Experimental film festival Process was taking place from 22nd to 25th March 2018 in Riga, Latvia. The festival is dedicated to analog cinema, celebrating the physical medium of film in all its personal, adventurous and uncompromising forms. The first of a kind in Baltics, for the second time Process provided four days of film screenings, expanded cinema performances, lectures, discussions, and other events.

The year of 2018 the festival was focusing on alternative forms of co-existing, looking for ways to establish little independent territories outside of the accustomed patterns of action and thought.

The festival had three open call programmes: Resistance, selected by Erik Martinson (CA/LV), Fear, selected by Rouzbeh Rashidi (IE/IR) and Maximilian Le Cain (IE),  Introspection, selected by Lāsma Bērtule (LV), and three curated programmes: Baltic Experimental curated by Ieva Balode (LV), Experimental Film Society programme from Ireland's filmmaker's collective curated by Rouzbeh Rashidi (IR/IE), and Retrospection programme curated by Dāvis Sīmanis (LV) and Jānis Putniņš (LV).

The festival took place in the Kino Bize movie theatre, with film screenings, lectures and discussions, as well as other venues around the city for other events.

The festival was organised by Baltic Analog Lab in collaboration with Kino Bize.

Main support comes from the State Culture Capital Foundation.

Film Programmes

@Kino Bize

Resistence

Curator: Erik Martinson (UK/LV)

Fear

Curators: Rouzbeh Rashidi and Maximilian Le Cain (Experimental Film Society, IE/IR)

Introspection

Curator:Lāsma Bērtule (Baltic Analog Lab,LV)

Baltic Experimental

Curator:Ieva Balode (Baltic Analog Lab,LV)

1. White Trash. 2'35'', 16mm
Jeff Zorrilla and Ignacio Tamarit. 2017, AR
2. . Splintering, 6'49'', HD
Luz Olivia. 2017, US
3. A proposal to project, 2', 16mm
Viktoria Schmid, 2017, AT
4. Events In A Cloud Chamber, 22', HD
Ashim Ahluwalia and Akbar Padamsee, 2016, IN
5. I’ve been waiting to smile for a long time.4'27'', HD
 Christine Negus, 2017, CA
6. _______, 3', HD
Karissa Hahn, 2016, US
7. Diana, 8', HD
Traci Hercher, 2018, US
8. Approach/Withdraw, 9'50'', HD
Ker Wallwork and Juliet Jacques, 2016, UK
9. Equivalence is one of
the core concepts of translation, 2'40'', Super 8mm
Asmaa Barakat, 2017, EG/NO
10. Translation Sketch for Chapter 5:
Risks of the Game, 4'42'', HD
Padraig Robinson, 2015
11. THE END A MEXICAN MOVIE, 2'33'', HD
Annalisa D. Quagliata, 2016, MX
12. Sangre seca / Dry Blood, 9'17'', HD
 Colectivo Los ingrávidos, 2017, MX
13. In Still Time, 10'26'', HD
Leslie Supnet, 2015, CA
 
1. Darkness. Inese Tīkmane, Laima Vainiņa. 4’29, HD
Inese Tīkmane, Laima Vainiņa. 2017, LV
2.tā..atā. 3' , super8
Elizabete Mežule-Gricmane. LV, 2017
3. Homo Ludens, 3', HD
Laima Vainiņa. LV, 2017
4. Equal Tense, 7',HD
Ieva Balode. LV, 2018
5. Conatus, 4', 16mm
Vytautas Juozenas.LT, 2015
6. Untitled, 3', 16mm
Eitvydas Doškus. LT, 2011
7. Film About an Unknown Artist, 11', 16mm
Laura Garbštienė. LT, 2009
8. Take as much as you can carry, 7', 16mm
 Kipras Dubauskas.2016, LT
9. Waves of Intuition, 3', super8
Ragne Mandri. 2017. EST
10. Red & Black, 1999, 5',HD
Janno Bergman. EST
11. Exposure, 7'56, 16mm
Paul Kuimet.EST, 2016
12. The End, 5’34’, HD
Ülo Pikkov.EST, 2016

 

 

1. Quiet, Walnut, 8', HD
Juana Robles. 2018, CH
2. What Is Beyond the Hellraiser? 2’38”, Super 8mm
Vallée Guillaume. 2017, FR/CH
3. Fantom, 21'43'', HD
Sabotanic Garden. 2017, FI/CZ
4. Great Dismal Swamp, 12', HD
Jason K Sudak. 2017, US
5. Trigger Warning, 5', HD
Scott Fitzpatrick. 2017, CA
6. Southern Cross, 3'19'', Super 8mm
Jeff Zorrilla / Azucena Lozana. 2017, AR
7. Coyolxauhqui, 9'46'', HD
Colectivo Los ingrávidos. 2017, MX
8. The Garden of Delight, 11'36'', HD
Michael Fleming. 2018, NL/US
9. Metal Laser City (A Cinepoem), 17', 16mm
Philipp Ramspeck. 2016, CH
 
