The Golden Mask (Atoosa Pour Hosseini, 2020)

There is a strong and strange connection between the found and original footage in Atoosa Pour Hosseini's latest film. If the former is viewed as an artifact of the past and the latter belongs to 'now', then it is highly probable that their uncanny, symbiotic mutuality is a blurred reflection of the future, at once intimidating and alluring in its foreboding stillness. Time transforms into timelessness, with eternity embedded into the titular object that may originate inside of Luminous Void or an alternate reality.

The mask is not only 'one of civilization's most ancient and potent objects', as noted in the official synopsis, it is also a recurring motif in the voluminous filmography of Experimental Film Society, Rouzbeh Rashidi's HSP: There Is No Escape from the Terrors of the Mind and Maximilian Le Cain's Moon Tiger Movie (Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4) being just a couple of examples. A golden, expressionless and somewhat creepy piece is worn by an unnamed wanderer - the author's alter ego or embodiment of her subconscious mind - whose spatial, temporal and psychological disorientation widely open door to our uncertainty. (Are we stuck in Maya Deren's or Jean Rollin's universe?) 

Intensifying the disquieting vagueness which permeates the thick atmosphere are 'magisterial yet marginal figures' clad in black and seemingly as lost as the enigmatic protagonist, amongst the ruins of a decaying world. Maybe they are nothing but ghosts, apparitions of life refusing to vanish entirely, just like a passing train and a few cars glimpsed from the bridge. But who are those people staring into what appears to be an aquarium, and circus acrobats skillfully balancing on Pilates balls? Are they, simply put, memories that belong to the masked wanderer, or expressions of Pour Hosseini's thoughts on film as a medium operating as hints for unmasking the mystery?

Whether any answers can be provided or not, The Golden Mask will always remain a hauntingly beautiful paragon of post-sci-fi cinema, its elliptical, wistfully meandering narrative deeply imprinted in the stark fusion of dreamily evocative, intuitively edited Super 8 imagery and eerily brooding aural emissions, both familiar and unknown...

Zenith in π Madness

 Zenith in π Madness

Oh, sweet Silence, I walk thee
In the trousers of rain checkered lust
And the pooch spills on the floor
Every single smile for the killers of
Mid-day and walls closed around

When the leeches bark above
The Lake of Wherever You End Up
My honest yellow belly whipped cream
A dead dream absorbs their hatred
Isn’t that the wonder of being born

Everything in the rainbows of our mists
Exists on the same oak stake in bloom
The rulers burn, they burn serendipitously
Under the clouds of ever-changing
Delusions open-minded and sick

Wait (for) me, Maio Dutee!

Mr Mindfucker's Magical Metamorphosis
(March, 2019)

Gemini: Axioma Lucis / Mortis

To your health this glass of poison I drink
And I sink and I sink and I sink
Into a sea of tranquility
Into a dream of
memory
6

(original size: 40x50cm / 300dpi)

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Aviva (Boaz Yakin, 2020)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

Wow! I’m head over heels for this film!

A boy, Eden, meets a girl, Aviva, online, then she buys a ticket, and moves from Paris to New York where he lives, their relationship blooms into a tumultuous marriage, and eventually, they become best friends. However, there’s a twist somewhat reminiscent of Luis Buñuel’s acclaimed dramedy That Obscure Object of Desire. Each of the two is portrayed by male and female dancer, with both of their sides often sharing the same space which tends to be confusing in the most amusing way possible, particularly during the squabbles! And when they get entangled with other people, their one-night stands turn into sultry bisexual threesomes... Oh, and did I mention that the fourth wall is left in shambles?

Following a peculiar, genre-bending coming-out-and-of-age horror-mystery Boarding School, Boaz Akin’s latest offering appears like a huge leap in the author’s artistic evolution; something akin to a pleasant and electrifying meta-cinematic shock. His unique, unapologetically erotic gender-swapping ‘game’ is imbued with a powerful magic stemming from neo-surrealistic flourishes, a fluid, intimate camerawork, sparkling chemistry between non-professional actors and instantly captivating choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith who also grand jetés into the role of Eden’s femme-persona. Uninhibited in their bold performances, skilled and talented dancers of multi-ethnic origin join in a ravishing, titillating, hyper-kinetic celebration of life, love, self-actualization and the beauty of naked bodies. Liberating and invigorating even in the (sparse) moments of intense melancholy, Aviva is an off-kilter musical de- and reconstructed into an unruly, yet endlessly sympathetic beast of a film. To paraphrase a line by the masculine version of Eden (Tyler Phillips, who looks as if fathered by Michael Paré), ‘fuck consistency and tone, they did it’.

