The more things change, the more they stay the same : the 2012 alternative film/video festival

The Alternative Film/Video Festival in Belgrade has historically been one of a triumvirate of critical festivals, with Pula’s MAFAF (1965-1990) and Zagreb’s initiating GEFF (1963-70), servicing experimental, exploratory, avant-garde, personal film in the former Yugoslavia, at Belgrade’s Academic Film Center (AFC) within the Student City Cultural Centre (DKSG). Initiated in 1982 it was resurrected in 2003 with a dual regional and international focus after a hiatus due to the collapse of the socialist states of the former Yugoslavia. As well as a series of curated and retrospective programs each competition program is now split into international and regional halves, selected by Greg de Cuir and Zoran Saveski with production support by Milan Milosavljević. Two film workshops were also available. One on scratch film by Ivan Ladislav Galeta, the other on filming and processing led by Vassily Bourakis. Initiated by de Cuir the first Alternative Film/Video Research Forum was part of the festival this year bringing together research on alternative/ experimental/ avant-garde/ underground film and video. Although I participated in this side-bar I will concentrate here more on discussions from the festival roundtable and contextualise a small number of films, a couple from competition but mainly regional work that I would find difficult to encounter without attendance here.

A sampled OZ Hystery: Australian alternative film from the 60s to the present

Regional Support Network presents:A Sampled OZ Hystery: Australian Alternative Film from the 60s to the PresentTuesday, October 21, 8pm ($5 or PWYC)Videofag (187 Augusta Avenue)(co-sponsored by Videofag and Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT))Curated by Dirk De Bruyn (in person)PROGRAM:Fun Radio - Nigel BuesstLeading Ladies - Lynsey MartinContemplation of the Rose - Michael LeeZoomfilm - Dirk de BruynDiscs - Dirk de BruynDolls - Paul FletcherExcerpt - Chris KnowlesExacuate - Michael Buckley and Sue McCauleyMorena - Marie CravenShort Lives - Neil TaylorE.G. (Elephant Girl) - Virginia HilyardTraum A Dream - Dirk de BruynKeepinTime Abstract - Steven McIntyreTime Ball - Marcia JaneWAP - Dirk de Bruyn

The house that we live In: Dirk de Bruyn film retrospective

A Two program retrospective of Dirk de Bruyn's experimental film career for 1973-2015

Chamber music in painting photography film

This exhibition expands upon the history, approaches of experimental film and image making. Through speculative and abstract approaches the artists appropriate images to deal with trauma, confusion and nostalgia. The artists in this exhibition use personal imagery to demonstrate abstract ideals and idiosyncratic perspectives. Work in the show will be made up of photographic prints, collage, 16mm film and video work. Through physical manipulations of the image surface, retrenching of forgotten archives and poetic layerings of time and place, this exhibition aims to examine the de-linear and personal ways artists can experiment with the image.Through incorporating work of long standing artists Dirk De Bruyn and Luigi Fusinato in contrast with the work of young artists Anna Higgins and Beth Caird, the exhibition will examine the relationship between experimental film from a pre-digital context and how it influences, echoes and evolves in a post-digital environment.

Old Tom, new Tom

This presentation will Involve a discussion of Canadian fringe artist Mike Hoolboom's experimental narrative Tom (2002 75 minutes, Digital Video) The presentation will Include a short excerpt and stills from the film Tom is a biography of experimental filmmaker Tom Chomont who tells of his struggle with HIV and Parkinson's disease and disarmingly recounts confronting memories of infanticide, incest, fetishism and death It is how these revelations are innovatively processed through excerpts of Chomont's films, home movies, photos, Images lifted straight form Video Busters, archival and found footage that is so telling it is as If the surface of cinema itself is the body that is being marked and reconstituted and "the personal" forever changed by the Infection of this material Into our psyche.

This work is offered as exemplary evidence of the strong link between an experimental non-narrative cinema that flourishes In North America and new media art

The presentation will touch on the following areas:

> The Innovative marking out of the self In terms relevant to a new media practice.
> The correspondence between this film and media theorist Arthur Kroker's Ideas about panic bodies and excremental culture.
> An examination of erasure and loss In non-narrative forms.
> The historical context of Hoolboom's work as part of a North American experimental tradition and as a shared non-narrative tradition With New Media.

The presentation Will conclude With some comments about the relationship between experimental film and new media In this country and how the failure to Identify this relationship constructively here may have contributed to the current "death of the new" The concept of new media and New Australian Will be contrasted to attain some Insight Into the Ideological underpinnings of "Creative Nation".

223

"There are those films that are formalistic by design – the materialist films, which can’t be accused of doing injustice to their subject matter. Most notable in this area has been Dirk de Bruyn’s "Direct on Film" series. The resulting films (Vision, 223, among others) comprise of frantic flashes of colour and shape – very annoying to the viewer. But once the filmmaker (or someone) explains that the films are visual music, it’s surprising how watchable they become! This example points to the importance of the viewer in the experimental film scenario. Whilst the modes of viewing for particular types of films take time to learn, a certain facilitation of them is possible if the viewer is open and adaptable." http://www.innersense.com.au/mif/debruyn_films.html

"With 223 I used Photographs from my past as a base. It gives the eyes something to come back to from the faster abstract shapes. The Pos/Neg flickering gives a feeling of depth. Its called 223 because I had some letterset of the numbers 223. There is a layering of images and techniques."

The outer limits of read-ability

This is a 20-minute presentation that involves 3 simultaneous 16mm film projections and live performance of sound poetry, which addresses issues of traumatic effect and affect. The Outer Limits of Read-ability extends the concerns of my earlier film, entitled Traum A Dream (Australia, 2003), into the immediacy of the performance situation. Traum A Dream has been described as “a representation of traumatised space, depicting a person who is consumed by a body of pain in which slowly something is remembered.” The Outer Limits of Read-ability enlists the strategies of experimental film, direct cinema, and punk, while invoking Artaud's notions of “cruel performance”

Analogue stress

Made from reworked and reanimated found industrial and discarded personal footage. The main focus is the soundtrack which has been reconstructed from scratches, pen marks, Letraset strips and the music and phrases of found films.

Published versions: #1, #2, #3 are all slightly different to each other.

Byron Bay hysteria

"This time lapse video work of De Bruyn's evidences the bold rythmic structures found in his nahd-painted 16 mm film work. A prolific fimmaler, de Bruyn is a master of his craft and shows in this work that that mastery knows no bounds in this format."  Fractured Light exhibition catalogue

Flusser's death rattle

A live film performance using magnificent 16mm featuring Dirk De Bruyn in person. Can an image be sonic and ephemeral in the digital age? Live 3-screen film projection, shadow-play and sound poetry plumbing 35 years of experimental film practice, laying bare those processes of graffiti production splattered across the alleyways and railway lines of the planet’s inner cities but whose performance threatens to become completely hidden inside the computer. Images scratched, dyed, bleached and redrawn by hand are brought together to immerse the audience in an aural-visual rant. Does the analogue answer back to the digital media explosion or merely succumb in an angry death rattle of lost causes? Rev presents a rare opportunity to see one of Australia’s most important experimental filmmakers presenting a unique expanded cinema event.