A special program for Archivio Aperto

Encouraged by Archivio Aperto’s invitation to take part in Carte Blanche, the 25 FPS team has curated a selection of films shown during its two decades, strongly reflecting upon the nature of images in contemporary culture. The program will be presented and shown on Sunday, October 27.

For this program, Marina Kožul, Tena Trstenjak, Nika Petković have delved through its programming archives and selected five challenging films by directors well known to our festivalgoers: Shelly Silver, Michael Robinson, Jesse McLean, Marko Tadić and Eve Heller. Not only do they take images to their (un)explored ends, they showcase their ability to intersect real and imagined layers of reality.

The program opens with Shelly Silver's What I’m Looking For, 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 by Michael Robinson, 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. 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, 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. 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.