Amateri in Sarajevo

Mr Cole's movie Amateri, or The Lost Innocents, will play at Sarajevo Film Festival next week. As you may remember, the video was produced as part of an artist residency at Kino Klub Split, and is a poetic interpretation and perversion of the history and culture of the Kino Klubs of the region of the former Yugoslavia.

EVENT: Amateri at Sarajevo Film Festival
PROGRAM: BH Film
WHERE: Art Cinema Kriterion, Obala Kulina bana 2, Sarajevo 71000, Bosnia and Herzegovina
WHEN: Tuesday, 15th August 2017, 15.00 
COST: 5KM (€2.55) (buy online)

Unfound Peoples Videotechnic: Alpha Semester Graduate Screening in Split

Following a harrowing semester in which students grappled with modules such as Mythology of the Self, Rotting the Image, and Setting Your Attitude In Stone, the first ever class of the roaming UPV film and video school are to present their coursework for the public’s appraisal. 

Each of the students created a series of one-minute films in response to the aforementioned topics, contributing to a program of true range and appeal. The Videotechnic took place at Kino Klub Split in April of this year, where the students were aggressively reprogrammed with a warped practical history of artist-oriented film and video. 

Furthermore, the Videotechnic’s principal, failed filmmaker turned guru Graeme Cole, will present the work in progress of his Kino Klub-inspired new video, created as part of an artist’s residency at Kino Klub Split. There will be a brief introduction, and a Q&A at the end, after which those students who graduate will be freed to the outside world to pursue careers of unparalleled artistic excellence and enviable economic stability. 

The screening is open and free to all who wish to attend. It should take less than 2 hours. 

This project is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. 

EVENT: Unfound Peoples Videotechnic: Graduate Screening 

WHERE: Kino Klub Split, Ulica slobode 28, 21000 Split 

WHEN: Sunday, 18th September 2016, 20.00 

COST: FREE

Sarajevo-Split Log 1

"In the time when there was the law that people were not fully responsible for the crime they commited [sic], during stormy weather along Adriatic Coast. (Because there was a southern wind (Yugo) which made people depressive.)"

So reads the .srt introducing the start of the late Montenegrin filmmaker Živko Nikolić's peculiar 1977 little-islander flick, Beštije (Beasts). Coming on like Jean Rollin without the boobs, or even Peter Greenaway without the rhythm, Beštije dwells in uncanny territory, shot on location in the castle town of Kotor, but lit and performed with such artifice that it feels like a claustrophobic chamber play.

I don't think it gives too much away to point out that the only beasts in Beasts are of the humaine kind, a cast of self-interested eccentrics on one side and army of indistinguishable babas on the other, variously trying to shag, lynch, or bury alive a pale stranger who arrives on the island one rainy night (when morning is finally portrayed in the epilogue, the very concept of daylight feels alien). Neither does the wind make much of a an appearance; a relief to me, as I was already discomforted by the introductory lines, having chosen at random to watch this movie on the very day I commenced editing the as yet untitled but Yugo-wind themed video we shot in May as part of my Kino Klub residency.

I've been in Sarajevo for a week, to commence the second part of my Balkan residency (vagaries of scheduling compelled me to switch the Zagreb section of my itinerary for Sarajevo, although I'll still reach Split as planned in the second week of September). My time here will be divided fourfold: the festival; a second, youth film festival; completing the aforementioned wind work ahead of Split; and trying to draw out some connections between the Sarajevo Kino Klub scene and its more celebrated equivalents in Split, Zagreb and Belgrade.

Split Log 01

Arriving in Split as a self-appointed ‘failed-filmmaker-turned-guru’, I am to undertake a residency at the city’s historic Kino Klub, absorb the artistic and pedagogic technique of the ‘Split school’, and feed back into the loop with a series of workshops drawing on the Institute’s research and my recent studies at film.factory in Sarajevo (just 150 miles east from here). I will also mount some kind of film/video production inspired by or perhaps merely as a distraction from my quasi-academic work.

Secretly, it’s also a mission to make sense of a lot of fragments, scraps, vacuums and glitches that have accumulated in my already-ragged knowledge over the past couple of years and left me feeling more lost than ever. Combined with my pre-existing specialism in misplaced, damaged and impossible films, and a critical exoticism/guilty fetishism for the severity of socialist institutional nomenclature, the project has been christened as the Unfound Peoples Videotechnic.

Seduced by a stray quote from the Klub’s foremost historical figure, Ivan Martinac, I intend to spend the month on the (figurative) beach in a mood of “near insane contemplation”, knitting together some of those fragments into a workable comfort blanket with which to warm myself and those who would join me for breezy Split evenings and British winters to come. Perhaps I will remember to document my progress here.

I have also begun scribbling about some of the variously obscure/classic regional films I'm watching on Letterboxd. I'll try to pin them up here too.

