The Nodes of Image and Sound, from the Edge into the Centre of the Gaze
We will open the fourth edition of the International Festival of Experimental Audiovisual Practices V-F-X Ljubljana with the Slovenian feature-length film Don't Think It Will Ever Pass: 25. 4.–26. 1. by Tomaž Grom, which won the Vesna Award for Best Film at last year’s Festival of Slovenian Film. The decision of the expert jury, which, in some media, was characterised as “radical”, fills us with optimism, for it seems it indicates a more informed view inclined to understanding film practices in all their potentiality. The film, which premiered last year at the Slovenian Cinematheque, will again be accompanied live by its director.
In the spirit of the performance uniqueness of every film show, various programme segments of the festival will examine the relation between film image and sound and the potentiality of performance practices in relation to audiovisual art expressions. We have thus joined forces with Kino-uho, the Slovenian Cinematheque’s traditional cycle of silent films with live musical accompaniment, and present a darkly intoxicating universe of Vasko Pregelj, a Slovenian pioneer of experimental cinema. The programme of his short films, which had been considered lost until recently, will be accompanied live by Tine Vrabič – Nitz, an established name on the Slovenian electronic and club music scene.
Performative gestures on the intersection of film, video, gaming and engaged technophilosophy are involved in the work of the Vienna collective Total Refusal, which will be presented with a retrospective and a lecture performance in cooperation with art historian Valentina Tanni.
This year, the already established programme section Vistas, which brings an eclectic selection of the most resounding titles of the international scene, is accompanied by two survey sections: House of Reasoned Truths, an overview of recent African video art curated by Kisito Assangni, a Togolese-French curator, and Natural Causes?, a retrospective of Romanian experimental cinema, prepared by Călin Boto, the associate curator of the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival. V-F-X Ljubljana has already screened the film productions of students from UN ALUO, UN AGRFT and AVA – Academy of Visual Arts in Ljubljana, as well as the Academy of Arts in Nova Gorica, within the framework of the Slovenian Film Database (BSF). This year, the student programme What's Cooking?, a curated selection of recent student productions, will be screened in the Slovenian Cinematheque Hall for the first time. Student programme proves that good experimental student films are made in Slovenia too and the festival provides them with the required platform enabling them to be shown to the public.
The film programme will be accompanied by the VR point Immortelle at the Cinematheque’s café, the workshop The Magical World of Analogue Film under the mentorship of visual artist Neža Knez and in cooperation with Klubvizija from Zagreb and the round table The Dark Side of Analogue Film: Independent Labs, which will address the question of creating with the analogue in the environment of the digital present. The festival will conclude at Kino Šiška, where we will immerse in an intermedial performance by French musician Amélie Nilles. The hybrid multichannel sound experience has been conceived as an experience of a total immersion into a “garden of sounds”, a slightly eccentric experimental sound universe.
The Festival team