A Selection of Recent Artworks (VI)

Initiated in 2019, my most extensive series of collages Bianco/Nero still keeps growing, and taking some unexpected twists and turns that reshape its moody dystopian universe. Hereinafter, I present several recently finished 'chapters', and reveal a couple of brand new ones that may be too hot for the social network censors...

Un Incontro alle Scale della Luna / A Meeting at the Moon Stairs

Mostrami l'Eternità! / Show Me Eternity!

Il Carro Armato Volante / The Flying Tank

Rinascita di Venere / Rebirth of Venus

L'Acrobazia / The Stunt

All'Improvvisso, un Angelo / Out of the Blue, an Angel

Una Memoria Primordiale, Versione 4.1 / A Primordial Memory, Version 4.1

I Custodi del Segreto / The Keepers of the Secret

Tutto ciò che Siamo / Everything We Are

La Perla della Saggezza / The Pearl of Wisdom

2020 Highlights and 2021 Greetings

Saying that 2020 was challenging would be a severe understatement, given that it turned our reality upside-down, and made it appear borderline surreal (or rather, apocalyptic). When I (reluctantly) look back at it, I am instantly overwhelmed with a bizarre and bewildering mixture of discordant feelings. However, I am grateful to have persevered, and only time will be able to tell how deep my psychological scars are. Although it is hard to speak of personal accomplishments while the world is crumbling down, I will take the liberty to summon up my brightest moments of this extremely dark year.

My collage obsession continued to grow which resulted in close to 300 new pieces, including three short films which I dubbed 'motion picture books' - Untold, In Search of Tanatos and Seven 77 - brought to life through the music of my friends Jelena Perišić (Kemmer), Predrag Karanjac (Mother Beth vs Blondie) and Marko Dabetić (Tearpalm), respectively. Based on the ideas by NYC-based musician & film director Martin Del Carpio, I created visuals for two of his films, Kindle and LOS, which were officially selected by several festivals. In November, Untold and Seven 77 were screened at the 2nd edition of IMAGE PLAY ► International Video Art Festival beautifully organized and curated by Hernando Urrutia, with the event taking place in the mind-blowing auditorium of the Municipal Theater Baltazar Dias, in Funchal, Portugal. Untold also played as a part of the 15th Fonlad Festival of Video Art and Performance.

MeleM (lit. balm, salve) - my second solo exhibition - was held in cafe bar Julijan Djupon in my hometown of Niš, in July and August, and I took the opportunity to show bits of experimental work by artists with whom I collaborated on numerous occasions - Rouzbeh Rashidi's Homo Sapiens Project (101), Daniel & Clara's Espectros Da Terra and Martin Del Carpio's Auricular Confession. I would like to send many thanks to my friends and family for the support, as well as Julijan Djupon staff for their help in organization, and all the visitors who showed interest in my artwork. September was marked by minimalist, Japan-inspired collages that I designed for the upcoming project by German composer and filmmaker Martin Gerigk, and by a promotion of several collages on the theme of body in non-profit online magazine Libartes (currently, their website is under construction). Three 'chapters' of my extensive Bianco/Nero series - La Culla della Strega, Niccolò: L'Avventura Cosmica i Pulcinella è Morto! - were presented at online exhibition New Balkan organized by artists' platform Vijuga, in October.

Most of October and November were fueled by preparations for the sophomore edition of Kinoskop which I co-curated along with three wonderful, witty and dedicated people - Marko Milićević, Ejla Kovačević and Aleksandra Dalichow. During Zoom Q&A sessions, four of us had the pleasure of meeting and speaking to more than 40 participating filmmakers - the champions of celluloid tape - who were eager to share their insights into creative process and challenges they were faced with, supporting our idea of an analog cinema community. Add to that favorable Vimeo statistics, and Kinoskop 3 is very likely to happen in 2021!

Finally, December saw the publication of the second book by Experimental Film Society, Luminous Void: Twenty Years of Experimental Film Society, to which I am deeply honored to have contributed with five of my essays. Edited by Rouzbeh Rashidi, Maximilian Le Cain and Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Luminous Void 2 'examines the ideas and impulses that animate EFS as well as the practices of many of the filmmakers associated with it' and features texts by 'noted critics and curators from across the globe'. For me, this book represents the most important milestone in my orbiting around EFS so far.

Invigorated by these delightful memories, I move on into 2021, and hope that all of you make the most of it. I wish you good health, frequent strokes of luck and the abundance of art, perhaps in autumnal colors... Happy New Year!

Delight / Imperfection (original size: 100x60cm / 300dpi)

Top 60 (Recent) Films of 2020

Every January, I promise myself to establish a stricter film-evaluation system, only to end up challenged by more than 50 highly rated films as December draws to a close. And although I do my best to catch up with all the current offerings, somehow there's always a lot left to see next year, and not to mention out-of-nowhere blasts from the recent past, which is why you'll find a few mid-decade releases hereinafter.

