EFS @ Kino Armata, Kosovo

Two programmes of Experimental Film Society films will be screening at Kino ARMATA in Pristina, Kosovo on 19th and 20th of November 2020. ARMATA is a public space in Prishtina, Kosovo, that promotes alternative culture and social dialogue. 

PROGRAM ONE: Luminous Void: Docudrama By Rouzbeh Rashidi (2019, 71 Minutes)

Luminous Void: Docudrama is a documentary like no other. Starting with the bizarre practices and fantasies of a group of filmmakers working under the label Experimental Film Society, it spins off into a manifesto of light and sound. This dazzling journey through a view of cinema as cosmic ritual and erotic delirium is also an idiosyncratic celebration of the medium itself. Rouzbeh Rashidi’s ornate visual style unleashes a parade of visionary scenes that redefine movie magic as a fevered hallucination.

PROGRAM TWO: EFS Short Films (65 Minutes)

1_I Wake Up Screaming By Chris O’Neill (2019) / 10mins / Ireland

Chris O’Neill continues his series of found footage inquiries into the haunting power of the cinematic image with I Wake Up Screaming. Images from a little-seen and underrated masterpiece of 1970s genre cinema are twisted and distorted into an unrecognisable new vision. This assault on the senses is heightened by an intense soundtrack from Texas-based rock ‘n’ roller Gabbie Bam Bam.

2_I’m Not a Doctor (2019) By Michael Higgins / 3mins / Ireland

A glimpse in between two frames that ignite under the pressure of a gunpowder spark.

3_Personal Growth (2019) By Vicky Langan / Maximilian Le Cain / 24mins / Ireland

A Super-8 film that conveys the haunting charge of a privately made home movie of great significance to its creators but unsettlingly mysterious to viewers. Its grainy, black and white texture vividly renders the elemental coastal seascapes where it was filmed. Langan & Le Cain appear as a couple who inhabit this wild terrain as if it were a domestic arena.

4_The Underworld (2019) By Jann Clavadetscher / 17mins / Ireland

This hallucinatory trip through the psychedelic recesses of science fiction begins in the flickering bowels of the earth. An explorer played by Cillian Roche undergoes a bizarre mutation in which cinema itself might possibly play a part. Clavadetcsher’s gorgeous 16mm colours and dazzlingly intense editing are underscored by a characteristic lightness of touch.

5_Antler (2018) By Atoosa Pour Hosseini / 15mins / Ireland

Pour Hosseini’s work with Super-8 conjures a mysterious territory that exists between memory, subjective perception and the objective materiality of the filmed image. Antler pushes deeper into this realm, seamlessly combining archival footage of animals and reptiles in their habitats with newly filmed material of the artist and an assistant at work in a botanical garden.