ExtinctionThe Frames of Representation (FoR) film festival, celebrating its third edition this year at the end of April at London’s Institute for Contemporary Art, is chiefly concerned in showcasing new works of independent cinema that operate within a field of seeming polarities: between fiction and non-fiction, the real and the imagined, the periphery and the center. They are films that exist at the edges of documentary and fiction—that murky territory where one form bleeds into the other, thus opening up spaces that are both aesthetic and political by posing questions about the practices of representation. This year the festival is framed by its theme ‘Landscape,’ a fruitful topic capable of activating multiple meanings and for being perennially relevant: after all, we all live bounded by landscapes. They are the air we breathe, the houses we live in, the neighborhoods, cities and countries we call home. Landscape, in this sense,...
- 4/17/2018
- MUBI
For its second edition, Locarno in Los Angeles is doing things a little differently: This year’s festival, which runs April 5—8 at the Downtown Independent, will focus on award-winning titles from the vaunted Swiss fest. That includes Wang Bing’s “Mrs. Fang” (International Competition Golden Leopard), Metev’s “3/4,” (Filmmakers of the Present Golden Leopard), and Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias’ “Cocote” (Signs of Life Award).
“Locarno Festival has always paid great attention to U.S. cinema, bringing to Europe some of the best examples of a truly independent cinematic spirit; now having the opportunity to showcase our selection in the city of cinema is a great counterpoint to that,” said Locarno Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian in a statement. “Therefore I’m happy that, after a successful first edition, Locarno in Los Angeles is back with an expanded program, including last edition’s major winners. I salute the work...
“Locarno Festival has always paid great attention to U.S. cinema, bringing to Europe some of the best examples of a truly independent cinematic spirit; now having the opportunity to showcase our selection in the city of cinema is a great counterpoint to that,” said Locarno Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian in a statement. “Therefore I’m happy that, after a successful first edition, Locarno in Los Angeles is back with an expanded program, including last edition’s major winners. I salute the work...
- 2/8/2018
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
I have reviewed more than a thousand Asian films, but very few have left me as perplexed as “Dragonfly Eyes,” both regarding their quality and regarding what I have just witnessed. One thing that can be said for the film, though, is that it does not lack in originality.\
“Dragonfly Eyes” is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam, that will be on January 24 until February 4
Xu Bing, a visual artist, started collecting surveillance videos and footage from the cloud. He collected a huge amount of material, and tailored them together to tell a story. The heroes of the story are Qing Ting and Ke Fan, which are played by different, unsuspected individuals who have been caught on surveillance cameras. Xu Bing added voice acting and, with the help of foley artists, filled the narrative with sounds, since the surveillance cameras rarely record sound, just image.
The rather abstract story shows...
“Dragonfly Eyes” is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam, that will be on January 24 until February 4
Xu Bing, a visual artist, started collecting surveillance videos and footage from the cloud. He collected a huge amount of material, and tailored them together to tell a story. The heroes of the story are Qing Ting and Ke Fan, which are played by different, unsuspected individuals who have been caught on surveillance cameras. Xu Bing added voice acting and, with the help of foley artists, filled the narrative with sounds, since the surveillance cameras rarely record sound, just image.
The rather abstract story shows...
- 1/30/2018
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
The modern pervasiveness of surveillance technology causes an unfamiliar type of cognitive dissonance where their use is collectively recognized but an innate fear of privacy lost has been pushed into the subconscious. Whether it’s security cameras posted in neighborhood bodegas, webcams affixed to almost every laptop made after 2010, or the increasing appearance of dash cams, nestled inside vehicles that can capture either the pure mundanity of the metropolitan commute or the underlying tension of it mortally barreling out of control: they’re watching, and the rapid proliferation of public-monitoring equipment makes it hard to tell who “they” are — if anybody — or why they bother to watch in the first place. Chinese visual artist Xu Bing, whose previous work includes a calligraphic book and installation piece, Tianshu, that deconstructs the logical patterns we associate with language — in this case, interpreting 4,000 nonsense characters designed to look like Mandarin — boldly approaches the...
- 10/16/2017
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
The following essay was produced as part of the 2017 Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring film critics that took place during the 70th edition of the Locarno Film Festival.
