If you are tired of predicting correctly what happens next in the films you watch and feel like venturing into unknown territory, then head on down to Limassol’s Old Vinegar House this weekend and embrace innovation at its best with the Experimental Film and Creative Strange Screen Festival.
With its roots in the European avant-garde of the 1920s, Experimental cinema has been a source of inspiration for artists and audiences for decades, spawning countless film movements that have ultimately changed our way of viewing film. As the word experimental film suggests, this type of medium is trying something new, different so different that, at first, it will cause confusion, if not annoyance to the viewer.
In simple terms, experimental films are incredibly easy to define but quite difficult to understand since most people have no preconception of what they are. Imagine a movie that is neither narrative nor documentary. What remains? Chaos, disorder, incoherence; a combination of ideas forced together by the filmmaker without any regards for characters, structure, or theme.
Experimental film work is often too ‘artsy’ for cinemas yet the celluloid medium was not conducive to art galleries, so experimental filmmakers often find themselves in a no-man’s-land between the art world and the film industry.
Strange Screen, however, offers home for those individuals wishing to articulate the oblique connections between the ordinary and the extraordinary, and explore new voices and perspectives.
Over the years, the festival has grown into an annual institution in Greece, where it has run for eight years touring the country, what we see here in Cyprus is modified programme, catered to local aesthetics and trends.
The programme is jammed pack with weird and wonderful things to see with all the action divided between the Old Vinegar House and the neighbouring Kafeney. This year’s screening programme includes experimental short films by young filmmakers from around the world, a section for Cypriot filmmakers and a tribute to the later director Yiannis Lambros.
Specifically this year’s special screening presents 15 American activists – filmmakers, followed by a discussion on Activism in Film. Overtly political films have rarely been in fashion in cinema. Hollywood has flirted with them, but this your chance to see and learn how American activists feel today, through a screening of State of Emergency – a series of public projections that served as the inaugural display inside Eyebeam’s new Window Gallery. Curated by Sherry Millner and Ernest Larsen, this collage of videos collectively examines the notions of America and democracy.
Similarly there will also be screenings in the form of a seminar on the Dadaist movement – an early twentieth century art society which ridiculed contemporary culture and traditional art forms. The movement was formed to prove the failure of existing style of artistic expression rather than to promote a particular style itself.
Finally, other parallel events form a big part of the Strange Screen festival. This year’s master class Improvised Camera II has as its subject the Human Condition, held under the guidance of filmmakers Aki Kersanidi and Chrida Tzelepi (film crew ANEMICINEMA) in collaboration with the Multimedia and Graphic Arts of CUT. The aim of the seminar is to produce a short experimental film / video. The films will be made without using editing programme. The film will be produced, discussed in the master class and then screened as part of the festival programme all on the same day. Meanwhile festival guests also include Joanna Frankou who will dance flamenco and concluding the festivities is an after party at Kafeney for an open cinematic jam.
Experimental movie festival and parallel events. December 16-18. Palio Xydadiko 34 Genethliou Mitella Street, Limassol. Tel: 99-985232. www.mitos.org.cy. [email protected]
