Internationales Festival Zeichen der Nacht - Berlin - International Festival Signs of the Night



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9. Internationales Festival Zeichen der Nacht / Berlin Edition
22th International Festival Signs of the Night / Worldwide

December 10 - 15, 2024

Kino & Bar in der Königsstadt - - - Straßburger Straße 55 - - - 10405 Berlin (Prenzelberg)


 




Berlin

Bar und Kino in der Königsstadt
Strassburger Str. 55

Friday December 13th
18 h (6 pm)


 

Vernacular Dreamscapes: Nocturnal Dream Disposal

Marc Richter
Germany / 2024 / 0:08:32


"Nocturnal Dream Disposal" is the first part of "Vernacular Dreamscapes" a multi-part audiovisual project with texts by Marc Richter, music by Black To Comm, visuals by Neue Deutsche Kunst (all the same person actually) and the voices of five artists of which Inger Wold Lund and Felicia Chen (Dis Fig) can be heard as short voiceovers in this film. The overall theme of "Vernacular Dreamscapes" is nature as a zone of the unknown and uncanny, an alien and alienated territory, a deserted zone. This is counteracted by the appearance of dreamlike and absurd phenomena and inscrutable cavernous architecture. A stringent plot is never revealed, reality remains vague. The zone is inhabited by places, dreams, voices and supernatural creatures and artifacts; drug-induced experiences are creating a psychedelic time-stretching experience. We’re reminded of so-called "Involuntary Parks“, forbidden areas made uninhabitable by human-made disasters. A primitive AI creates a world where Dhalgren meets The NeverEnding Story in Stalker/Ballard territory.

BERLIN PREMIERE


 

512x512

Arthur Chopin
France / 2024 / 0:21:00

Using images already available on the internet, text-to-image programs can sometimes create monsters. 512 × 512 explores the biases of Artificial Intelligence through the shocking images it can produce by synthesising “the entire memory of the world”: high-tech nightmare visions that reveal what we have repressed.

BERLIN PREMIERE

 

Demi-Demons

Martin Gerigk
Germany / 2024 / 0:17:12


Demi-Demons is an essay film about the contradictions of contemporary existence, which separate us from our natural instincts, opening abysses within us. The glorification of the hermaphrodite, the hedonism of virtual realities, the search for new levels of physical attraction and forms of higher consciousness, ambivalence towards sexual reproduction, these abysses embody the existential struggles inherent in navigating the terrain between instinct and enlightenment in a rapidly evolving world. Demi-Demons is made and animated from vintage photos and collages, creating a surreal and thought-provoking atmosphere.

GERMAN PREMIERE


 

Nerve Scales

Timothy Rollin Pickerill
United States / 2024 / 0:13:56

Nerve Scales is part of a larger multi-decade project, The Omen Project, a serious of multi-media productions surrounding a couple, a man and a woman, mind and heart. Inspired by the Iliad and the Odyssey, the hubris of man at war with the world, leaving his family and love behind, becoming lost and fallen through his own fault. This story is transposed to modern times and a mythic view of our own war with the world, with the advent of Nuclear War. These two again separated by hubris, arrogance, and destruction, he wanders looking to regain his love. A love song and tale of woe, told in experimental video, movement, and poetry.


GERMAN PREMIERE

 





Kyklop

Telemach Wiesinger
Germany / 2023 / 0:15:00

The short film poem KYKLOP is dedicated to a mechanical eye as an autonomous being. Round wheels and targets similar to him seem to arouse the interest of this main character. The atmosphere is thundery, thunderous. It reminds of the cyclopean thunder demons from the "Theogony" of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod.
KYKLOP (2023) is another autonomous part of the film cycle by Telemach Wiesinger and Alexander Grebtschenko that began with TURBULENCE (2022) and its pairs of mechanical wings.
The combination of Wiesinger's purely analog film design, characterized by technical finesse and impressively varied film grain, and Grebtschenko's kinetic objects and extremely reduced music allows for numerous interpretations. Questions also occupy the viewer: Why does the cyclops wear a loudspeaker instead of a pupil? Is the receiver here also the transmitter? How does the sound level created from alienated noises of the camera mechanics play with the images?
Like magicians, Telemach Wiesinger and Alexander Grebtschenko are able to create unique magical worlds with their mechanical devices.
Raise the curtain on illusions

BERLIN PREMIERE





 

In the Noise of the Downpour

Oleksandr Stupak
Ukraine / 2024 / 0:11:47

The film is a contemplation of life through the prism of war. It is a premonition of global world changes... and a hope for the prudence of humanity.
Human beings live in a world of memories, fears and passions, dreams and hopes. In our memories, we increasingly want to return to the world of childhood - summer, where joy and light reign, as opposed to cruel reality, loneliness and existentialism. But it is becoming more and more difficult to get into this world, to dissolve at least mentally in the sun's glare. This film is about man in nature and nature in man, about cyclicality, the beginning and the end - the path to eternity. Autumn is heading towards winter, and we are so eager for light.

GERMAN PREMIERE

 

The Shore

Eron Sheean
Netherlands / 2023 / 0:20:15

Inexplicably abandoned by his parents on a windswept, empty beach, a young boy embarks on a surreal journey through time – and a contemplation of ageing and his own mortality.


GERMAN PREMIERE