Two Chinese independent films—Wang Bing’s Golden Leopard-winning “Mrs. Fang” and Xu Bing’s “Dragonfly Eyes”— competed for the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival (both played Tiff a few weeks later). Wang and Xu are established names whose works speak to the intersection between cinema and contemporary art. Both of their films belong to the category of experimental/conceptual documentary, and together they provide distinctive windows into contemporary Chinese society. At the same time, the differences between them couldn’t be any greater. They are formal opposites: when handling images of the real, Wang is minimalist, and abstinent, austere, while Xu is maximalist, provocative and melodramatic.
Commissioned by Documenta 14 and originally conceived as a video art piece,...
Two Chinese independent films—Wang Bing’s Golden Leopard-winning “Mrs. Fang” and Xu Bing’s “Dragonfly Eyes”— competed for the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival (both played Tiff a few weeks later). Wang and Xu are established names whose works speak to the intersection between cinema and contemporary art. Both of their films belong to the category of experimental/conceptual documentary, and together they provide distinctive windows into contemporary Chinese society. At the same time, the differences between them couldn’t be any greater. They are formal opposites: when handling images of the real, Wang is minimalist, and abstinent, austere, while Xu is maximalist, provocative and melodramatic.
Commissioned by Documenta 14 and originally conceived as a video art piece,...
- 9/14/2017
- by Zoe Meng Jiang
- Indiewire
The feature debut by Chinese artist Xu Bing, Dragonfly Eyes, carved out ot 10 000 of authentic and freely-circulated found footage possess equal degree of being disturbing as being fascinating contributing to the advancing aesthetics of post-humanism.
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 8/29/2017
- Screen Anarchy
To the credit of the Locarno Festival, the films in the 2017 selection don’t waste time trying to tell universal stories that transcend their time and place. Falling in love varies depending on the social conditions behind it, as Xu Bing’s found-footage film “Dragonfly Eyes” aptly proves, while weaving a story about obsession and surveillance in contemporary China. Similarly, working in a mine in Serbia has a wholly different routine than mining for gold in Suriname, as Ben Russell’s latest documentary “Good Luck” takes its time to show. Even something as widespread as the notion of the work/life balance varies considerably in films from Locarno coming from different parts of the world and set in different milieus, and enough of these films either circumvent or contradict traditional depictions of the home.
It’s telling that new films in which the home is a sooth place are either...
It’s telling that new films in which the home is a sooth place are either...
- 8/24/2017
- by Irina Trocan
- Indiewire
55th New York Film Festival Projections choices announced by Anne-Katrin Titze - 2017-08-19 22:50:10
Leviathan directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel's latest, Caniba, will screen in the 55th New York Film Festival Projections program Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the 55th New York Film Festival Projections selections, which run from October 6 to October 9. The programme will screen eight feature films, including Kevin Jerome Everson's Tonsler Park, Neïl Beloufa's Occidental, Narimane Mari's Le Fort Des Fous, Rosalind Nashashibi's Vivian’s Garden, Xu Bing's Dragonfly Eyes, Luke Fowler's Electro-Pythagoras (A Portrait Of Martin Bartlett), Ben Russell's Good Luck, and Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's Caniba. Zhou Tao's 48-minute The Worldly Cave will be shown on loop at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater over the four days of Projections. There will also be eight programs of shorts and the newly restored work of Barbara Hammer and Mike Henderson preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the 55th New York Film Festival Projections selections, which run from October 6 to October 9. The programme will screen eight feature films, including Kevin Jerome Everson's Tonsler Park, Neïl Beloufa's Occidental, Narimane Mari's Le Fort Des Fous, Rosalind Nashashibi's Vivian’s Garden, Xu Bing's Dragonfly Eyes, Luke Fowler's Electro-Pythagoras (A Portrait Of Martin Bartlett), Ben Russell's Good Luck, and Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's Caniba. Zhou Tao's 48-minute The Worldly Cave will be shown on loop at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater over the four days of Projections. There will also be eight programs of shorts and the newly restored work of Barbara Hammer and Mike Henderson preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
- 8/19/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
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