Emerging from six continents and ranging from the uncompromising experiments to eccentric genre-benders to hyper-stylized dramas to fairy tale deconstructions to video game-like adventures, sixty features - twelve of which are animated - capture my cinephilia at its most eclectic, and represent a counter-balance of sorts to the majority of both mainstream and alternative lists I've checked out so far. They are grouped in six categories whose titles (hopefully) suggest their nature.

BOLD CINE-DREAMS & CHALLENGES OF CONTEMPO-ALCHEMY

1. Last and First Men (Jóhann Jóhannsson, 2020)
2. Valley of the Gods (Lech Majewski, 2019)
3. Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus (Dalibor Barić, 2020)
4. Black Sun (Daniel & Clara, 2017)
5. Desire Path (Marjorie Conrad, 2020)
6. Siberia (Abel Ferrara, 2020)
7. Call for Dreams (Ran Slavin, 2018)
8. The Bottomless Bag (Rustam Khamdamov, 2017)
9. Homo Sapiens Project (200) (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2000-2020)
10. Shell and Joint (Isamu Hirabayashi, 2019)
11. The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror (Raúl Ruiz & Valeria Sarmiento, 2020)
12. Its Existence Commenced This Hour (Wolfgang Lehmann, 2019)
13. The Scream (Phillipe Grandrieux, 2019)
14. Sofa (Bruno Safadi, 2019)
15. Minotaur (Zulfikar Filandra, 2020)

THE ART(HOUSE) OF WHIMS

1. This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, 2019)
2. Angel (Harry Cleven, 2016)
3. The Portuguese Woman (Rita Azevedeo Gomes, 2018)
4. Paul Keller – Silence in the Scream (Axel Loh, 2020)
5. Undine (Christian Petzold, 2020)
6. Mank (David Fincher, 2020)
7. Tesla (Michael Almereyda, 2020)
8. Nevrland (Gregor Schmidinger, 2019)
9. About Endlessness (Roy Andersson, 2019)
10. You Go to My Head (Dimitri de Clercq, 2017)

LEGENDS & FAIRY TALES

1. WolfWalkers (Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart, 2020)
2. Children of the Sea (Ayumu Watanabe, 2019)
3. A Yellow Animal (Felipe Bragança, 2020)
4. The Last Fiction (Ashkan Rahgozar, 2018)
5. The Bra (Veit Helmer, 2018)
6. Gretel & Hansel (Osgood Perkins, 2020)
7. Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (Salvador Simó, 2018)
8. Pinocchio (Matteo Garrone, 2019)
9. Primal: Tales of Savagery (Genndy Tartakovsky, 2020)
10. Hoffmaniada (Stanislav Sokolov, 2018)

WE'RE JUST A BUNCH OF FUCKING ANIMALS!

(a line from the Architects' single Animals)

1. Monos (Alejandro Landes, 2019)
2. Diner (Mika Ninagawa, 2019)
3. True History of the Kelly Gang (Justin Kurzel, 2019)
4. The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul, 2019)
5. Amulet (Romola Garai, 2020)
6. Luz (Juan Diego Escobar Alzate, 2019)
7. Why Don't You Just Die! (Kirill Sokolov, 2018)
8. Beasts Clawing at Straws (Kim Yong-hoon, 2020)
9. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil (Won Tae-Lee, 2019)
10. Lily Lane (Benedek Fliegauf, 2016)

FUN & GAMES & SCI-FI UNTAMED

1. Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (Miguel Llansó, 2019)
2. Spontaneous (Brian Duffield, 2020)
3. L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties 2 (Jingming Guo, 2020)
4. Max Cloud (Martin Owen, 2020)
5. Human Lost (Fuminori Kizaki, 2019)
6. Promare (Hiroyuki Imaishi, 2019)
7. Altered Carbon: Resleeved (Takeru Nakajima & Yoshiyuki Okada, 2020)
8. Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (Ethan Spaulding, 2020)
9. Knives and Skin (Jennifer Reeder, 2019)
10. Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (Cathy Yan, 2020)

DISSOLVE THE SILENCE...

1. Adam’s Passion (Andy Sommer, 2015)
2. Kasper Bjørke Quartet: The Fifty Eleven Project Full Visual Album (Justin Tyler Close, 2018)
3. Island Songs (Baldvin Z & Ólafur Arnalds, 2017)
4. Heavy Trip (Juuso Laatio & Jukka Vidgren, 2018)
5. Qlimax – The Source (Daan Jansen & Stijn Verlinde, 2020)