WF Online Series 2023
FOCUS: Filmexplorer
22 - 29 June
The first program of our 2023 WF Online Series showcases the activities of Filmexplorer. FILMEXPLORER is an online platform dedicated to art films. Through critiques, interviews and podcasts, it develops a multi-media reception of films. Present both in cinema world and art world, FILMEXPLORER aims to build an international community of people looking at film as a form of art, or simply as source of original experiences to share. Within this framework, it proposes critical discussions and curated selections online, but also offline moments of exchange.
We have the pleasure of giving you an audio interview with Ruth Baettig and Giuseppe Di Salvatore co-founders of the platform, talking about their activities as well looking at some of the core questions in filmmaking today. A program of 7 short films curated by both accompanies the interview and is being presented for one week starting on June 22nd here.
POETRY AND ITS POLITICS
Statement about Filmexplorer's curatorial choice - by Giuseppe Di Salvatore: here
The film program
A Brief Spark Bookended by Darkness
by Brent Green
USA, 2017, 5 mins, English
A hand-drawn animated tale about love in an increasingly dark world.
I Hope I'm Loud When I'm Dead
by Beatrice Gibson
UK, 2018, 20 mins, English
Reframing a current political moment in intimate terms, Gibson’s urgent snapshot of social calamities doubles as a document of practical resistance. Pauline Oliveros’ music and the words of poets CAConrad and Eileen Myles imbue images of street riots and refugee migration with graceful complexity.
Alone
by Audrius Stonys
Lithuania, 2001, 16 mins, no dialogue
A sad child is going to pay a visit to her mother in prison. Her solitude is immense. Sitting in the backseat, she looks on in silence outside the window while the landscape passes in front of her eyes.
Citizen Poet
by Mike Hoolboom
Canada, 2017, 10 mins, sound with English subtitles
After the breakdown the old world beckons, a sunrise in Amsterdam, and in that golden light a poem by Lisa Robertson floats across the waters. Cropped from her sterling poem-essay collection The Nilling, the maestro writes about what must be refused in order to create the borders that make identity possible. Against the borders of state she poses the project of intimate conversation and poetry (“bodies assert their incalculable distance”). Poetry is the speech of citizenship. Pigeons flap, friends clasp hands, a pair of strangers dissolve on the metro, ghost cars, lovers don’t mind the rain, tea sipping, sunset at the bridge. As if he were coming back to life.
Through the poem we receive rhythm –
it is in the history of poetry
that we have a record
of subjectivity’s movement in language.
The Nilling by Lisa Robertson
El Cuento de Antonia
by Jorge Cadena
Switzerland, 2016, 30 mins, Spanish with English subtitles
Battered by incessant winds, this community welcomes Antonia with a ritual of stripping bare the stories she embodies. Being recalcitrant to established orders and endowed with a beauty that defies the widespread poverty, she is the protagonist of a visionary tale for today's Colombia.
Hardly Working
by Total Refusal
Austria, 2022, 20 mins, English
Hardly Working sheds a limelight on the very characters that normally remain in the background of video games: NPCs. They are non-player characters that populate the digital world as extras to create the appearance of normality. A laundress, a stable boy, a street sweeper and a carpenter are observed with ethnographic precision. They are Sisyphus machines, whose labour routines, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.
Line Riders - Beethoven's 5th
by DoodleChaos
Online, 2022, 4 mins 26, Sound
Three Line Riders sled, skid, and sail across a choreography of lines. Written between 1804 and 1808, the accompanying music is from the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s ‘5th symphony’. YouTuber DoodleChaos drew, synchronized, and tested the course for more than three months.
The audio interview
Audio Interview Timeline (01:11:34)
On Filmexplorer
01:26 - Inspiration for creating Filmexplorer
11:42 - Mandate of Filmexplorer
18:32 - Activities of Filmexplorer
23:59 - The Berlin Hub: A residency initiated by Filmexplorer
26:39 - Interconnectedness and interdisciplinarity at the Berlin Hub
A selection of core questions
29:48 - The evolving experience of cinema
39:02 - The concept of reception: What does it mean to watch a film?
45:02 - Challenges faced by the Swiss independent sector
52:42 - Critical thinking and the culture of reception
01:06:40 - Carte blanche for Filmexplorer: Introduction to the film program
Our third edition (2023)
This third edition of our series is special, as we have chosen to dedicate it to the exploration of four distinct themes. We invite you to stay connected for forthcoming details about each program.
June (22 -29) 2023: Focus: Filmexplorer
October 26th - November 2nd 2023: Focus: Art of Intervention
December (7-14) 2023: Focus: Swiss Animation
February (8-15) 2024: Focus: Ukraine Video Art
"The WF Online Series” includes four curated screening programs per year, each with a unique curatorial proposition featuring productions from Basel, Switzerland, and around the world. Each program is available for one week.
This project is made possible thanks to the financial support of the Mary & Ewald E. Bertschmann-Stiftung