directors lounge monthly screenings
bernd lützeler
filmi fundas
Thursday, 28 August 2014
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte
Bernd Lützeler
with Eric Wilhelm Da Cruz
Bernd Lützeler, artist and film enthusiast who works with Super-8 and 35mm, also combines film and video in multi media installation work. In his work he is concerned with sound and image as distinct interfering media and their relations with technology and society. Also, he takes a specific interest in aspects of the audio-visual pop culture of India. He is a strong collaborator in order to create and exhibit. He worked with Kolja Kunt and Eric Wilhelm da Cruz on several projects. Part of the presentation will be an adapted super-8/video live show of "Eternal Showdown", and a film by his colleague Eric Wilhelm Da Cruz.
Bernd Lützelers work, though using a multitude of media and themes, is strongly connected with the spectres of film, the spectres of making, producing and watching film. His multimedia installations draw on the experience of mainstream images. The inherent questions of Hollywood cinema, why we are inclined to watch the same story, and even the same images again and again. There has always been the hate towards mainstream and at the same time, the fascination of Hollywood iconography among avant-garde movie-makers. There is something comforting in images we immediately seem to connect to, and that still seem to contain a promise. In "Eternal showdown" the typical dramatic triangle of protagonist-antagonist and resolution by the hero repeats itself endlessly. The film was specifically made for the panoramic film installation "Loop-o-Rama", a circular setup with nine screens, literally showing the same film roll on nine super-8 projectors, basically daisy-chaining the image. The shoot-out between three men becomes absurd, an endless climax.
Bernd Lützeler's most complex relation to the spectres of film however are his connections to Bollywood. Lützeler's earlier fascination with the melodramas from Bombay, back then only sold on the gray market of ethnic shops in Berlin-Wedding, gave him the idea to visit India. And for him, this started a long relation and involvement with the city. Bollywood has now become a brand even in the Western world, and the city changed its name to Mumbai. The artist's interest seems to have shifted from camp to the complications of an interest in a city with endless contradictions. And, Lützeler is dwelling on the subject of a place of film industry that is bound for a more drastic change towards digital than we have seen in the West. His most recent film "The Voice of God" already comments on a disappearing medium, as he uses film footage that he literally found on the street, together with footage he shot on the street and developed in local labs. The beautiful film that largely uses long term exposure and time-lapse photography also takes a technical term literal: the god's voice is a term used for a voice-over in documentary films that seems to come from nowhere specific but explains "everything" with god-like omniscience. Lützeler found Harish Bhimani, India's most famous voice-over artiste, and asked him to speak in an unknown language. And, his voice sounds beautifully mysterious, another film spectre, the artist re-creates here.
His next film, Camera Threat, will be made in India again. He plans for next winter to spring. This experimental film will explore the ambivalent relationship of the film metropolis Mumbai to the moving image. The form however will be truly hybrid, using both digital and analogue. In this context, the film will also look into the less glitzy nooks and crannies of the Mumbai film industry: though the changeover to digital is in full force in India at the moment, there are still a few small analogue animation studios hanging on with determination. Bernd still hopes, to be able to still work with these people, both before the camera and behind the processing machines, in Mumbai.
curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr
Artist's Links:
http://www.nomasala.com/
Press Links:
Z-Bar - http://www.z-bar.de/
Directors Lounge