Amos Gitai, Amie Siegel, Harun Farocki
Forum Expanded: Berlinale and KW Institute for Contemporary Art present Video Art and Installations
Opening: 8 February 06, 5–9 pm
The forum of the Berlinale develops new ways of presenting contemporary film and video art. Forum Expanded, an up-to-date selection of film, video and room installations that stand at the junction between cinema and installation art, can be seen for the first time at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the collaborative partner for the first edition. In the future, installative and performative works, which have emerged from the employment with the cinema, will regularly find a platform within the framework of the Berlinale.
At KW, a video installation of Amos Gitai as well as video works by Amie Siegel and Harun Farocki, and a 16mm film installation by Matthew Buckingham will be shown. Several installations can be seen in the Filmhaus at Potsdamer Platz, while the "hobby basement" by Meggie Schneider transforms the atrium into a living art space. A total of eleven works will be shown in the course of Forum Expanded.
Amos Gitai, whose video installation News from House / News from Home was opened in KW on February 8, 2006, was already present with four films in the forum. With a special screening of his new film News from Home / News from House, the forum pays tribute to the work of the groundbreaking Israeli filmmaker. With this film, Gitai concludes his house trilogy, which he began with Bait (The House, 1982 in the Forum) and continued with A House in Jerusalem in 1998. In it, a building and its history in West Jerusalem becomes a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On twenty monitors, the video installation creates connections between 25 years of film images. In addition, there will be a discussion about the current situation of film making in Israel. Following the Berlinale, the Arsenal Cinema shows an almost complete retrospective of the films of Amos Gitai.
In the foyer of the Arsenal Cinema, as in the past year, the Black Box has been built up; Here a trilogy by Jenny Perlin is shown. In the cinema, performative works by Elle Flanders and Angela Melitopoulos can be seen as well as Sharon Lockhart’s new 16mm production Pine Flat. With the Sshtoorrty or Short Story of Michael Snow and Spiral Nebula by Ken Jacobs there are also two works by veterans of the North American avant-garde film.
With “Hobby Basement”, Meggie Schneider already shows her third room installation in the atrium of the film house. The ground floor of a single-family house with garden forms the playground for the festival visitors, with leisure facilities from the foosball tournament to slot car racing.
Alongside the presentation of Amos Gitais News from House / News from Home, a first German / English-language publication about the Israeli filmmaker, whose main focus is the HOUSE Trilogy, will be published. In addition to texts by Jean-Michel Frodon, Irma Klein, Annette Michelson, Paul Willemen and Amos Gitai, the publication includes a first complete filmography.
Edited by Anselm Franke together with Antje Ehmann and Katharina Fichtner
International Film Festival in Berlin, KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.
| 34.- Euro | ISBN: 3-86560-059-x
Events:
13 February 06, 12 am
Panel discussion: Image Politics in Israel / Palestine
13 February 06, 2.30 pm
Angela Melitopoulos presents Corridor X
15 February 06, 6 pm
Interview with the artist Amie Siegel and the filmmaker Harun Farocki