The Festival "Images and Aspects of Alternative Cinema", the annual celebration of innovative cinema in our country and the beloved institution of those passionate about alternative cinema, returns again this summer, between June 20 and 26, 2022, in the welcoming courtyard of the Municipal Museum of Engraving Hambi in old Nicosia (near Famagusta Gate).
The Festival is an initiative of the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth in collaboration with the non-profit organisation Brave New Culture.
With tributes to prominent filmmakers, the "Images and Aspects of Alternative Cinema" Festival focuses its attention on a cinema that is different, with a strong experimental and idiosyncratic element, a cinema that observes, interacts and leads the broader cinematic language to unexplored paths.
This year's "Images and Aspects of Alternative Cinema" Festival 2022 consists of the following programmes: The Weather Today[/B]
In May 2020, renowned filmmaker David Lynch (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks), in the midst of the pandemic, began presenting on his YouTube channel the daily weather report for his home city of Los Angeles. Since then, with remarkable consistency, he has uploaded over 700 weather reports. Each of them is 1-2 minutes long and, in addition to the typical weather reports, very often includes a short commentary - a reference to something that is on David Lynch's mind that day. Each day at the festival one of these weather reports will be presented.
[EDITED BY DIMITRIS BABAS]
Anna Kannava - Clinging to the Magic of Life
Anna Kannava, despite her very short life and career, succeeded in being recognised and appreciated as a unique creator of the Australian cinematic landscape. Born in Cyprus in 1959, she emigrated to Australia in 1974 and, learning English at high school, studied film, acting and fine arts. The 1980s and 1990s were particularly productive for the filmmaker, with the creation of a series of short and medium-length films, as well as personal and inventive documentaries.
The festival will screen her early work, especially her more personal documentaries in which she addresses, among other things, issues of female identity and migration.
[EDITED BY DOROS DEMETRIOU AND BILL MOUSOULIS]
Bava/Argento: Delirious Horrors of a Yellow Age
Deadly revelry, baroque decorations, stylized photography, surreal aesthetics, sexual violence, masked killers, gorgeous victims, delirious horrors aka giallo. The term, which means "yellow" in Italian, first appeared through (pulp) light literature in the 1930s, when horror and mystery novels began pouring into Italy with bright yellow covers. The giallo film genre blossomed with Mario Bava and flourished with Dario Argento, offering relentless splatter to critics and audiences alike from the 1960s.
[EDITED BY: CHRISTIANA IOANNOU]
Black Liberation Movies
With the global Black Lives Matter movement combating the systemic racism and violence at the heart of contemporary American society, the program explores African-American experimental cinema by critically observing the complex interplay of race, power and representation in relation to the art of filmmaking, and attempts a re-study of the - often overlooked - work of directors of the African diaspora in the United States.
[EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER ZIMMERMAN]
Envisioning the Invisible: Barbara Hammer's Queer Gaze
Spanning a period of five decades, Barbara Hammer was able to "forge" an innovative set of subversive, yet highly apt, experimental works that laid the foundations of queer cinema. Continuously experimenting with a multitude of cinematic forms and genres, Barbara Hammer, through her groundbreaking videos and films, interweaves creativity and radical feminism, composing a tangible tapestry of lesbian bodies and stories. Shortly after her death in 2019, the Festival presents a mini-retrospective celebrating her vision for cinema.
[EDITED BY CHRISTIANA IOANNOU, CHRISTOPHER ZIMMERMAN]
Nefeli Kentoni: Catastrophe (2022)
Performance
This year the festival is again hosting a live performance that participates in the search for new relationships between image, rhythm and narrative. Katabasis is written and directed by Nefeli Kentoni, who works with the mediums of performance and video. It deals with the transience of existence through the reconstruction of a landscape, after the end of the world or before the beginning of another. Using tools from theatrical, physical and visual practices, the subject is approached from different perspectives - a tour guide, a mother, memory and its voids, and dust.
[CURATED BY EVAGORAS VANEZIS]
Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Greek Tragedies
Poet, writer and director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, with his unconventional attitude, left his mark on Italian (... and not only) cinema. A hundred years after his birth, his films always remain sharp and heretical, records of a 'wild' life in post-war Italy. As a small tribute to this important figure, we present three films that reveal his hidden Greek dimension: Appunti Per Un' Orestiade Africana (Notes on an African Orestiad), Medea (with Maria Callas) and Edipo Re (Oedipus Tyrannus). This ancient Greek triptych is not on the margins of Pasoline's work, but is one of the cores of his rich and varied filmography: it constitutes the dialogue between a 'cursed' and socially anxious film poet and classical literature.
[EDITED BY DIMITRIS BABAS, WITH INTERVENTION BY VISUAL ARTIST-RESEARCHER CHRISTODOULOS PANAYIOTOU]
Forsenic Architecture: seeking the truth
A London-based research group, Forensic Architecture uses architectural techniques and digital technologies to investigate cases of state violence and human rights violations around the world. Among others, they have investigated the murders of Pavlos Fyssa and Zak Kostopoulos, electronic surveillance, and war crimes. The conclusion of the investigation is always a video where the findings of the research work are presented. These videos are documentaries - evidence-based procedures that analyse the "crime scene" and are shown through the official website of the team. There is nothing overtly 'innovative' about them, yet through their insistence on analysis and evidentiary process, they suggest a new type of audiovisual narrative. A small selection of these films is presented at the festival.
[EDITED BY: DIMITRIS BABAS]
Alternative Chronotopes - Selections from the Archive of the Academic Film Center Belgrade
Since the Academic Film Center Belgrade (AFC - Akademskifilmskicentar) was founded in 1958, originally as an amateur film club in the then socialist Yugoslavia, until today, it has played a major role in the film scene of this Balkan region. Throughout these decades, particularly experimental and highly innovative films by important filmmakers have emerged.
Some examples from the AFC's career and its rich archive will be screened, films that have made their own history and won international acclaim.
[CURATOR: DOROS DEMETRIOU]
General Information
- Starting time: 20.00
- Venue: 55 - 59 Ammochostou Street, Nicosia
- Entrance for the public is free.
- All screenings are for persons over 18 years of age
For more information about the festival programme, please contact 99 407856 or on Facebook, the Images & Views of Alternative Cinema Film Festival page and the festival's newly established website http://ivacfestival.com/
The Festival is supported by the Municipal Museum of Printmaking Hampi and the communication sponsor is RIK.
(EK/SX)
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs PIO
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or PIO
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