FRACTO Experimental Film Encounter announces its seventh edition and invites Berlin audiences to immerse themselves in 4 days of film screenings and talks, taking place between the 23rd and the 26th of November 2023 at Kunsthaus ACUD, in Berlin Mitte.
The Selection for the 7th edition of Fracto spans nineteen titles, curated in four programs, gathered from an International open call of approximately nine hundred submissions, two Worldwide, one European, eleven German, and three Berlin Premieres, from the USA, France, Canada, Germany, Austria, Japan, Spain, Poland, Italy, the UK, Scotland, Finland, The Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Iceland.
The selection program echoes enchanting forces from the uncanny, where through vertiginous light spinning and spatiotemporal expansion, we are thrown inside out onto liminal spaces as if being devoted to imaginary islands and drawn cities. Here, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, littleness assumes the vastness of an ephemeral universe, and the archive appears reduced to a secret inconsistency of ashes. Now, presence and absence dance seduced by death as spectral appearances replace disappearance. (G.B.)
The line-up of the 7th edition includes Alexandre Larose, Anna Marziano, Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, Dianna Barrie and Richard Tuohy, Emmanuel Piton, Eve Heller, Ewelina Rosinska, Frédérique Menant, Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado, James Edmonds, Justin Jinsoo Kim, Lewis Klahr, Mika Taanila, Michael Lyons, Milena Gierke, Raquel Vermunt, Shiho Kano, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Wenhua Shi.
The 2-day all analog focus of Fracto 2023 is dedicated to Milena Gierke, a significant and established figure in Berlin's experimental film scene since the 90s, both as a filmmaker and independent curator. Her work, often considered part of feminist cinema, has its roots in the long tradition of diary film. But, as Gierke studied fine arts and cinema with Peter Kubelka and Robert Breer, for her, the editing in camera is not just a tricky joyful experience of the camera as a toy, but a precise tool to explore with rigour the world as filtered through her inner and phenomenological feelings. Gierke's world is a canvas where constructivist architecture is rebuilt and sculptured by light and shadows, where simple gestures of daily life become rituals, and where walk-scapes and travels become adventures of perceptions. Her art belongs to painting (the Dutch school) and music (Debussy), and it has that subtle and beautiful power of the revelation of the inner secret of life and human beings. (F.R.)
The focus presents all films in their original analog formats, super8 silent, projected directly by the filmmaker.
Finally, a workshop will be presented as an open discussion between Paris-based film historian Federico Rossin and German filmmaker Milena Gierke on how a film festival can be the place for interchanges between disciplines, addressed to a young audience coming from the art universities of Berlin, with particular attention to practical and intellectual interaction between French, German and an international audience. The workshop will take place at the ACUD Kunsthaus Studio on Saturday afternoon, November 25.
FOUR SELECTIONS https://fractofilm.com/Selection-2023
1/ STUDY OF AN ISLAND *THU 23 9PM ACUD KINO*
2/ CARTOGRAPHY OF LITTLENESS *FRI 24 8PM ACUD KINO*
3/ LIMINAL SPACE * FRI 24 10PM ACUD KINO*
4/ SUBTERRAIN OBLIVIONS *SAT 25 9:30PM ACUD KINO*
LINE UP
Alexandre Larose, Anna Marziano, Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, Dianna Barrie and Richard Tuohy, Emmanuel Piton, Eve Heller, Ewelina Rosinska, Frédérique Menant, Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado, James Edmonds, Justin Jinsoo Kim, Lewis Klahr, Mika Taanila, Michael Lyons, Milena Gierke, Raquel Vermunt, Shiho Kano, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Wenhua Shi
FOCUS MILENA GIERKE
PART I *SAT 25 7PM ACUD KINO* https://fractofilm.com/2023-Focus-Milena-Gierke-Part-1
PART II *SUN 26 8:30PM ACUD KINO* https://fractofilm.com/2023-Focus-Milena-Gierke-Part-2
WORKSHOP https://fractofilm.com/2023-Workshop
GIERKE IN CONVERSATION WITH ROSSIN *SAT25 4PM ACUD STUDIO*
TICKETS https://fractofilm.com/TICKETS
TRAILER https://vimeo.com/876830862