Poliglocia

I believe Tale of Tales recovers the subversive potential of fairy tale. The synopsis for the movie in Germany presented it as "Fantasyfilm". It may be useful to know that the German word for fantasy is actually spelled "Fantasie", whereas the English word has come to be used by Germans what the rest of the world tries to make sense of as "high fantasy" or "swords and sorcery", thus covering the wide range from Conan to Harry Potter. But should this cover fairy tales as well? Opinions may differ. Although professor Tolkien would argue that all folk narratives, from Beowulf to Briar Rose , have a particular though anonymous author, some poet, behind them, I prefer to believe in collective creation (as posed by, for example, Levi-Strauss) that shapes a tale bit by bit like the ocean shapes a round stone. Of course, such unconscious processes can't be considered to be fantastic. I'd rather follow Stephan Frings, who claims that fan...

Last weekend, the Short Film Festival in Oberhausen took place for the 61st time. In this case it had clearly a central figure: Ito Takashi was featured not only as a special guest presenting a long retrospective of his masterpieces; he was also included in the special program about 3d film and space, and even participated in the competition with his new film "Saigo no Tenshi". He also won two major prizes. This first post, therefore, will be mainly about his work. I hope to get to write about the many other amazing experiences of the festivals in a later entry. A frame is a frame is a frame: The works of Takashi Ito 1977-1985 It is hard to believe that a movie can be so shocking without anything happening in it: Flashes, intersected pictures, a wildly, frantically moving camera - is the camera moving, or is movement but a composition of static, separate images? All of Ito's works are clearly modern art in the sense of Ortega y Gasset's dehumanization: they don...

Lihito Kamiya - "Travelogue" Preformancevideo Ein nackter Körper durchwandert karge Landschaften und sucht Schutz in instabilen, beweglichen Behausungen. Doch trotz seiner langsamen, tastenden Bewegungen, steht er zu den Elementen, die ihn umgeben, in einem ständigen Kampf. Karten sind der Versuch, sich vor dem Chaos der Umgebung zu bewahren, sich in einer vermeintlichen Ordnung zu bergen, die doch nur das Äußere und Innere invertiert. Obwohl nichts ihn fassen kann, trägt er doch endlich einen Anzug und Schuhe in den Händen: der Weg selbst wird zum Zeichen der Person, das Laufen ist etwas, was man sichtbar mit sich trägt. Und dann, nach dem langen Weg, wieder ein nackter Körper: trotz allem, was er auf sich nimmt, ist in seiner Mitte nicht eins der durchwanderten Orte und Begebenheiten, sondern die Abwesenheit davon. Der Körper, in seiner Trennung vom Raum, in seiner Heimatlosigkeit, bleibt, in sich selbst, nackt. Tanzfuchs: "Dis_Order - eine objekti...