail of the whole image but nevertheless organic to the experience of how we take in the synthesis and evolution of both the sound and image. Text also plays a subtle roll in proposing poetic meanings along with associative memory or place. The final section “sex” takes a decidedly different tact from the previous sections using as its structure a solo performance by Mr. Hemingway that is visually interspersed with references to the previous three sections. These visual interstices bring a different sensibility to the unfolding intensity of the performance while at the same time leaving open the dimensions and interpretation of this sonic and visual experience to its viewer and listener.
Technical and Artistic Fact Sheet:
All of the material of the film, both sound and image were created, shot, edited, manipulated and produced by Mr. Hemingway. The only exception is the use of some copyright free archival imagery from the Prelinger Archive.
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS-MUSICIANS:
GERRY HEMINGWAY is an American composer/percussionist and visual artist now residing in Luzern Switzerland. He is known primarily for his extensive output as a composer/performer of his own work and the works of numerous other composers including Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Bob Ostertag, Reggie Workman, John Cale, Leo Smith and many others. He is a Guggenheim fellow and has received numerous commissions for solo, chamber and orchestral work including “Terrains”, a concerto for percussionist and orchestra commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony. He also been involved in songwriting documented in the CD “Songs” produced by Between the Lines. His ongoing solo work, which has included multimedia began in 1974 and the film ‘kernelings’ offers the most extensive creation in this dimension of his work to date. Solo performances have often involved collaborations, the most recent of which is with visual artist Beth Warshafsky which have recently involved live interactive video and music performance. His work is extensively covered in a website he authored: gerryhemingway.com. Mr. Hemingway is currently a member of the faculty of the Hochschule Luzern.
SARAH WEAVER is a New York-based composer, conductor, and technologist working internationally as a specialist in works for experimental artists, large ensemble, and the telematic medium. Telematic music is live performance via the internet by musicians in different geographic locations. Recent projects: “Universal Synchrony Music 2013-2014” in collaboration with the NASA Kepler Mission and NASA ArtSpace; “Time Axiom” New York – California; “Cycles of Awakening” and “Renewal Ringings” premieres at The Stone in NYC 2012; “Thresholding 2012: New York – Seoul”; “Inspiraling 2010-2011: Telematic Jazz Explorations” New York – California; and “ResoNations 2009-2013: International Concerts for Peace” at international telematic sites in San Diego, Banff, Belfast, South Korea, Beijing, Abu Dhabi, Nairobi, and in New York at Iridium Jazz Club, BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and the United Nations Headquarters. Weaver has collaborated with Gerry Hemingway since 2008, extensively with Mark Dresser, and with ongoing musicians including Ray Anderson, Jane Ira Bloom, Stuart Dempster, Robert Dick, Amir ElSaffar, Oliver Lake, Miya Masaoka, Joe McPhee, Ned Rothenberg, Ursel Schlict, Jen Shyu, Dave Taylor, Doug Van Nort, and Min Xiao-Fen. She has taught and presented at universities in-person and telematically including New York University, New York University Abu Dhabi, New York University Florence, University of California San Diego, Stanford University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Michigan, The New School, Northwestern University, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Queens University Belfast, University College Cork in Ireland, and the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Liminal Music Inc is the nonprofit organization for Weaver’s artistic work.
www.sarahweaver.org
This event is made possible with the support of Swiss Arts Council ProHelvetia, Liminal Music Inc and the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film & Video Festival (KLEX).
ExScreen 001: Katsura Yamauchi in Person
Date: Monday, 12 January @ 8pm
Venue: Lostgens Contemporary Art Space, No. 8, Jalan Panggong, 3rd floor, 50000, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
KLEX kicks off 2015 with a new experimental film and video screening series, “EXScreen”! Our first event of the series will feature musician-filmmaker Katsura Yamauchi in person! Come meet Yamauchi-san! Also on the bill are several works from KLEX artists.
BILL 1: KLEX Screening Programme
Snail Trail (2012), 3:00 mins
Philipp Artus, Germany
Pain is slowed down in slow motion up to the sensitivity threshold and is sold as an everyday anesthetic. We browse through ready-made catalogues of horror, instructions for use, we order attractive ideas-images; we wish to leave our bodies and become that image for a change. Watching a film, we forget about ourselves pretending not to be interested in the content; in fact, we are interested in the hypnotising, pulsating light, which is when we discover our magical and tribal conscience and repressed fear of life.
Beauty Evaporates (2012), 4:00 mins
June Kyu Park, USA
Beauties are found in burning and melting.
The sympathy and the respect for the analogue medium, the ritual for the farewell.