1. Second Sun, 3', HD
 Leslie Supnet, 2015, CA
2. Untitled (found film), 1', HD
Roger Deutsch, 2018, HU
3. Sans lune / Moonless,  8', 16mm
Sophie Watzlawick, 2017, CH/GER
4. 38 River Road, 7'14'', 16mm
Josh Weissbach, 2016, US/CH
5. Discharge Working II, 4', 16mm
Johnny Welch, 2018, GER
6. Rites of Resistance, 20', 16mm
Miki Ambrózy, 2017, BE
7. In Film / On Video, 3', 16mm
Ignacio Tamarit, 2018, AR
8. Trailer #378, 3', 16mm
Tomasz Konart, 2017, PL/CA
9.Please step out of the frame, 4', HD
Karissa Hahn, 2018, US
10. Gedenken / In Memory, 9'40'', 16mm
Melina Pafundi & Katrin Eissing, 2018, GER
11. I Dream of Inadequacy, 2'07'', Super 8mm
July Saragosa, 2018, GER
12. We All Live in the Blue Image Forever, 6'30'', 2 x Super 8mm
James Edmonds, 2007-2018, GER
13.The Order of Revelation: 1-5, 14’, 16mm
Anna Kipervaser, 2015, US
14. Zombie, Pt.1, 3'45'', HD 
Scott Fitzpatrick, 2017, CA

 

Within this programme are multivalent assertions of politics, identity, formal concerns, and visibility in the midst of forces that seek to render a flattened-order. These assertions are not reactionary. The act of existence, out of sync with a smothering force, is the action. It is, in fact, the creeping control that is reacting—like an immune system—protecting an imbalance of power. Act, infect, corrupt, and above all, exist despite it. Bleed out the edges, become un-contained.

 

Cinema is fundamentally linked to the ghostly and uncanny. In summoning up insubstantial images that replay moments already passed, it can be compared to séance activity. In showing us sights and sounds of people often long gone but animated by the illusion of movement, it answers to Jean Cocteau’s description of it as ‘death at work’. Experimental film and horror cinema are therefore joined in being the two modes of cinematic practice that best explore the essence and deepest implications of what cinema is. At their most visionary, they overlap extensively.

Here we have films like different shaped chisels carving out cracks in the visible surface. A passage opens to an unpredictable inside where language, minds, the physical bodies of creatures, things and films are not what they seem. They will guide us in a journey to fourteen cardinal directions, whilst whispering unrepeatable messages into our third ear about a world whose outside keeps multiplying. (All will end well.)

 

The programme consists of experimental films from Baltic region made by filmmakers who chose analog film as a material to explore the cinematic essence of artistic filmmaking. The aim of the progamme is not only to showcase the range of analog, experimental films made in the Baltics but also to try and define the particularities between the neighbouring countries. 

Muito Romântico

Film screening by Distruktur (BR/DE) '72min 

 

 

Retrospection I

Curator: Dāvis Sīmanis (Filmmaker, theorist, LV)

Retrospection II

Curator: Jānis Putniņš (Filmmaker, theorist, LV)

 

Experimental Film Society

Curator: Rouzbeh Rashidi (EFS, IR/IE)

 

 

Experimental Film Society (EFS) is a group of filmmakers dedicated to the creation of uncompromisingly personal, formally challenging filmmaking. Based in Dublin, it has succeeded in forging a new and radically alternative Irish cinema. Its defiantly independent vision, both deeply informed by film history and utterly modern, has animated over five hundred shorts and features over its eighteen-year existence. Its films adopt an exploratory approach to filmmaking and foreground mood, atmosphere, visual rhythms, and the often-startling sensory interplay of sound and image. This programme highlights the various approaches EFS filmmakers have taken to celluloid, from a straightforward appreciation of 8mm textures to their more typical strategy of engineering sophisticated marriages between film and digital technology.  

 

1. Rhythmus 21 / Rhythm 21, 3’19”, 16mm
Hans Richter, 1921- 1923, GER, 
2. Vormittagspukk / Ghosts Before Breakfast, 7’, 16mm
Hans Richter, 1928, GER
3.München-Berlin Wanderung /
Walking from Munich to Berlin, 5’, 16mm
Oskar Fischinger, 1927, GER
4. Symphonie Diagonale, 6’40”, 16mm
Viking Eggeling, 1923-1924, GER
5.Étude cinégraphique sur une arabesque /
Arabesque, 7’, 16mm
Germaine Dulac, 1929, FR
 
1. Early Abstractions
No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 22’, 16mm
Harry Smith, 1939-1956, US
2. T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, 12’, 16mm
Paul Sharits, 1968, US
3.Clepsydra, 14’, 16mm
Phil Solomon, 1992, US
 


