TENT Biennale 2022

International Festival for Experimental Films and New Media Art

Mon, 05.12.2022 -
Sun, 11.12.2022
Arthshila, Santiniketan

TENT (Theatre for Experiments in New Technologies), Kolkata began as an attempt in exploring new artistic conditions and finding ways of connecting and sharing independently produced artistic works. The festival has emerged out of planetary concerns including decolonisation, transforming geographies, forced migration and gender. It addresses histories and theories of moving images and celebrates the ‘experimental’ form, which challenges the established parameters of image making, and encourages new ideas and expressions.

Since 2014, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata, has been a partner of the festival and has presented a number of experimental films from acclaimed German festivals.

This year the partnership brings you two programmes from the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

AWARD WINNERS 

This programme includes many important award winners from the two International and German Competitions of the 2022 Festival. The selection is opened by Meshy Koplevitch’s “73”, which, in a mixture of memory, history and personal reflection, shows a young woman recounting her father’s experiences during the Yom Kippur War. The filmmaker uses watercolours to reconstruct memories of her father. In “YON”, an unembellished version of one’s own family and childhood is told, taking a completely unsentimental look at home movies. “Weathering Heights” overcomes the notion that there is a difference between science fiction and our lived reality by condensing the difficulty of communication in a world still suffering from the effects of a global pandemic.The film, awarded the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen. “Feriado” by Azucena Losana, creates a hypnotic world that artistically challenges common narratives. Alexandra Gulea’s “NEALE AZBUIRATOARE”, awarded the Prize of the German Competition, interweaves visual and acoustic material to create a multi-layered narrative about a nomadic minority that becomes the plaything of surrounding powers.

ART AND EXPERIMENT

This year’s Artist and Experiment programme assembles some of the most intriguing filmmakers who are currently working in the field of tension between film and art. At the beginning, Gustaf Broms asks in “Perforated Realities” how the Covid-19 virus could shake the foundation of an idea of civilisation. Katrin Winkler uses private footage of missionaries who accompanied colonisations in Africa to address the question of how the colouring came about and how it is shaped by power structures through different colonizing actors.

“It grew fur again, lost it, developed scales, lost them” by Gitte Villesen is an essay film that explores two ideas that emerged from two works of feminist science fiction. In “Grandma's Scissors”, filmmaker Erica Sheu connects with her grandmother and her grandmother’s craft through her own. Finally, the dance film “Dancen”, shot in Wuppertal (Germany), looks at the fleeting impulses that live between individual moments of the day. The films in this programme provide an illuminating insight into the current state of media art.


For more details kindly write to tentbiennale@gmail.com 
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