7.11.2024, 17:00, Maxx 4
EN UT + Q&A
9.11.2024, 20:30, Maxx 3
EN UT + Q&A
10.11.2024, 13:00, Maxx 2
EN UT + Q&A
In the visual arts, portraits capture not just a person’s appearance, but also their personality, emotional state, social status, and cultural background. Our cinematic portraits explore the self and its representation on the screen. As the camera moves in on the protagonists, it delves deep into human identity, offering multiple interpretations of each identity, several versions of a person’s self.
It Was Still Her Face
Christoph Girardet / Germany 2017 / 8' / colour/black & white / no dialogue / Exp
Portraits of women. And men who are spellbound by them. The paintings – a recurring motif of film noir as well as European postwar cinema – aesthetically stand in the tradition of an outmoded academic style that is bent on a striking likeness with the model. They are revenants, omens of absence, metaphors for loss and death, objects of desire and fixation, which mesmerize both the viewer in the movie and the one in front of the screen.
Kacey Mottet Klein, naissance d'un acteur
Ursula Meier / Switzerland 2015 / 14'2" / colour / French / Doc
8 years. 12 years. 15 years old. A body is growing and developing in front of the camera, absorbing sensations and emotions, confronting its limits and its darker hidden parts. A body that through the years abandons itself to the character, transforming what could be seen as simple (children's) play-acting into the true work of an actor. A portrait of an adolescent who has created himself with the camera.
You Can't Get What You Want but You Can Get Me
Samira Elagoz/Z Walsh / Finland/Netherlands 2024 / 13' / colour/black & white / English / Exp/Doc
A unique slideshow documenting two long-haired trans men falling madly in love. Over the course of one year, the artist couple Samira Elagoz & Z Walsh gathered photographs from real-life events such as their first kiss, meeting each other's parents, long-distance thirst traps, a beach wedding, and top surgery and its subsequent recovery. A sweet and steamy celebration of T4T love with life and art all tangled up.
From My Desert
Veneta Androva / Germany 2019 / 14'16" / colour / English / Exp/Ani
Temperature: 21 °C. Humidity: 55%. Ideal conditions for Martin to stay fresh and presentable. Rosy skin, bedroom eyes, a naughty little cap – that’s how he meets the young art investor in the depot of an anonymous airport. His master, Lucas Cranach the Elder, created him almost five hundred years ago. Now he hangs opposite a paralysed suit rendered ecstatic by his presence. They are talking about the art market. And yet about so much more.
Blue Boy
Manuel Abramovich / Argentina/Germany 2019 / 18'24" / DCP / colour / Italian/German/Romanian/English / Doc
Seven Romanian male-to-male sex workers in Berlin have their portraits taken as they listen and react to recordings of their own experiences. By turning the process of exploitation into a spectacle, the camera becomes a client highlighting the inevitable performativity of such power relations.
Sun Song
Joel Wanek / USA 2013 / 14'35" / colour / no dialogue / Doc/Exp
A poetic journey from the darkness of dawn into the brightness of the midday sun in the American South. Filmed over the course of six months on one bus route in Durham, North Carolina, «Sun Song» is a celebration of light and a meditation on leaving.
Random White Dudes
Young Fathers / United Kingdom 2017 / 4'6" / DCP / colour / English / Fic/Exp
The Mercury Prize-winning band Young Fathers respond to «Looking Good», the Scottish National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition exploring male image and identity. They confront issues of privilege and inequality as well as conventions of historic portraiture.