Filma veidota no Rīgas Kinostudijas vēsturisku spēlfilmu fragmentiem laika periodā no 50. līdz 90. gadiem, kuros redzams vilciens. Kā stāsta Jānis Putniņš, „vilciens ir lieliski piemērots vēsturiska kinošķērsgriezuma veikšanai. Tas ir ne tikai ātrs, spēcīgs, dinamisks un vienmēr saistīts ar pārmaiņām, bet arī ar apskaužamu regularitāti sastopams visdažādāko žanru spēlfilmās. Līdz ar to izmantotie fragmenti ir ļoti daudzveidīgi un ļauj sajust attiecīgā laika perioda kino garšu.” Atrauti no sākotnējā konteksta un dzidri ieskenēti no 35mm kopijām, tie ļauj sajust vēl kaut ko, kas citādi varētu paskriet garām, izveidojot nepasakāmu, brīnumainu pavērsienu pilnu un neticami ievelkošu stāstu, kas iedarbojas ar līdzīgi nenovēršamu spēku kā ainava aiz loga, braucot cauri tālai, neredzētai zemei.

 Filma ir ceļojums Latvijas kino vēsturē un Latvijas kino arhīvos, kas īpašā autoru salikumā stāsta arī stāstu par cilvēka identitāti Latvijā un Baltijā.

Lecture about the beginnings of avant-garde, film screening

The post-war situation of the 1920’s allowed for the emergence of various filmmaker groups who objected to the previous ways of film narration; instead they created films with no representative or reconstructive functions. These authors were determined to make films as an end, not a means. Their dream was to create a universal language that would overcome the borders of national languages and make cinema its own art-form. Looking back, one can see that the 1920’s - 1930’s experimental films were the first ones to set „cine‑thinking about cinema” as their principal task and, as a result, affect the future course of film.

Lecture about the beginnings of avant-garde, film screening

The post-war situation of the 1920’s allowed for the emergence of various filmmaker groups who objected to the previous ways of film narration; instead they created films with no representative or reconstructive functions. These authors were determined to make films as an end, not a means. Their dream was to create a universal language that would overcome the borders of national languages and make cinema its own art-form. Looking back, one can see that the 1920’s - 1930’s experimental films were the first ones to set „cine‑thinking about cinema” as their principal task and, as a result, affect the future course of film.

 

1. La Picota, CO, 3’, HD
Ana González, 2018
2. Contact, 3’, HD
Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain, IE
3. Feed Me, Ireland, 3’, HD
Maximilian Le Cain, 2016
4. Universal Film, 3’, HD
Jann Clavadetscher, 2018, IE
5. Ice, 5’, HD
Michael Higgins, 2018, IE
6. Homo Sapiens Project (161-170), 8’, HD
Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2013, IE
7. Image Turned Down, 20’, Super 8mm
Maximilian Le Cain, 2011-2014, IE/GR

 
 
 

Process Expanded

24 March, LMS media gallery

 

 

Exhibition

17-25 March, Micēlijs

 

Opening performance

22 March, Koka Rīga

Aurelija Maknyte (LT), William Mokrynski (UK), Kristīne Krauze-Slucka (LV)

Curated by Vika Eksta (LV)

Exhibition puts together works made by artists who work with the physical and chemical qualities of analog photographic images, experimenting with the materiality of image. 
Lithuanian artist Aurelija Maknyte works with found slides which she transforms with fire. During the opening she will do a slide burning performance.
British photographer William Mokrynski experiments with darkroom manipulations during the creation of prints. He uses archived of negatives  American portraiture dating from the 1950s and 1960s to reflect on Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 dystopian novel „WE” where the world is populated by by anonymous he-Numbers and she-Numbers. 
Latvian photographer Kristine Krauze-Slucka explores altered states of consciousness provoked by her practice of holotropic breathing techniques. In the installation "Breathwork" she visualises this experience through experiments with analog photography and darkroom printing.

1. Fluxus et Refluxus: Behind the mirror

Distruktur (BR/DE)

3 x 16mm, 2x slide, live sounds | Brazil/Germany | Work in progress since 2006

2. M...H 

Gaëlle Rouard (FR)

2016, 16mm, b/w & color, 36min live expanded cinema performance

 

3. Refining the Senses

Atoosa Pour Hosseini (IE/IR)

8mm film projectors, light, sound, tools & objecs


4. Even Silence is Cause of Storm

Adriana Vila, Luis Macias (ESP)

A display of analog projection devices with 35mm slides, 16mm film and sound

The festival was opened with an audio-visual performance by the participants of camerlaess 16mm film workshop led by Gaëlle Rouard (FR), sound collective Bērnu rīts (Jēkabs Nīmanis, Maksims Šenteļevs,Rosislav Rekuta, LV), and all who are present. 

 

 

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Process 2023