(c) Archive Kathleen Bomani
Following the exhibition opening on Thursday, June 13, film/video fellows of the Akademie will present videos, documentaries and fiction during a long film night on Friday, June 14, 2013, starting at 10 pm at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart.
CONTRIBUTIONS
Reza Haeri
»Final Fitting«
2008
video, 35 min.
A documentary about Mr. Arabpour, the master tailor and craftsman, and the proprietor of the most famous tailor shop in Qom (Iran). He is in his eighties and for the last several decades has been the official tailor to the most important religious leaders of the country, starting with the late Ayatollah Khomeini to the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, as well as for the former president, Mohammad Khatami. His international clientele includes such prominent figures as Imam Musa Sadr of Lebanon.
Reza Haeri
»All Restrictions End«
2009
Video, color, HD, 35 min.
»All Restrictions End« is an experimental documentary dealing with contemporary Iranian history, focusing on the evolution of clothes and fashion. With clothing as the leitmotif, the filmmaker provides the history of Iran, the country of his birth, where beheadings and hangings are commonplace occurrences. It is an endless series of confrontations between groups that all want something different for their country. Clothing remains the point of departure in the stories about Iran, a land that has tottered for centuries between East and West, the present and the past, freedom and repression. In Baudelaire’s words, »fashion is the mirror of the times«, and that makes it a great metaphor for what is going on in a country.
Geumhyung Jeong
»Munbangu« (Stationery) & »RECORD STOP PLAY«
2011
animation, in HD & color, 6 & 8 min.
»Munbangu (Stationery)«
Geumhyung Jeong uses everyday objects upon which she bestows a strange, disconcerting life through an intense and risky interaction. Her movie »Munbangu(Stationery)« produces the desire to become one of these objects, a pencil or a brush or a piece of paper.
»RECORD STOP PLAY«
A double game between animating the object that films and the acutal animation. The lines blur between who is manipulating, who is recording and who is (re)playing. The viewer has to (re)negotiate the usual perception of limits or differences.
Shirin Sabahi
»We Came Here to Swim« (2012) & »We Fell Into The Water Staying Dry« (2013)
16mm film projection installation, black/white, silent, 3 min. each
»We Came Here to Swim« (2012) and »We Fell Into The Water Staying Dry« (2013) are two films independent of each other and yet, they are entangled by the characters of each film, recounting on the time they spent together on a film set. In the first film, the director reflects on her endeavors at finishing her film despite unusual circumstances. In the latter film, the cameraman speaks of the journey that led him to work in the film industry. Separate and together, the two films raise questions of communicability in relation to imagination invested in the work of art as well as the occupational hazards and the inherent unease of day-to-day creative labor.
Juna Suleiman
»Hiam«
23 min.
»Attempting to write a film about my grandmother failed the first time when she utterly refused to be filmed. It failed the second time when ten years later she agreed, but her physical condition left no point of referance to what the film was to be about. Hiam began shrinking in size and her bones were breaking too easily, but she never seemed to want to give up. Consequently, the decision to begin filming had to be an immediate one, and all the challenges I would face by doing an entire film mainly on my own would be dealt with. Hiam, on the other hand, was too busy coping with all that is changing in the life she knew so long, and was least interested in the filming process.
The result, so far, is a visual account of my 80 year old grandmother’s reality, altering between her daily routine and the sudden changes in her condition, a shift through lapsing times as a means of reconnecting with Hiam in her lonely struggle for a longer life.« Juna Suleiman