Berlinale Forum Expanded: Xénogénèse

Video installation

The Forum Expanded team has now finished the selection process for this year’s programme. 49 artistic works have been invited, including 32 films of different lengths, 15 installations, one lecture performance and a reading. The central thread here is this year’s theme of “Traversing the Phantasm”: In reference to theoretician Jacques Lacan, the concept of the phantasm is reflected in numerous ways in this year’s programme – as collective fantasies or (geo-)political realities of various different manifestations.

At silent green a single channel video installation of the digital version of a Japanese short film will be presented that was shown at the Forum in 1984: Xénogénèse by Morishita Akihiko.

XÉNOGÉNÈSE

An experimental film that focuses on the duality of its medium: material and image. A figure dressed in shirt and tie – the filmmaker himself – walks in circles around what appears to be a junkyard and confuses this duality as more and more vertical scratches are introduced to the surface of the image. The film employs tactics of trompe-l’œil to comically allude to the circular nature of human life and, in its function as the artist’s self-portrait, gently mocks the home movie genre. The film was first shown in Berlin at the 1984 International Forum of New Cinema as part of a program curated by Image Forum Tokyo. This year, a newly produced 16mm print will be presented again in the Forum as an opening film to several screenings. The digitized version of the film that will be shown at silent green was exclusively produced for the Forum Expanded program.

Production: Akihiko Morishita, Kōbe
Format: One-Channel-Video-Installation, colour
Length: 7 min
Language: no sound

free entrance