Experimenter presents FILAMENT, its annual film based exhibition that reconnoiter contemporary film practice. FILAMENT will be on view from July 4 until July 20. This year FILAMENT will include four feature length films by Amar Kanwar, CAMP, Naeem Mohaiemen and Omer Fast that explore the complex relationship between strife, political ideologies, territorial ambitions, people who inhabit the void, the memories that unrest leaves behind and its psychological and social implications.
FILAMENT
Amar Kanwar, CAMP, Naeem Mohaiemen & Omer Fast
4 – 20 July, 2013
Schedule of screenings:
Amar Kanwar
A night of Prophecy, 2002,
77 Mins 4 - 8 July 2013, 2pm, 4pm & 6pm
CAMP
Al Jaar Qabla Al Daar (The Neighbour Before the House), 2009-11,
64 Mins 9 - 12 July 2013, 2pm, 4pm & 6pm
Naeem Mohaiemen
United Red Army, 2012,
72 Mins 13 -16 July 2013, 2pm, 4pm & 6pm
Omer Fast
Continuity, 2012,
40 Mins 17 - 20 July 2013,Playing continuously
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Brief introductions to the films are below:
Amar Kanwar
A Night of Prophecy, 2002,
77 Mins 4 - 8 July 2013, 2pm, 4pm & 6pm
Is it possible to understand the passage of time through poetry? And if that were so even for one special moment then would it be possible to see the future? The film travels in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland and Kashmir trying to understand the past, the severity of conflict and the cycles of change. Through poetry you suddenly see where each and all the territories are heading to, where you belong and where to intervene, if you want to. The different poetic narratives merge together, allowing us to see a more universal language of symbols and meanings. The moment when this merger in the mind takes place is the simple moment of prophecy.
CAMP
Al Jaar Qabla Al Daar (The Neighbour Before the House), 2009-11,
64 Mins 9 - 12 July 2013, 2pm, 4pm & 6pm
The material for this film was generated by eight Palestinian families living in various neighborhoods in the city of Jerusalem/Al Quds, a place where the usual sense of “neighborhood” is broken by occupation and conflict. It was filmed over a month in September-October 2009, with a PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) CCTV camera that the residents installed on their own homes (or in the case of evicted families on nearby houses), a "tripod made of stones". The commentary you can hear is of people speaking over the video live, as they watch and move the camera from inside their homes. Sometimes the voice looks for an image, at other times image provokes voices, or they separate into distant landscapes and innermost thoughts. The footage was edited into this film in 2011.
Naeem Mohaiemen
United Red Army, 2012,
72 Mins 13 -16 July 2013, 2pm, 4pm & 6pm
United Red Army is the latest installment of The Young Man Was, a multi-year project constructing a history of the 1970s ultra-left. On September 28th 1977, the Japanese Red Army hijacked JAL 472 and flew it to Dhaka. As a negotiation began between the control tower and the lead hijacker (codename: Dankesu), a series of unintended consequences are set off. The film pivots off the audio tapes of the hostage negotiations. Outside the plane, we see fierce internal struggles of an unsteady military government, a Hollywood actress on her truncated honeymoon, and an interrupted episode of The Zoo Gang. Shumon Bashar wrote in Tank: “the crackly voices of these two strangers hurled into a forced, awkward intimacy… the tone with which they started their discussion was peculiarly polite, until the accord between ransom and reason reached breaking point.”
Omer Fast
Continuity, 2012, 40 Mins 17 - 20 July 2013, Playing continuously
In Continuity, we follow a young Bundeswehr soldier just returning home from Afghanistan. What first appears to be strange anomalies in an otherwise familiar domestic environment gradually becomes a nightmare scenario. As the young man struggles to make sense of his increasingly surreal and alien home, it becomes really doubtful whether he’s ever actually returned from service. With Continuity, the artist gets closer to the cinematographic tradition.