Green Cloud Temple (2012), 7:40 mins
Debora Bernagozzi, USA
This video is shot at the Cheng Hoon Teng or Green Clouds Temple in Melaka, one of the oldest continuously operating temples in Malaysia. Watching people perform the same motions as generations of their ancestors, seeing faded photographs of persons long deceased, the chants, the smell of incense, the flickering light of candles – I was so immersed in that moment. At the time I was shooting video in the temple, I was focused on preserving the feeling of being there.
Gong Xi Fa Cai Pt. II (2013), 3:30 mins
Andrew Stiff, Malaysian
Gong Xi Fa Cai, Part 1 & 2, is a two part exploration of a small town during the Chinese New Year celebration. Filmed in Mantin Negri Sembilan, the focus is on the shop house infrastructure of the town, as a backdrop to the celebrations of the Chinese New Year. GXFC Pt.2 captures the colours and patterns that form the overall visual infrastructure of Mantin. The beauty of towns such as Mantin lies in its textures and colours. The colours are present in all festivals, including the New Year celebrations. As ‘modernisation’ grips Malaysia, and South east Asia, we are in danger of losing the heart of our towns and cities, as has been seen many times in the West.
Scavenger (2012) 4:25 min
Jack Cheong/Okui Lala/Alphonse Chern, Malaysia
“Scavenger” is a work composed by filming a process of dual video feedback, expressing the chemistry of searching, identifying and procuring of the matter of interest in an ever changing data stream.
Banquet of Love (2014), 6:30 mins
Haruka Mitani & Michael Lyons, Japan
This abstract film was inspired by the occasion of filmmaker Norman McLaren’s 100th anniversary. Insects in their final momentschatter noisily, displaying extravagant colors and patterns. It istheir great feast of love. The film was made by scratching and painting directly on 8mm film. Powder and layers of transparent lacquer were also applied, with more layers of paint, lending depth to the various colors. The soundtrack was created optically with an original system, ‘The Octopus’.
The First Rain (2012), 8:15 mins
Koji Tambata, Thailand
This work is coming after my video project ‘Music Works’ and ‘Pre-Music Consciousness’ and is much more personal in a certain sense. One of intentions is juxtaposing images to get organic movements and reach the final result with process of it. Fragments taken from everyday life is going to reach some kind of reality eventually. In this time living in Thailand is one of influential aspects and the title, The First Rain is named by being witness of crucial moment of something. And here will be coming beautiful raining season after beautiful long dry season…
BILL 2: KATSURA YAMAUCHI (Japan)
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER:
Katsura Yamauchi (b. 1954)
Born in Beppu, far from the bigger cities in Japan, Yamauchi was until recently relatively unknown, but has now shown himself to be one of the most unique musicians in Japan. Not until 2002 did he quit his regular job to dedicate himself fully to music. Yamauchi had developed his own original style, mixing improvisation and minimalism with melodic elements. His music called SALMO SAX is at the same time challenging and easily accessible, unrecognizable and beautiful. Katsura Yamauchi has released several solo CDs and recorded with Michel Doneda, Gunter Muller, Norbert Möslang, Jason Kahn, Toshimaru Nakamura, etc. Katsura Yamauchi made first movie “HoFuNeM” in September 2012. Next one, “HaRuLi” was produced in July 2014. They were made of only image of water. He is a musician and a saxophonist, called Salmosax, and he has been developing Salmo World. His movies are part of it. He is searching the universe, including the material and the spirit and space and time.
ABOUT THE FILM:
I have no story for this movie. Theme song “KAGE” has no word. But you maybe find a message in it. I think the movie expresses the future through showing the starting point, and our sense of values will change soon. We have to hold an answer now. A fairy of water is the symbol of the nature. She sings(no meaning) and shows us a universe. And we see contrast of an end, hope and beauty, ugliness and stability, destruction and a man, a woman, the sun, the moon, etc. I’ve spent so lomg time in mountains, woods and rivers, and I experienced surprising spectacles there in my life. And I made a small photo album of water. After that, I decided to make movie of water using my music. Then I went to my favorite river etc. for four seasons for two years. I got many pictures that water gave me as presents. I chose and put them. They are my impulses and impressions which came from water and universe. This movie which is not concreteness or abstraction, either was completed.
ABOUT “EXSCREEN” SERIES:
“ExScreen” is a new experimental film and video screening series of KLEX, started in January 2015. Realizing the lacking of exposure for local audience to see and discuss about contemporary local and international cinematic works with an experimental and avant-garde approach, ExScreen aims to provide the platform for appreciation and discussion in experimental cinema.
FB Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/357307311117819/
