Photoplay Series N.2 – Distruktur

Category:

Date: Wednesday December 2nd 2015
Doors open at 19h30 – Screening 20h
Location: Spektrum Berlin – Bürknerstraße 12 12047 Berlin

Curated by Klara Ravat

PhotoplaySeries2-01

During the second edition of the Experimental Film screenings series Photoplay taking place at Spektrum we are very glad to present a program by Distruktur. The Brazilian duo based in Berlin will be present to introduce us to three of their films: Triangulum, Cat Effekt and In the Travelers Heart.

Distruktur are Melissa Dullius and Gustavo Jahn, artists and filmmakers working as a duo since 2007. They have an extended filmography of experimental works which have been shown in venues and festivals such as Berlinale, Torino, Moscow IFF and Videobrasil, as well as in New Museum in New York, Paço das Artes in São Paulo, and Vilnius Contemporary Art Centre. They work as well with photography, music and installation. Gustavo and Melissa changed Brazil for Berlin in 2006 where they encountered a group of people who was willing to create an independent film collective, known in the present as LaborBerlin e.V, an artist-run space for analogue film practice embracing a more experimental and D.I.Y. craft approach to film production.

Even if their work could have similarities with narrative films as they often use scripts, actors and costumes we can situate their pieces in the experimental field, sometimes close to a surrealist style that forgets time and places space somewhere in a disrupted time line.

The first two films will be shown digitally and the last one as 16mm.

PhotoplaySeries2-02

TRIANGULUM | 16mm | Egypt, Germany, Brazil | 22min | 2008
On the edge of the abyss a troupe of three meets faith, who appears in the form of a young woman. They are transported to an eastern metropolis, not knowing where to go or what to do. Random signs are the only directions to follow and will lead each one of them on a different journey. In perpetual movement, paranoids, they go further in search of balance.

CAT EFFEKT | 16mm | Russia, Germany, Brazil | 40min | 2011
A woman goes alone through the streets of Moscow, getting on and off subway trains and underground passages on her way to a meeting that includes a screening of a film about a cat. And that’s it; or so it is for those who believe the plot is the best part of cinema. The Jahn-Dullius duet makes an enigmatic film between abstraction and trance. Because as they search for that visual purity that’s historically connected to experimental cinema–equally far from theatrical as from the written word– Cat Effekt leaves one thing clear: cinema is all about images. – Adapted from BAFICI catalog 2011 IN

THE TRAVELER ́S HEART | 16mm | Lithuania, Germany, Brazil | 20min | 2013
The winter reigns as the Traveler crosses by feet an ancient landscape.In this place there’s also another presence, someone who’s very similar to the Traveler. Does the Traveler realise this figure that cohabits the same space as him? Is the other a guardian angel or a devil?