urban research
la calle — la habitación
Tuesday 24 Nov, 19:30, presented by Klaus W. Eisenlohr
Kino Avantgarde
Kommunales Kino Freiburg
Alter Wiehre Bahnhof
Urachstr. 40
79102 Freiburg im Breisgau
La Calle — la Habitación
(Die Street — the Habitat)
Urban Research at Kommunales Kino Freiburg
The film program Urban Research comprises works of artists who explore urbanity in contemporary cities with experimental means. In recent times, a growing number of contemporary artists have come forward with personal and challenging views onto the changing urban environment. This selection of films brings together films from the realm of Latin lingua, mainly Latin America but also Portugal, Chicago and a Latin enclave in Vienna. The artists' views reflect daily life and they "deturn" or shift perceptions towards the less ordinary. Some settings appear more common than expected — in certain ways, urban life has become internationally similar and the artists request the audience to read subtleties and notes in between lines.
In a report on the Red Cross in Mexico City, the daily ambiguities between the middle class perspectives of Red Cross operation volunteers, and the clean world of modern medicine on one hand, and poverty and violence eruptions in the street on the other, make visible the contradictions of the fragmented urban geography. Or, the wildly growing building extensions of social housing projects, too small in their layouts, aren't just adoringly depicted as informal architecture but shown in all the contradictions between anarchy, self-organization, daily life, internal conflicts and legal insecurities. In other films, the gaze at windows of the neighborhood or watching random encounters on the street reflect daily life and private escapes; and the random encounters with abandoned magnetic tapes on the street, or with the "spirit" of "super barrio" attempt to link pop culture with the reality of vernacular life. One film asks "where is Macondo" and finds that place not just in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' imagination but in a barrio of Vienna (Austria) and in Avacataca (Columbia).
This program was selected and edited with the support of Verena Grimm (Berlin/ Mexiko Stadt) and Fernando Llanos (Mexiko).
press links:
http://www.koki-freiburg.de/
http://www.directorslounge.net
more infos and images:
http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/index.html