June 28th – BABETH VAN LOO: ENCOUNTERS

She was inevitably in the right place at the right time to meet artists who breathed the spirit of their age. Babeth Mondini-VanLoo made an international name for herself thanks to the films she made with Joseph Beuys. This evening is dedicated to Babeth’s encounters with artists who have shaped her life and work.

Babeth Mondini-VanLoo (1948, Netherlands) is a media artist, filmmaker and producer. She studied film and fine arts at the San Francisco Art Institute and performance and sculpture under the supervision of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf. Watching her work, from her early punk days to her latest Buddhist involvements, you feel Babeth has been inspired by Joseph Beuys credo: ‘no separation between art and life’. The people that inspired her are essential elements in her oeuvre.

In between the films Eye programmer Anna Abrahams will interview Babeth about the films and the people that are portrayed.

PROGRAMME

• BEUYS SOCIALE SCULPTUUR & DAS KAPITAL (BABETH MONDINI-VANLOO, 1980, 15′) Babeth juxtaposes two screens of film material that she filmed on 16mm with her teacher Joseph Beuys at the Venice Biennale and in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in 1979 and 1980. In this film installation, she presents Beuys’ extended notion of art next to his view on the democratisation of money. Beuys: ‘When I say that everyone is an artist, I’m referring to that art that one could call social art, a new discipline of art.’
• JULES DEELDER – DEAD ALIVE (BABETH MONDINI-VANLOO, 1979/2022, 10′) Mondini-VanLoo’s recently finished work on the spoken word poet and writer Jules Deelder: Jules Deelder: Dead-Alive (1979 – 2022), a reworking of unedited footage shot in 1980 and finished in 2021 for the online version of IFFR. The narrative of Jules Deelder – Dead Alive conceived as an installation piece and/or short experimental film enfolds by depicting Jules Deelder, Holland’s legendary performing poet and author, who gradually changes in poetic visuals from a living icon into the carrier of his death mask. The ‘screenplay’ for the film is created through the process of trial and error with image and sound, and the surprises it produces give direction to the narrative.
• CHANCE VERSUS CAUSALITY: THE NEW REALISTS (BABETH MONDINI-VANLOO, 1979) A film about chance, with the artist Daniel Spoerri, originally intended to be screened as a double-screen 16mm projection, with the soundtrack by cult band Cabaret Voltaire. Instructed by the director to take the chance principle as a point of departure part of it was played with closed eyes. This evening will see the premiere of the new digital restoration of this film, introduced by Eye curator Simona Monizza and Babeth Mondini VanLoo.

June 14th- KAREL DOING: PHYTOGRAPHY + IN VIVO

Karel Doing makes fabulous images on a layer of emulsion using flowers and leaves. After giving a workshop earlier this afternoon, where the participants collaborated on two animations made using plants from the immediate surroundings of Eye, the results are shown during this in-depth lecture featuring Doing’s short phytographic films and Doing’s latest film In Vivo, with live music by Gareth Davis.

The program:

• THE MULCH SPIDER’S DREAM (KAREL DOING, GB 2018, 14′) This film attempts to kindle the vision of a spider by using experimental phytochemistry; creating organic shapes, rhythms and colours directly on expired 16mm film. The film is literally made in the artist’s back garden, using weeds and biodegradable chemistry to make images on expired film stock.

• PHYTOGRAPHY (KAREL DOING, GB 2020, 8′) Phytography dives into the rich and varied world of plant chemistry. This collection of organic ‘objets trouvés’ demonstrates how nature generates multiple creative solutions, each one structured intricately. Through the application of a simple chemical process, the selected leaves, petals and stems have imprinted their own images on the film’s emulsion. Shapes, colours and rhythms whirl across the screen drawing the viewer into a world beyond language and speech. The film taps into a realm of mutualism and generosity, readily available despite the environmental havoc caused by human greed and overconsumption.

• A PERFECT STORM (KAREL DOING, GB 2022, 3′) A Perfect Storm is a landscape film or, more precisely, a landscape imprinted on the film’s emulsion. The artist has used seeds, tiny composite flowers and other small elements of cultivated plants that grow in his garden and wild plant species gathered from a nearby nature reserve. The film consists of sequences that are intricately composed and parts that are completely ‘self-organised’. As such plants appear not merely as inanimate objects but rather as characters who are expressive in their own right.

• WORKSHOP RESULTS Presentation of the results of Karel Doing’s phytography workshop in the form of two film loops with an improvised soundtrack.

• IN VIVO (KAREL DOING, GB 2021, 61′) In this elegy humans appear like ants, walking around their habitat in a preprogrammed way, while animals and plants act like individuals. This upside-down world has a strange attraction which is at once alienating and deeply familiar.
  The surface of the film material itself is present like a skin that breathes and interacts with the living world in manifold ways: grainy, ephemeral, tinted, vibrating. Time and space are blurred into a reality that is both specific and universal. The film is simultaneously a documentary, a home movie and a symphony. We see scraps of the filmmaker’s personal history including encounters with his friends and family. But beyond those commonplace scenes, the film offers an unusual encounter with the real, embedded in a delicate composition of images and sounds.
  A recurring doomsday clock is counting down, reminding us that in the here and now species are disappearing rapidly from the planet. How long does it take to realise that our destructive behaviour is irreversible and threatens to destroy everything we love?

