The Art Kino Film Club aims to establish a permanent forum for experimental film and video art in Stockholm, while giving art films and their audiences a place and a context for further exposure and understanding. Screenings include works that have touched and influenced us over the years, as well as newer projects and forms of artistry that have only recently taken form. Art Kino features projects from all over the world, and each screening focuses on a very specific theme or subject matter.
For Art Kino #10, NOMAD Films and Bastard Gallery will present: INTERMORIOR, by artist Simon Mullan; THE MARINA EXPERIMENT, by director Marina Lutz; and THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT, by director Cory McAbee. Each of the films has a unique emphasis on the term hero, which can be interpreted in many ways.
In INTERMORIOR, the artist Simon Mullan is strapped to a spinning wheel, taking on the role of a knife thrower’s assistant in a re-enactment of the “Wheel of Death”, a common act in impalement arts and a classic scene in popular culture. In Mullan’s version, the image of him nearly impaled by flying knives, subjecting himself beyond the point of no return to the peril of possible death, triggers questions about the role of an artist and the conventions that surround it. Part attention-seeking, daredevil macho man; part dedicated martyr, putting himself on the line in the name of Art.
Director Marina Lutz has been incredibly heroic, sharing a very personal story in a very public way through her film THE MARINA EXPERIMENT (18 min). The film is the result of over 10,000 photographs, Super 8 home footage and reel to reel audiotape interrogations that Marina's father made of her during her upper class upbringing in 1960s and 1970s Manhattan. An eerie and infinitely fascinating archive that she herself has now sorted out and reassembled. Her father’s transgressive voyeurism is turned against himself, while a courageous self portrait simultaneously grows out of the almost incestuously intimate ‘home movies’. The result is a family exposé that can’t be shaken off that easily, and which in an intelligent and absolutely unique way raises the question about the right to not be seen. Marina confronts us with a very real issue; THE MARINA EXPERIMENT makes us uncomfortable, as it should, enticing a certain empathy and outrage and leading us to meditate on a larger set of questions than the archive poses.
THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT (91 min) - American independent cinema at it’s best and most creative - shares with us a very different type of heroism, that of the pioneer. “Space travel has become a dirty way of life, dominated by derelicts, grease monkeys, and hard-boiled interplanetary traders such as Samuel Curtis.” Written, directed and starring Cory McAbee, of the legendary cult band The Billy Nayer Show, we follow Curtis on his Homeric journey to provide the all-female planet of Venus with a suitable male, while pursued by an enigmatic killer, Professor Hess. This sci-fi, musical western features flinty black and white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets and the spirit of the final frontier. With music by The Billy Nayer Show and some of the most original rock n’ roll scenes ever committed to film, THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT radiates creative energies; a truly original film made from the spirit and will of creating a world with whatever means available, and certainly setting an example for other filmmakers in this genre.
Art Kino #10 will take place Thursday, June 16, 2011, 18H-20H, at Bio Rio Cinema.
Biografteatern RIO
Hornstull strand 3
117 39 Stockholm
T: 08-6699500
info@biorio.se
Bastard Gallery is an artist-run, non-profit art space in Stockholm dedicated to the promotion of a cross-cultural concept of art with strong connections to contemporary society. Since the start, the gallery has produced more than twenty exhibitions and cultural events. Whether presenting site-specific works, happenings or cross- and counter-cultural events, the gallery space is a communicative tool, hoping to make an impact on society in general.
Art Kino was initiated by Virlani Hallberg, Eric Weber, Jenny Palén and Giovanni Naves. Art Kin #10 is a collaboration between Virlani Hallberg (Bastard Gallery), Ari Allansson and Sarah Schutzki (NOMAD Films). For more information about the screening, and/or Art Kino in general, please contact us.
