Picklesong

Melody

Although Gainsbourg and Birkin had appeared in a string of films since their magnetic collision in Pierre Grimblat’s Slogan, Melody was a bit of diversion from their collaborations since it’s a series of interwoven videos inspired by the Gainsbourgalbum. For '71 it’s a novel concept to bring visual life to an LP, but even more surprising are the short film’s amazing visuals that director Averty crafted using a wealth of video filters, overlays, camera movements and chroma key effects. Averty applies these in tandem with the increasing tone of Gainsbourg’s songs, which more or less chronicle an older man's affair with a young girl. Each song is comprised of steady, sometimes brooding poetic delivery, with refrains timed to the phrase repeats of each song, while Alan Parker’s buzzing guitar accompanies and wiggles around Gainsbourg’s resonant voice. The bass is fat and groovy, the drums easy but steady, and the periodic use of strings or rich vibrato makes this short a sultry little gem.

Bride of the Ravine

A video art by Aleksi Soselia featuring Mount Kazbek.

Moving Image

A person rides a bicycle while simultaneously projecting visuals of a distant place

Soviet White

Archival footage of a wedding in Soviet Georgia

Meter Meter

Video Art by Ana Chorgolashvili

Border

An odd man on a balcony

ID

A girl is unable to say her name

Migration

A Rubik’s Cube used as an allegory of migration

Emptiness

A traversal through a wireframe rendering of a construction structure.

El siglo de las luces

Wintopia

IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.

Viva video, video viva

Today, analogue video is attractive primarily thanks to the distinctive aesthetic quality of its pixelated image and raster errors. But for Czech artists who first explored the possibilities offered by video art in the late 1980s, this medium represented a path towards freedom. Through a portrait of her grandfather Radek Pilař, one of the pioneers of Czech video art, the director explores her own legacy of imperative creative fascination. Her film’s main story, i.e., the process of reconstructing the 1989 exhibition Video Day, contrasts this enchantment with life in the final days of the totalitarian regime, which different sharply with the adventures of those who decided to emigrate – whom the filmmaker also visits in order to discover forgotten works, get to know their creators, and re-establish broken ties.

Cóndor

Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art

Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.

ACT III

Abstract video art set to the music of Philip Glass.

Voyage

An NTSC space opera.

Continuum: Parts 1 & 2

Abstract video art with music composed by Philip Glass. Music by the Kronos String Quartet.

Decoherence

Decoherence is an audiovisual composition made with sound waves, water, and granular and spectral processing. A 60 cycle drone from a speaker cone below creates subtle patterns on the liquid surface, which grows increasingly turbulent. This piece explores interference patterns, the interplay of macro and microscopic patterns, chaos and continuua.

Minotavr II

True Life Romance

Performance video about a holiday romance at St Ives, Cornwall.