COURTISANE FESTIVAL 2010

From: Stoffel Debuysere (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Feb 17 2010 - 03:01:10 PST


COURTISANE FESTIVAL 2010
17 - 21 March 2010
Ghent, Belgium

The 9th edition of the Courtisane festival presents a unique blend of
film, video, audiovisual performances and media art. Discover the work
of today's and tomorrow's most adventurous filmmakers and media
artists in various locations across the city of Ghent. A five-day long
cinematic experience 'on the edge'.

A taste of things to come:

ARTISTS in FOCUS
Three artists/filmmakers will present a selection of their own work,
as well as works that have inspired and influenced them.

Morgan Fisher
Fisher’s films are an exploration of the film apparatus and its
physical material, as well as of moviemaking production methods : from
film’s standard gauge (35mm) to the use of production stills, the
narrative role of inserts and the invisible importance of the
projectionist. Fisher plays with the concepts of film, cinema and
filmmaking, creating a unique and intimate view of cinema and its
physical representation. ” One thing my films tend to do is examine a
property or quality of a film in a radical way,” he says. “Being
radical is a modest form of being extreme. They each examine an axiom
of cinema and say, ‘What if ?’”

David Gatten
Over the last ten years Gatten’s films have explored the intersection
of the printed word and the moving image, while investigating the
shifting vocabularies of experience and representation within intimate
spaces and historical documents. Through traditional research methods
(reading old books) and non-traditional film processes (boiling old
books), the films trace the contours of both private lives and public
histories, combining elements of philosophy, biography and poetry with
experiments in cinematic forms and narrative structures.

David O'Reilly
“animation, computers, internet, 3d, cats, chronic depression,
stories, independent film-making, more cats, trauma, low-art, Berlin,
talking animals, theory, dreams, drama, compression, nonsense,
rendering, artificiality, aesthetics, suicide, symbolic
representation, narrative, experimental, cats, paper, computer,
software, bsod, error, mspaint, lofi, sss, author, auteur, pop
culture, fine art, narcissism, pretentiousness, dramaturgy, love,
hallucination, jpeg, mov, mpeg, Ireland, Kilkenny, 1985, serial gen,
crack, torrents, cinema, anarchy, color-space, z-space, real time,
anti-aliasing, aliasing, xxx, walt disney, simulation, distractions,
internet etc.”

EVENTS
Two thematic evenings will be filled with performances, installations
and screenings.

Night Vision
Thursday 18th March will be devoted to ‘Night Vision’, exploring the
dynamics between visibility and invisibility, light and darkness,
seeing the night and seeing in the night, with among others Paul
Clipson & William Fowler Collins, Phantom Limb & Earth’s Hypnagogia,
Disinformation (Joe Banks) and Pieter Geenen. We'll also be screening
films by Deborah Stratman and Jeanne Liotta.

Surface Tension
'Surface Tension’, on Friday 19th March, has Dominique Petitgand,
Karen Mirza & Brad Butler with David Cunningham and Paul Abbott with
Seymour Wright & Ross Lambert investigating the folds and fissures
between perception and conscience, experience and meaning. Also at
show: Lis Rhodes' expanded cinema piece ‘Light Music’ (1975-77)

SCREENINGS
As always, Courtisane 2010 will present a broad selection of recent
Belgian and international film and video works, bringing together an
exciting mix of up and coming young talent and established names,
including Duncan Campbell, Phil Solomon, Otolith Group, Apichatpong
Weerasethakul, Ben Rivers, Adele Horne, Luke Fowler, Rosa Barba, Lewis
Klahr, Mary-Helena Clark, Bas Devos, Peter Rose, Karen Mirza & Brad
Butler, Janie Geiser, and many others. Apart from the selection of
recent works, we will present the video and film programme ‘Vital
Signs’, which will focus on the the formation of the meaningful,
exploring the edges of meaning and the boundaries of communication.
With works by Katarina Zdjelar, Imogen Stidworthy, Gary Hill, John
Smith, Guy Sherwin, Pavel Medvedev, Kathrin Resetarits, Peter Sulyi
and others.

EXHIBITION
The Expo ‘Digest Sound’ investigates the sometimes successful,
sometimes failing marriage between communication and technology,
featuring work by Matt O’Dell, Barry Hale & Joe Banks…

Our friends from KRAAK will also present a series of concerts during
the festival. Get a foretaste with Carlos Giffoni and Oneohtrix Point
Never on March 14th !

The complete program will soon be online on www.courtisane.be
For a more extensive preview, see the blog www.diagonalthoughts.com

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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.