Curated by Marina Kožul, Tena Trstenjak, Nika Petković
(25 FPS International Experimental Film and Video Festival)
A curatorial space that Archivio Aperto entrusts, for each edition, to a European festival of experimental cinema. This year, the carte blanche is curated by 25 FPS International Experimental Film and Video Festival in Zagreb (Croatia).
Since 2005, 25 FPS International Experimental Film and Video Festival, devotedly screens independent and non-commercial cinema, showcasing films that push the boundaries of cinematic language, narrative, and form. Dedicated to promoting innovative and avant-garde works, the festival explores the intersection of film with other art forms and genres, offering audiences a rich exploration of the medium’s possibilities. Ahead of the Festival’s 20th birthday and encouraged by Archivio Aperto’s invitation to take part in Carte Blanche, the 25 FPS team has delved through its programming archives in order to highlight some of the films that in the past twenty years have strongly reflected upon the nature of images in contemporary culture and their ability to intersect real and imagined layers of reality. We are delighted to present a selection of films that dare to experiment with form and meaning, while not underestimating the spectator, even at the cost of a possible misunderstanding!
We begin our journey with What I’m Looking For (Shelly Silver, 2003), a short tale of desire and control that documents the adventure of a woman drawn into a series of meetings with strangers, with a task to photograph their moments of intimacy. Her apparently simple mission ultimately becomes an investigation into the nature of photography, the documentary versus fiction and private versus public.
The exploration of the human perception of nature is the central point of You don’t bring me flowers (Michael Robinson, 2005), another fairy tale, marked by a wry commentary on America’s fascination with beautiful and exotic visual representations of landscapes.
Motivated by a deep curiosity about human behavior, especially when observed through mediated images, Jesse McLean’s research interest becomes evident in one of her first masterpieces, Magic for Beginners (Jesse McLean, 2010). An exploration of mythologies anchored in fan culture through an intermittently absorbing and psychedelic montage, revolving around childhood obsessions.
In his artistic practice encompassing drawing, installation and animation, Marko Tadić reserves for art a space full of potentiality and allusions. His short film Events Meant to Be Forgotten (Marko Tadić, 2020), filmed on 16mm, combines archival materials and a poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger to speak about the vanishing and forgetfulness of human lives.
We conclude this short journey with Eve Heller’s visual and musical poem Singing in oblivion (Eve Heller, 2022). Interweaving footage shot on location with images meticulously lifted from antique glass negatives, Heller offers us a lyrical evocation about lost voices and traces, transporting the film material itself from the past into the future.
