Surfaces

The Terrorists a film by Thunska, was one of my favorites in the Berlinale, but at first I resisted it greatly. The languid shots of scantily clad boys on a fishing boat were lovely, and designed to arouse, a camera between the thighs of a young fisherman as he lay on the deck of the boat, playing with his cell phone. With the introductory text claiming this to be a political film I was left wondering where the politics would come in. Soon the politics were woven into the film. Shots from the view of an unseen person travel the city, looking out the window of public transportation while the voice of a young man recalls his mother telling him of her days as a communist and the violent struggle against the repressive regime. Another sequence shows young men masturbating while describing their relationships to their fathers. These two sections spoke of intergenerational relationships in a country and culture still in a state of violent repression. Earlier in the film was a section that showed an S/M scene on a ship intercut with shots of corpses recently murdered by the military in the riots of a year or so before. Still another scene portrayed shots of a family photo album that slowly change into photos of a past atrocity from the 1970s while set to a pop song about a lover who is a liar. The lies of a State are set next to the lie of a happy family life. Lastly the film has long shots of footage taken from recent political violence, old women yelling that the lives of people are not the same as the lives of fish, bringing the film back to a specific, local context that the film began with. A lasting quote from the movie; the narrator asks which is more disturbing, remembering something that has never happened or forgetting something that has.

Genesis Breyer P Orridge has for nearly 30 years been a major inspiration for me. Indeed, it is the works of Genesis and Derek Jarman which are responsible for me making things in the first place. Twin poles, one personal and the other a cold critique of the world we inhabit. Considering this cold critique came from Genesis work in Coum, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, it was very refreshing to have this new film from Marie Losier focus on a very personal aspect of my Genesis Myth, a simple and touching love affair. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye omits extensive interviews of Genesis the Rock Star, provocateur, theorist and artist and instead follows these two figures through the banality of everyday existence. Lounging around the living room, cooking pasta, or playing hide and seek in the Archive are favored instead. Marie’s very personal and playful style develops here effortlessly from her short films. Having a key figure of cultural history reveal themselves in such a personal way allows the fan/viewer/film-goer to see the human from which this valuable and important work emerged. Marie made a fine movie, one that adds something very special to an understanding of history, pop culture, late 20^th century avant garde, sexuality and intimacy. Thank you Marie!

Os Residentes was a film unlike any I have ever seen. It is a film in chapters, like a manifesto, each being introduced by a camera shot close up of a striped piece of cloth, cut to a piece of clothing hung on a wall. The film was magnificently shot, and the music was so fine and beautifully mixed that I at times forgot I was in a cinema, feeling as if I was there among the cast of characters who inhabited this abandoned squat. The film uses political theory from the late 1960s in the dialogue, and is set in the context of political expression and action of the late 1980s, but is a completely contemporary film, composed of shots that could easily belong in an art gallery. This is the mechanism which brings the critique into the 21^st century. It is a film which very much depicts a desire for a Utopia, but is very distrustful of them. The characters abandon their project when the experiment begins failing. Spectacular acting performances from an ensemble lead by Melissa Dulius and Gustavo Jahn had me completely absorbed throughout. With all the theory this film could have slipped into the polemical, but the juxtapositioning of the banal events such as a couple having relationship problems with kidnapping and group expulsions, also combined with the amazing visuals and sound made this film an epic poem, a poem which brought the struggles of revolutionary ideas into our own age. Directed by Tiago Mata Machado, music by Juan Rojo

Annette Frick presented the work of love she began nearly 20 years ago. Photographer Herbert Tobias is shown to a wider audience, recued somewhat from oblivion in her film Lightflight. Tobias was a fascinating character. In WW11 he had photographed what he saw on the eastern front in such a way as that it seemed there were no victors. All participants lost. Coming back from the war into the rubble of his own country, he photographed a ruined Berlin. In this devastation he began his first fashion shoots. It is these which first won him acclaim. Soon his photos were gracing the cover of Vogue magazine and album covers. He was the person who gave Nico her name. His revolutionary interests kept him from the front of popular culture for too long. Taking long absences into the post WW11 underground culture, he began a relationship with future terrorist Andreas Baader, taking some lovely photos of him. His later work focused on underground gay culture. In these photos we see a personal engagement as opposed to the estrangement and formality in say, Mapplethorpe. Annette has given us an important piece to a puzzle of forgotten, buried and ignored histories.

My own screening, Noise Margins, I managed to see the whole program of shorts later in the festival, having seen Marie’s film premier which screened. The program was a nice group of films, offering condensed sound and image like some kind of psychic candy. At both screenings the audience was packed, and largely intact by the end of the program, a feat often in a screening of experimental works. The Q and A after them were interesting and lively. This film I made with Paul Rowley and David Phillips was an assault in some ways. The projection was great and sound too, especially in the second showing, a visceral tearing into the violence depicted (or absented, depending on what you actually saw) It screened with the film, Pigs, by Pawel Wojtasik, Ghosts 9 by Genesis Breyer P Orridge and Prufrock Back in America by Eva Heldmann. Thanks Forum Expanded for the opportunity and good company!