20.12 – 10.01
[ Havneterminal, Tromsø]
Artists’ Film International is a partnership of 15 international organisations that celebrates moving-image. Every year, each organisation selects a film from an artist connected to their region, based on a collectively agreed theme.
Branching out from the theme of SOLIDARITY, the films selected contemplated the act of coming together; in friendship, community and resistance.
These three films exemplify the act of building new communities and friendships by reaching out in solidarity, through meeting, trying to understand, and helping others.
Inventory 2021
IPınar Öğrenci, 2021 (Video-Forum, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Germany)
16 mins
A remake of Yugoslavian director Želimir Žilnik’s Inventur – Metzstraße 11 (1975), Öğrenci updates it, moving its original focus from ‘guest workers’ in West Germany, to residents in Chemnitz, East Germany. A migrant himself, escaping the repressions of the current Turkish regime, Pınar Öğrenci depicts the anti racist struggles of people living in Chemnitz. The people in the film talk about their life histories, their connections to the region and their commitment against racism as well as the everyday experience of discrimination in its structural and its individual forms.
Artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci (1973, Turkey) lives in Berlin. Through various mediums, such as photography, video, film, performance, and installation, she explores themes such as migration, war, state violence, assimilation, collective movements, and natural disasters.
Her works have been exhibited widely at museums and art institutions including 60thVenice Biennial 2024), documenta fifteen 2022 in Kassel, Berlinische Galerie (2023), 12th Gwangju Biennial (2018), 6th Athens Biennial (2018), Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), and Survival Kit (2019). Her first solo exhibition abroad was realized at Kunst Haus-Hundertwasser Museum in Vienna, “A Gentle Breeze Passed Over Us” in 2017.
Dos personas
Lihuel González, 2018 (Selected by Fundación PROA, Argentina)
28 mins
Zhang Jing and Renaud have never met each other, they only know that their conversation partner does not share the same language and of their need to emigrate to a different country. The conversations that arise are spontaneous, they craft a catalogue of gestures, voice tones and linguistic similarities that help decode what the other person is saying and thus try to create a new code to make themselves understood. It reflects on the feeling of uprooting, the difficulties that come up when we try to understand another and what happens in the process of adapting to a new culture.
Lihuel González (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1986) is a photographer and audiovisual producer trained at the Universidad del Cine. In addition, she participated in art clinics with Gabriel Valansi, Hernán Marina and Alberto Goldenstein, and was part of the FNA – CONTI Training Program (2013). She has held national and international exhibitions and has received numerous awards and recognitions including first prize in the UADE National Visual Arts Competition (2021, third prize in the 108 National Hall of Visual Arts in Argentina (2019)) and second Prize National Visual Arts Hall – MACA Museo Junín (2016).
L’ESCALE / THE STOPOVER
Collectif Faire-Part, 2022 (Selected by argos centre for audiovisual art, Belgium)
14 mins
Filmmakers Paul Shemisi and Nizar Saleh travel from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Germany for the screening of their new film. During a layover in Angola, they’re stopped at the airport because the airline doesn’t trust their documents to be real. While Paul and Nizar think they are being led to a hotel until their flight back home, they are actually being taken to an illegal detention center. The filmmakers’ testimony – which offers an eye-opening insight into the impossibility of safe and carefree travel for Congolese artists – stands in stark contrast with the seemingly peaceful images of cloud formations passing by an airplane window.
COLLECTIF FAIRE-PART is an ensemble of Belgian & Congolese artists. Together they aim at telling new stories about Kinshasa, about Brussels, and the many complex relations in between. Next to their shared practice, they try to support each other in their personal artistic projects. The group was founded by filmmakers Anne Reijniers, Paul Shemisi, Nizar Saleh and Rob Jacobs when they first started working together in 2016. Over recent years the collective of four has shape-shifted into a larger group of regular collaborators between Belgium and DR Congo, in which team composition changes with each project. Next to filmmaking, they take pictures, curate programs, give workshops and organize a biennial performance festival called SOKL.
Anne Reijniers (BE, she/her) is a filmmaker and farmer, interested in politics and botanics. Next to her collective practice with Faire-part, Anne investigates the potential of collective gardening as an act of anti-capitalist resistance.
Paul Shemisi (DRC, he/him) started by working as camera-assistant for foreign film crews in his home town of Kinshasa. After having gained experience he studied cinema at Les Ateliers Action, a film program organized by INSAS. He has worked on various films as co-director, scenarist, producer and cameraman, including Renaud Barret’s Système K.
Rob Jacobs (BE, he/they ) is a filmmaker and organizer. Next to his artistic work, Rob gives workshops on masculinity & violence in high schools.
Nizar Saleh (DRC, he/him) is filmmaker and photographer. After finishing his studies in visual communication at Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa, Nizar made several short docs looking at Kinshasa’s art scene. Together with his colleague cineast Paul Shemisi he founded production house ‘Kimpavita Film’.