EFS 2014/2015 Update

"The past few weeks have been quite a hectic time for Experimental Film Society. We presented film programmes in IndieCork Film Festival, Cork Film Festival, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, and organized a number of international screenings. One of the final EFS activities this year was held last night at The Guest House, Cork. Bahar Samadi and Navid Salajegheh closed their residency with “Non-Pacific Coexistence of Numbers and Dates”, a truly unique and spectral performance that was the culmination of much hard work and research. We’d like to thank Maximilian Le Cain, Dean Kavanagh, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Mick O'Shea, Irene Murphy, Jann Clavadetscher, Vicky Langan, and many others for their tremendous support and involvement in facilitating these events. EFS activities in 2014 will conclude with a screening in Tehran in December. We will return in 2015 with screenings in Ireland, Spain, Italy, Germany and many other places. Also keep an eye out for two new feature films heading your way, as both “Cloud of Skin” and “Ten Years in the Sun” will be completed over the coming months."

(above images from performance “Non-Pacific Coexistence of Numbers and Dates”)

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Review of "Return of Suspicion" (2014)

Thai film critic Jit Phokaew has reviewed "Return of Suspicion" on his cinema blog.

Read the piece here

"Return of Suspicion" @ Pantalla Fantasma Film Festival, Spain

"Return of Suspicion" has been selected for the 4th edition of the Pantalla Fantasma Film Festival.

It will take place from the 19th to the 24th of January 2015 in Puerta (Bilbao, Basque Country). 

Information Here

EFS Screening @TBG+S (2)

Info Here

"Forbidden Symmetries" (excerpt) in The Austrian Film Museum

A section of the collaborative feature film "Forbidden Symmetries" (2014) will play at The Austrian Film Museum on Wednesday 26th November 18:30 pm as part of Daniel Fitzpatrick's contribution to 'The Invisible Cinema – Film, Art, History, and the Museum' (Lectures and Conversations: Nicole Brenez, Chris Dercon, Noam M. Elcott, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Lars Henrik Gass, Siegfried Mattl, Winfried Pauleit and Jacques Rancière).

Expended Cinema – Curating Cinema’s Futures During an Era of Transition (Daniel Fitzpatrick) 

“In relation to cinema’s digital futures a time for prognosis seems now to have passed, apparently all we need do to understand the shape of this digital future is look around us. In spite of the rhetoric that initially supported this transition it can seem that the digital ‘revolution’ (an awkward term for a transformation that has witnessed a large degree of unreflective acquiescence) has perhaps not led to the ‘opening up’ of possibility it once promised but rather to a further calcification of ‘what cinema is’, at least if we are to consider it in terms of its more visible, more mainstream iterations. While the dematerialisation of cinema now seems like a distant memory its despecification gathers apace. The following article will consider several instances of curatorial practice iterated in relation to the cinema’s recent transitional era. It will include references to gallery exhibitions like Hall of Mirrors (MOCA, LA 1996) and Future Cinema (ZKM, 2002) alongside curatorial projects realised in relation to the cinema space (Kubelka Was ist Film? project, 1996-). Each of these instances is considered in relationship with the emergence of a digital future which threatens to subsume existing understandings of cinema, almost entirely.”

More Information

EFS Activities in November 2014

(1)

EFS in Cork Film Festival 2014

(above: "Hades of Limbo", dir. Rashidi, 2012)

EFS has been crucial in nurturing a new Iranian underground cinema that is significantly different 
from both official Iranian cinema and the politically oppositional works that western audiences are familiar with.
Introspective and nightmarish, these films consist of oblique but searingly intense visions of enclosed existences.

Rouzbeh Rashidi will present both programmes in the forthcoming Cork Film Festival 2014.

Full Information Here

(2)

EFS @ Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (II)

(above: Hamid Shams Javi's "The Hell With It" 2013)

Monday 24th November, 6pm

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (Studio 6 Open), 5-9 Temple Bar, Dublin 2.

 Free admission, all welcome.

The second of six bi-monthly Experimental Film Society (EFS) screenings, taking place at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios under the Studio 6 Open programme, highlights the reach and stylistic diversity of EFS’ international membership. Bahar Samadi’s haunting, gem-like videos make very personal use of found footage to evoke a mysterious sense of loss and memory. Jason Marsh’s "Pitpony" and Esperanza Collado’s "The Illuminating Gas" both explore the raw materiality of celluloid but with contrasting approaches to rhythm. An emphasis on hypnotic rhythm and a willingness to tackle darkly erotic material characterizes the two collaborative pieces in the programme, Dean Kavanagh & Rouzbeh Rashidi’s "Homo Sapiens Project (183)" andVicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain’s "Desk 13". And the darkness continues into Hamid Shams Javi’s surreal nightmare vision of family life in contemporary Iran, "The Hell With It". 

Full Information Here

(3)

Bahar Samadi and Navid Salajegheh @ The Guesthouse, Cork

EFS are very pleased to announce that Iranian/Paris based artists Bahar Samadi and Navid Salajegheh 

will occupy The Guesthouse, Cork for a three week residency from the 7th of November 2014 concluding with an exhibition on the 30th.

Full Information Here

(4)

"Forbidden Symmetries" at Österreichisches Filmmuseum 

A section of the collaborative feature film “Forbidden Symmetries" (2014) by Dean Kavanagh, Maximilian Le Cain & Rouzbeh Rashidi will play at Österreichisches Filmmuseum on Wednesday 26th November 18:30 PM as part of The Invisible Cinema – Film, Art, History, and the Museum (Lectures and Conversations: Nicole Brenez, Chris Dercon, Noam M. Elcott, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Lars Henrik Gass, Siegfried Mattl, Winfried Pauleit and Jacques Rancière) 

Full Information Here

Official Poster for "Polar Nights"

Trailer Here

Poster by Rouzbeh Rashidi