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June 7 – JANIS RAFA AND THE FEAR OF LEAVING THE ANIMAL FOREVER FORGOTTEN UNDER THE GROUND

Janis Rafa’s films view the world from a non-human perspective. Humanity has forever lost its dominant position. Laurie Cluitmans, curator at the Centraal Museum, presents a selection of short films and excerpts from the Greek artist’s oeuvre, connecting them to the climate crisis, landscape and the interior lives of humans and dogs. The screening concludes with a video interview with Janis Rafa.

Laurie Cluitmans selected Janis Rafa’s film Lacerate (2020, 16’) in which a woman with a pack of hunting dogs takes revenge towards her perpetrator: no longer the victim, she becomes the executioner. Lacerate is a reflection on domestic violence, gender-based violence and the notion of inherited violence between man and nature inspired by biblical iconography and Flemish still lifes.

Also screening: The Fear of Leaving the Animal Forever Forgotten Under the Ground (Janis Rafa, 2021, 12′). Stray dogs are locked up at a neglected, post-apocalyptic location: actual fall out shelter created during World War 2 to protect humanity in case of a nuclear war. This film is replete with contradictions: beastly versus human perspective, perpetrator versus victim, subjugation versus power and cruelty versus empathy.Janis Rafa (1984, Greece) lives and works between Amsterdam and Athens. Her oeuvre combines film, video installation and sculpture in which she reflects on human existence by focusing on the non-human. The stories are set on the outskirts of the city, full of stray dogs, roadkills, hunted prey, forgotten ruins and desolation. Dead and alive, human and non-human beings coexist. Rafa goes in search of the invisible, the marginal, the mythical and the occult. Rituals of saying goodbye, burial or exhumation, submission or revenge form a circular story. Her work is currently being presented at the Venice Biennale.

May 24 – Feast

In 2005, three gay men organised sex parties during which drugged victims were injected with HIV contaminated blood. The perpetrators were sentenced to years in prison in 2008. Those are the facts. For filmmaker Tim Leyendekker they constituted the point of departure for a film that plays a complex game with reality and fiction.

In the 21st century it is no longer remarkable if films break genre. Feature films disguised as documentaries, true stories are animated. Director Tim Leyendekker takes it one step further. There was more to the story of contaminated HIV blood being administered to drugged gay men in Groningen than came out during the court case at the time according to Leyendekkker and co-scriptwriter Gerardjan Rijnders.

With an extended Q&A (in Dutch).

April 5 : Toetsen in het landschap

Pianist Sara Crombach’s contemplations on artist Guido van der Werve’s work which she views as a never-ending search for a home. Music offers solace to the lonely, searching human in the Romantic landscape.

Pianist Sara Crombach has been much lauded in the press for her capacity to surprise, disturb and move audiences with performances that merge music, poetry and other art forms. As Guido van der Werve’s piano teacher, she knows his playing and compositions like no other.

March 29 : BIAK Stories & Missing Scenes – een nieuw narratief voor koloniale film

Filmmakers Monique Verhoeckx and Sabine Groenewegen talk with cultural historian Nancy Jouwe. In their artistic process, they make use of archival materials with a colonial background to create a new narrative. On how to express the ongoing resonance of heritage and identity.

Filmmaker and visual artist Monique Verhoeckx is working on a cinematic installation using mixed media as well as an interdisciplinary project, BIAK Stories, investigating the effects of war, decolonisation and diaspora alongside themes such as identity and trauma.

In BIAK Stories, a cinematic installation made up of three projection screens, archival footage, sound design and objects, she probes a complicated romantic relationship within the tensions surrounding the decolonisation of Netherlands New Guinea.

Sabine Groenewegen is an artist and award-winning filmmaker whose work has been shown internationally at film festivals and art centers. She will discuss her ongoing project Missing Scenes, which explores histories of women on rubber plantations in Sumatra in the early 20th century and the narrative machines which mediated the representation of those realities, including omissions in the archival remains.

Nancy Jouwe is a cultural historian and author. As a researcher, lecturer and curator she focuses on ethnicity, gender, race and misogynoir (hatred directed towards black women); Papuan heritage and identity and transcultural art projects are also covered by her research.

March 15: SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS

After being denied and repressed by a succession of rulers, traditional Ukrainian culture was reborn thanks to Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (SERGEJ PARADZANOV / SUHH, 1964 / 97 MIN). At the premiere in Kyiv the film had the effect of a(n) (anti-)revolutionary deed. 20 of the Ukrainian cultural elite were arrested. Paradzjanov and cameraman Iljenko ultimately won many international prizes for the film.

