CW#12 l SEASON 3 l Enigma

Theme: Mythology

26 July 2023, Wednesday | Season 3, Episode 12

Apartment Project and online

 

Livestream link: https://youtube.com/live/KCM-NPeBQEQ

Organized by the Apartment Project Berlin and funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe

 

Enigma

 

19:30 Short film screenings

21:00 Q&A with with Jasmina Metwaly, Hakkı Kurtuluş and Melik Saraçoğlu, moderated by Şirin Fulya Erensoy

 

The films featured in this «Chromatic Wednesdays» event not only draw on mythic narratives, but create their own. Using humor, irony, monsters, found footage, and mythic stories, they unravel the manipulative nature of myths as they incorporate them into their cinematic work to form enigmas to be deciphered again.

 

«Lake of Fire» by NEOZOON (2022, Germany, 11 min, English)

On some Internet platforms, it seems that the fear of death can only be overcome if people believe in a powerful savior. Otherwise, eternal damnation awaits in hell. «Lake of Fire» collages found footage into an experimental documentary that contrasts the dualistic view of Evangelicals with its fatal consequences for planet Earth.

 

 

«A Demonstration» by Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner (2020, Germany/ Netherlands/ United Kingdom, 25 minutes, English)

 

«A Demonstration» is a monster film without monsters. Inspired by the existence of monster taxonomies at the heart of early modern European science, the film explores and reinterprets a way of seeing the natural world that is almost impossible to imagine from today’s vantage point: early modern naturalists were guided by a logic in which scientific truths were discovered through visual analogy. Drawing on the meaning of ‘monster’ in Latin, meaning to show, reveal, demonstrate, «A Demonstration» is a poetic exploration of the boundaries of sight and the metamorphosis of form.  

 

 

«Müjdeler Var Yurdumun Toprağına Taşına, Erdi Sinemam 100 Şeref Yaşına!» («We Bear Good News for Our Beloved Country, Our Cinema Is Celebrating Its 100th Anniversary!») by Hakkı Kurtuluş and Melik Saraçoğlu (2015, Turkey, 22 minutes, Turkish with English subtitles)

 

The documentary is a interrogation of Turkish (cinema) history from 1856 to the present day, based on the mysterious and missing film «The Fall of the Russian Monument In Ayastefanos», which was allegedly shot on 14 November 1914, the so-called birthday of Turkish cinema.

 

 

«On this shore, here» by Jasmina Metwaly (2022, Germany/ Belgium/ France, 23 minutes, English)

 

In this fable, in a form of an animated triptych, a Gorgon comes to life. Crowned not by snakes, but by long projections that can detect the pasts and futures of a city. The present, we learn, is frozen in Medusa’s gaze who investigates various tenses, testimonies and myths of protagonists: the Alexandrian historian who witnesses an earthquake in 365 AD, Carbon-12 and Carbon-14 – radioactive formations due to cosmic ray strikes – and Medusa avatars as voicing narrators who take on multiple roles. Here, both the past and the future are myths in which once again we see the lost, the forgotten, the future past of a city.

 

 

NEOZOON is a female art collective founded in 2009 in Berlin and Paris. Their work is based on the principle of collage and explores sociological questions dealing with speciesism in the Anthropocene. In their video films, the de-and recontextualization of found footage, especially YouTube material, is a recurring element. Amongst other venues, NEOZOON´s work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at ZKM in Karlsruhe, at Kunstwerke Berlin, and shown at national and international film festivals in Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Locarno, and New York.

 

Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner are artists, filmmakers and writers. Since 2018, they have collaborated on moving images, installations, texts, and lectures that address the thresholds between the body and its environment, knowledge regimes and power, and forms of organization and perceptions of the natural world. Their collaborative works have been presented worldwide, including at the Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Courtisane, EXiS Seoul film festivals, CAC Vilnius, Los Angeles Filmforum, Museum of the Moving Image NY, Transmediale, Sonic Acts, Berlin Atonal, Impakt Festivals, Seoul Mediacity, Taiwan Video Art biennales, the Baltic Triennial, and have been featured on the Criterion Channel. Their films have won numerous awards, including the Silvestre Best Short Film at IndieLisboa and Best Short Documentary at Guanajuato Film Festival. They are the authors of «All Thoughts Fly: Monster, Taxonomy, Film» (Sonic Acts Press: 2021).

 

Hakkı Kurtuluş (b. 1980, Istanbul) is a director, (script)writer, producer, and actor. He studied film, communication, and German studies at the universities of Galatasaray, Lyon, Paris, Tübingen, Weimar, and Berlin. A graduate of Lyon Lumière University and former scholar of École Normale Supérieure, Kurtuluş holds an MA and a PhD in German Studies from École Pratique des Hautes Études- Sorbonne and Université Paris 8. As a cultural historian, he teaches at Berlin International University, IES, and CIEE Berlin.

 

Melik Saraçoğlu (b. 1984, Istanbul) graduated from Galatasaray Francophone High School. He completed a double degree in film and literature at Lyon Lumière University (2003-2006). In 2006, he attended Vienna University. Since 2009 he wrote, directed, produced, and edited several feature and short films and won several national and international awards. He wrote the novels «Hospital Notebooks» (2015) and «Citizen Berzins» (2018). In 2021, Saraçoğlu released his latest films, «Together, We Shall Die» (fiction) and «Incurable» (documentary). He teaches at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul.

 

Jasmina Metwaly is an artist and filmmaker based in Cairo and Berlin and a member of the Mosireen video collective. She works in video and film and has recently returned to drawing. Rooted in performance, theater, and film, her work focuses on process-based practices with a social function generating tensions between participants and audience. Metwaly’s work has been exhibited at international art venues and festivals. She has participated at the Berlinale with «From Behind of the Monument» (2013), «Out on the Street» (2015) with Philip Rizk, and «On this shore, here» (2023).

 

Şirin Fulya Erensoy is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie post-doctoral fellow at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. Her current research project focuses on the audio-visual production of the new wave migration from Turkey in Germany. Her previous academic work concentrates on video activism as an alternative media practice, censorship in documentary film practice in Turkey and gender in genre cinema. Erensoy has presented her research at international film and media conferences and published her work in international academic journals and books. Erensoy was the host of independent news outlet Medyascope TV’s English news bulletin This Week in Turkey (2019-2021). She has worked as an editor, producer, translator, and researcher on several international film projects, and has directed her own short films and videos. She continues to curate and moderate film events in Berlin.

 

 

«Chromatic Wednesdays» is a bi-weekly event series bringing together creative thinkers across diverse backgrounds. As part of this interdisciplinary program, the film screenings will be shown at 19.30 (doors open at 19.00) Apartment Project (Hertzbergstraße 13, 12055 Berlin) and can also be followed online on Youtube (https://youtube.com/live/KCM-NPeBQEQ).