Unfound Peoples Videotechnic at Kino Klub Split: Mr. Cole's new residency

This April, Institute co-founder Graeme Cole will hold an artist’s residency at Kino Klub Split in Croatia, supported by Arts Council England.

Mr. Cole will be introduced to local artists and institutions, and create new film and video works in the context of the rich culture of experimental film and video work of the former Yugoslavia region. He will also hold a series of free workshops for local film and video artists.

During the residency, Mr, Cole will research the structure and function of the Kino Klub model and use his findings to construct a program of workshops and resources to explore the language of artist’s moving image in the age of the ubiquitous lens. This aspect of the project will be developed into an itinerant absurdist filmmaking academy, hereby known as the Unfound Peoples Videotechnic.

Graeme Cole recently completed his MA in Filmmaking at Béla Tarr’s film.factory in Sarajevo, in neighbouring Bosnia & Herzegovina. He is an independent artist-filmmaker whose films have played at festivals all over the world. Working mainly with Super 8 and other consumer formats, Mr Cole’s films take the language of narrative-based genre movies and infect them with an absurdist sensibility. Meta-narratives and open-source laboratory work expand and re-categorize the parameters of his cardboard and fog universe.

Kino Klub Split was established in 1952 and its activity is recognized in public as one of the original entries in the history of Croatian non-professional, alternative, amateur cinematography. Kino Klub organizes weekly screenings and boasts a classical film school program covering audio-visual media, new media, copyright and amateur film and computer animation. The club cultivates an atmosphere conducive to creative growth, freedom of opinion and expression, and the conditions for free circulation and exchange of ideas and experiences.

Mr. Cole’s project is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

For more information on the April 2016 workshops and how to apply, please read on:

 

UNFOUND PEOPLES VIDEOTECHNIC presents

(Hrvatski)

UPV Videomaker’s Radical Deprogramming Program
“How to lose yourself, find yourself and lose yourself again.”

Artist-filmmaker Graeme Cole (UK) will hold a series of FREE interconnected filmmaking workshops during an artist’s residency at Kino Klub Split, April 2016.

The program is intended to reboot our assumptions and fetishize the tools and (im)possibilities of filmmaking in the context of the historic Kino Klub movement. Each workshop will consist of a lecture, creative exercises, discussion and screening.

Short filmmaking assignments in the form of audio-visual research will be set between workshops and reflected upon in class. The emphasis is on creating with the tools you have available (particularly camera phones and tablets), but Kino Klub will help facilitate filmmakers with other equipment where necessary. These assignments are intended to be completed as ‘homework’, but Mr Cole will be available for support where possible.

At the conclusion of the program, we will hold a presentation in which each participant will screen their work to an invited audience and we will preview Mr Cole’s residency project.

Local filmmakers and visual artists are invited to apply for the workshops, which may be most suitable for those who are just starting out or who have made a couple of films already. Please email a couple of lines explaining your experience and your interest in the program to graeme (at) zoomcitta dot co dot uk and include links to your work if possible. Alternatively, please contact Sunčica at Kino Klub on 0918965860 (Limited to 5 places).

Week 1 – Saturday 9th April
*Mythology of the Self *
There is no autobiography, only automythology.

This module looks at the personal voice of the filmmaker. Taking the genre of ‘essay film’ as a starting point, we will explore how the filmmaker relates to their surroundings and personal history, and how best to transform, disguise, exaggerate and lie about their feelings through art in order to reach more fundamental (and entertaining) truths.

Week 2 – Saturday 16th April
*Rotting the Image*
The odour of a film’s look.

All too often, lazy imagination, cinematography and post-production can result in a visual quality that posits dull or unmediated visuals as code for some kind of yawn-worthy ‘realism’. In this module, we will debate whether or not the moving image exists as an ‘object’ in the age of digital code, whether we should pretend it is anyway, and how it can be decomposed to evoke evocative new so-called realities.

Week 3 – Saturday 23rd April
*Something About Sound Design, Gardening & Mutants*
How to control sound, and how you can never control sound.

Admitting that sound is our enemy can be the first step towards learning to manipulate it against the audience. In this module, we will look at ways of artificially introducing sounds into the environment of our cowering images, and how to use alternative sound structures, associations and textures to infect the minds of unsuspecting ‘viewers’ through their ear-holes.

Week 4 – Sunday 1st May
*Setting Your Attitude In Stone*
Manifestoes, obstinacy & self-flagellation.

Every film needs a manifesto. You need a manifesto. Your wardrobe needs a manifesto. Your hairdresser requires precise instructions. This module will take a look at existing and implicit artistic manifestoes, and examine their power both as liberating tool and comforting straitjacket. Finally, we will categorize our own valuable faults and habits in the light of what we have discovered over previous weeks.

On weeks 1, 2 and 3 you are invited to join Mr Cole on Sundays to test our theories and collaborate on a new video work.