Paradzjanov’s prior films had still been (a)politically correct just as he had been taught at film school in Moscow, and which he distanced himself from. In Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors Paradzjanov’s style changed radically into something unique. With unusual camera movements and a contrasting soundtrack, he elicits a magical, surreal atmosphere. From this film on onwards he would create his own mythical reality.

In certain respects the director was definitely influenced by his time studying in Moscow: the natural lyricism is reminiscent of Earth by Dovzjenko, the Ukrainian who was his lecturer there. Paradzjanov’s idiosyncratic style was continued and expanded upon in The Color of Pomegranates and The Legend of Suram Fortress. This is the director’s cut of the film and is 15 minutes longer than the copy released in the Netherlands.

Short: Good Boy

Preceding the main feature, the short Good Boy by Ukrainian director Mariia Ponomarova about a young data-analyst who allows his life to be crushed by the worries of his mother, father, the latter’s colleague and his overenthusiastic, lost dog. Ponomarova studied at the Kyiv National University of Theater, Cinema and Television and graduated from NFF Master of Film. She will attend the screening to talk about her film and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.

Support Filmmakers at War

The proceeds of this screening will be donated to the Support Filmmakers at War campaign for Babylon’13, a documentary filmmakers’ collective in Ukraine, founded during the Maidan revolution, which Ponomarova is a member of. The income from the tickets will enable makers to purchase equipment and cover their costs. Their reports from the front lines bring stories from the war in Ukraine to global audiences.

March 8: In Memoriam Monica Vitti – L’avventura

During a cruise along the Italian coast, a young woman disappears from the ship. Her fiancée and her best friend start searching for her – but end up feeling more and more for one another. L’avventura is the first part of Antonioni’s ‘love trilogy’, all three starring Monica Vitti (1931-2022) in the lead role.

Alienation, isolation and sparse dialogue characterise this trilogy in which men and women do their best to get closer to one another – but just end up further away. With an introduction by programmer Thijs Havens and the short film Julia / Guiliana (Manon Bovenkerk, 2008, 9′).

The Winners of the 10th edition of the Research Labs

On Saturday 12 February, Eye hosted again the fantastic Research Labs, a hub for students of academies and universities who flock to present their own work and view that of others.

The best curated programme and the best works were awarded by the Cherry Pickers: a group of seven students from the academies participating in the Research Labs: Elio J Carranza  (Sandberg Institute), Tessel Schmidt (Piet Zwart Institute), Albert Rosager (Rietveld Academie), Thijs Dekker (Leiden University), Magali Speicher (Royal Academy of Art), Cody Kenner (University of Amsterdam) and Erin Doherty (Master Institute of Visual Cultures). 

 They awarded Cherries to: 

Cherry for the most urgent work – Leak, by Astrid Ardagh, 3’13” – Gerrit Rietveld Academie  

Cherry for the most surprising work –Enter Amazons, by Jemima de Jonge, 4’53” – Royal Academy of Arts  

Wild Cherry – My Sweet Failure, by Pelle Nijburg, 6’ – Piet Zwart Institute 

Cherry for the best curated program – Please Hold, by Noah Rook, Elina Lipska and Caitlyn Dijkxhoorn – Leiden University.

February 8, SELECTED ARTIST’S MOVING IMAGE

New work by Dutch artists and experimental filmmakers,  recently added to Eye’s collection. The programme  includes short films by filmmakers and artists – both emerging and established – like Janis Rafa, RAAAF, Sohaib Bouaiss and Erika Roux & Anni Puolakka.

The new collection of artists’ films is distributed by Eye and also screened at international festivals. The selection highlights recent trends in the artist’s film and the short experimental film. Most of the filmmakers featured in the program will be present for a Q&A.

A WHITE SCREEN IS VISIBLE (SOHAIB BOUAISS, 2020, 8’)

A White Screen Is Visible is a short film based on the filmmaker’s experiences growing up in multiple cultures. It abstractly documents the search to finding his identity, guided through the parasomnic experiences that frequented his youth.

FORCES (MARTA HRYNIUK & NICK THOMAS, 2020, 12’)

Forces was developed through letters written between the artists, a device to impose formal constraints on their relationship as partners. Hryniuk and Thomas filmed each other in various tableaus, in locations chosen for the conjunction of symbolic and material forces in the landscape. The work reflects on the acts of spending, sharing or wasting time.

VANITAS (ERIKA ROUX & ANNI PUOLAKKA, 2021, 18’)

Vanitas portrays four, unemployed characters in the future: a singer, a what-naut, a gamer, and an office building. Revolving around the characters’ observations, it wonders about the transient and often meaningless seeming nature of human activity.

LACERATE (JANIS RAFA, 2020, 16’)

Inspired by the iconography of biblical paintings and Flemish still-lifes, Lacerate reflects on the subject of domestic and gender violence by portraying the extreme decision of a woman who turns from victim into executioner.

LUFTSCHLOSS (RAAAF, 2021, 5’)

In 1942 the Nazis erected colossal Flak Towers to ‘protect’ the historic city of Vienna. The immense concrete castles were meant to become the symbols of a victorious Third Reich. These seemingly indestructible structures still dominate the city’s skyline – until today.