Followed by a discussion with filmmaker Ute Aurand
Film is Her Notebook: Ute Aurand Shorts In 2018, Indonesian film programmer/archivist Lisabona Rahman spent time at the Arsenal Film Archive in Berlin in the Living Archive residency program. Her focus of interest at the time was women filmmakers’ work on film. It was during this search that she met with filmmaker Ute Aurand.
Ute Aurand has been working as a filmmaker since her student times in Berlin from 1979 and as a film programmer since 1990. Her work features people and landscape around her, wherever she goes. The films that she made use colors and compositions like paintings, move like films, keep personal records like diaries and are created in an economy that is very distinctly a practice of celluloid filmmaking.
Besides making films, Ute Aurand also curates film programs, showcasing the works of women filmmakers from all around the world to the cinephile public in Germany. Her programming work shows the diverse ways that film has been used by many women as a sort of notebook to record personal surroundings, later presented in form of a film. The film as a medium has a dimension of physicality, just like a notebook or a diary would, which contains records of the filmmakers’ live and her emotions. Yet differently from a diary (or home movies), these films are made to be shared with the public therefore creating an interesting mix between personal documentation and artistic expression.
In Jakarta, Ute Aurand shows her films and teaches a 16mm filmmaking workshop. Additionally, Lisabona Rahman presents a program of four films by other female filmmakers, conceived during her Living Archive residency.
For Ute Aurand, “Rushing Green with Horses” is a collection of brief moments, filmed between 1999 and 2018 on journeys, at home, with friends and alone. They are private gestures that attract her attention, spontaneously filmed beyond narration or documentary. Film duration 82 minutes and shown in 16mm film format.
Ute Aurand, born in Frankfurt/Main, West Germany in 1957 and raised in Berlin, studied at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) from 1979 to 1985. Alongside her own film work she has been curating film programs since 1990 – the monthly “Filmarbeiterinnen-Abend” (1990-1996) and the series “Sie zum Beispiel” (1995–96). She is co-founder of the group “Filmsamstag” (1997–2007) as well as of the series “Großes Kino, kleines Kino,” experimental films for children, Arsenal. She has taught at the Universities of the Arts in Hamburg and Bremen as well as at the HGKZ in Zurich. In 2015 she initiated a Bolex workshop. Her films have been seen at international film festivals.
Lisabona Rahman has been working as film programmer since 2006. She took up a specialization in film preservation and curatorial studies from the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) in 2013, as well as film restoration technique from the L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna, Italy. Lisabona currently is based in Jakarta and works as a freelance consultant on film restoration and archival film programming.
The program “Film is Her Notebook” was conceived by Lisabona Rahman and Ute Aurand and is presented by Lab Labalaba and Goethe-Institut, supported by Rubanah Underground Hub, Kinosaurus and the Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art (Berlin).
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