While there were many films presented at Ostranenie, these pages are
dedicated to profiling the women film-makers whose work was show there. A
part of the festival was dedicated to examining the legacy and
achievements of media pioneers, Moholy-Nagy, Tesla, Schriabin, Oscar Sala,
Lev Theremin; a section from which women innovators were notable by their
absence. For more details of the whole festival :
VISIT : Ostranenie
This is the third Ostranenie festival designed to exhibit work and bring
together artists from Eastern European countries who work in film, video,
multi-media, electronic music and electronic arts in installation,
internet and CD-Rom forms.
This year's Ostranenie was organised by Stephen Kovats and Nina Czegledy
and took place in five main sites in Dessau. Most of the video screenings
were at the former Bauhaus building in Dessau with an internet cafe at
K.I.E.Z e.V, an arts centre in the city. There were exhibitions installed
on both sites and in the Marienkirche.
A special programme Women at the End of the Millennium was introduced by Bojana Pejic.
Women videomakers featured strongly in the Crossing Over programme which arose from a series of workshops sponsored by the Soros foundation in Sofia.
A programme of Video Documentaries by women film-makers was also shown.
In addition to these special events, women also featured in the general programme which highlighted work from former Eastern European countries and for the first time included work from Albania, Moldova and Bosnia-Herzognovina.
This included a new videowork by a young Albanian woman, Erjona Daka,
'Kotesi / Vanity' (15 mins, 1997). This video shot in a storage shed,
featured only one actor. A young man who typed on a typewriter with no
paper a series of reflections as he slowly picked up and considered the
objects around him ; a child's shoe, a woman's shoe, a boot. The objects
seemed to cover a spectrum of life events. At the end of the film, he
covers up the typewriter with plastic, hides it away. The film alludes to
hidden and secret thoughts but it also suggests that storing information
for the self - as an unproductive activity - can be a vain and selfish
act.
On a lighter note, a very cleverly crafted and ironic film shown in another programme was Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck's 'Busby' (3.18 mins, 1997, Germany). A parody of Busby Berkeley's routines in an almost Bauhaus-manner using the abstract qualities of hands to form the shapes and movement of dancing.
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Copyright © : N.Paradoxa,1997
N.Paradoxa : Issue No.5, November 1997
Cyberknitting
event at Ostranenie