July 20-21
Moscow International Experimental Film Festival (MIEFF) will present selected films from its competition and non-competition programmes.
MIEFF presents the works of filmmakers and video artists who work at the junction of artistic practices. The festival’s objective is to contribute to the development of experimental cinema as a space for interaction between cinema, music, theater and contemporary art.
The films are screened in their original languages with Russian subtitles.
July 20, 4 PM, Pavilion
AIDOL
Presented by director Lawrence Lek.
Lawrence Lek’s first feature-length film, AIDOL, is a CGI fantasy that forms the sequel to his acclaimed film Geomancer (2017). Deploying 3D rendering and video gaming software, AIDOL is a technically dazzling and thematically-layered experience. It tells the story of Diva — a fading superstar preparing for a comeback performance at the 2065 ’eSports Olympics’ — and Geo, an AI with artistic yearnings. Through spectacular sequences and shifting virtual realities, the film transports us into a world defined by the interplay of humanity and technology. AIDOL is accompanied by a score composed and orchestrated by the artist. The director will give a public talk after the screening.
Lawrence Lek, UK, 2019, 83 min.
Free admission, advance registration required (link in Russian)
July 20, 7:30 PM, Main stage
MIEFF 2019 winners screening
Presented by MIEFF curators Rita Sokolovskaya, Kristina Efremenko.The programme will feature four short films made by the winners of the festival’s competition programme, including the prizewinner in the category run jointly with the major exhibition project The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030-2100. The international jury panel included video-artist Polina Kanis, curator Alexander Burenkov and director Lawrence Lek. The winners will be announced during the festival’s closing ceremony on July 14 in the summer cinema of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
Free admission
July 20, 4 PM, Pavilion
Segunda Vez
Presented by MIEFF curators Rita Sokolovskaya, Kristina Efremenko.
Dora García intertwines politics, psychoanalysis and performance into Segunda Vez (“Second Time Around”). This staged documentary orbits the figure of Oscar Masotta — a pivotal theorist in the Argentinian avant-garde from the 1950s to the 1970s, whilst not being a biopic about him. Masotta’s ideas on Lacanian psychoanalysis, politics and art (happenings and dematerialized art) changed the artistic landscape of that 1960s Buenos Aires preceding the dictatorship and with it the end of the avant-garde. The title, Segunda Vez, originates from a homonymous story written by a contemporary of Masotta’s, Julio Cortázar, which recounts the climate of psychosis and uncertainty caused by the trauma of disappearances in Argentina.
Dora García, Belgium, Norway, 2018, 93 min
Free admission, advance registration required (link in Russian)
July 21, 7:30 PM, Main stage
Close up: Bruce Conner
Presented by MIEFF curators Rita Sokolovskaya, Kristina Efremenko.
Bruce Conner (November 18, 1933, McPherson, Kansas – July 7, 2008) was an American artist renowned for his work in film, assemblage, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, photography, and conceptual pranks. Initially known for his assemblage, Conner turned to film with A movie in 1958, and other media soon after, with a freewheeling curiosity and resistance to pigeonholing that would last throughout his lifetime. His contributions to cinema stand among his greatest achievements. Many attribute the birth of the music video to his 1961 film Cosmic Ray as well as his more direct forays into the form in America is waiting (for David Byrne and Brian Eno) and Mea culpa (with Devo). A movie has achieved canonicity, and is today taught in introductory film history courses across the world.
Programme includes: Ten second film (1965), A Movie (1958), Cosmic Ray (1961), Marilyn Times Five
Free admission
