14. Clair-Obscur Filmfestival
Films. Performances. Iconic Turn.

International movies of all genres, all lenghts, all kind of performances and full of surprises. A platform for the friends of the cinema, the cineasts and the users of the moving pictures. A dark horse for the eyes and many seductive musical curiosities for the ears. And that each and every year. When you leave the festival you not only do that in good cheer, but also full of plans of capturing your nightmares on celluloid. The festival is second to none in Switzerland and has no competitors to speak of. The dedication of the organisers born 2,000 years ago, but still young at heart is undisputedly independent, selfless and ensures artistic freedom and accepts no compromise. And they always accomplish that the audience scrutinises what is being offered, which is a far cry from the usual commercial entertainment fare of TV and the movies. Whether shown in the bunker, at the printer’s or in the safe, it’s always big cinema. We continue to follow …

FILM 1

SLEEPERS
Austria 2002, 3 min, Experimental
Children operate and marvel at the arsenal of the Austrian Army during National Holiday in Vienna.

FILM 2

JUST LIKE THE MOVIES
Austria 2006, 21 min, Experimental
“It’s just like the movies!” was usually the first reaction of those watching the events of 9/11 in New York unfolding on their TV screens, no doubt recalling the endless number of catastrophes that Hollywood has proposed over the years. Now confronted with the reality of one such scenario – of unprecedented destructive and symbolic resonance - a feeling of déjà vu arises while looking at these images.

FILM 3

HOLY WAR
Italy 1999, 42 min, Documentary
The slogan „Holy War“ returns to cosmopolitan cities and brings with it, an entirely postmodern twist. The film opens with the sawing of a huge fir tree which escalates into a chainsaw massacre of thundering machinery. While witnessing the consumption mania of pre-Christmas preparations, we are ironically reminded of the mobilisation of forces at war.

SCREENINGS

SLEEPERS / Nov. 11, 2011 / 8pm
JUST LIKE THE MOVIES / Nov. 11, 2011 / 8.50pm
HOLY WAR / Nov 12, 2011 / 6pm

LOCATION

H95 - Raum für Kultur
Horburgstrasse 95
CH-4057 Basel
Switzerland

LINKS

Clair-Obscur Filmfestival

People talk about their murder fantasies and live them in short films. 10 years later they are once again interviewed; the clips and interviews are combined to create a film. Director Michal Kosakowski, post production sound supervisor Olaf Mierau, sound designer Tatjana Jakob and composer Paolo Marzocchi will talk about their work between the extremes, mere ‘making-it-bearable’ and dealing with the yawning chasms of one’s own soul. Moderation: Vasco Hexel.

DATE

Nov 5, 2011, 11am-1pm

LOCATION

Kölnischer Kunstverein Theatersaal

LINKS

Zero Killed - official website
SoundTrack_Cologne 8.0
Paolo Marzocchi
Tatjana Jakob
Olaf Mierau

WEBSITE
TRAILER / YOUTUBE
TRAILER / VIMEO
TRAILER / FACEBOOK

SYNOPSIS

Since 1996 film director Michal Kosakowski has been asking people with different backgrounds about their murder fantasies. He offered them the chance to stage their fantasies as short films. The only condition was that they had to act in these films themselves, either as victims or perpetrators. More than a decade later, Kosakowski met these people again to ask them about their emotions during their acts of murder or victimization, and interviewed them about current social topics such as revenge, torture, war, terrorism, media, domestic violence, the death penalty, suicide etc.

If someone murdered a person you love, how would you feel about it? Should torture be legalized? Are soldiers murderers? How to define good and evil? Their replies are juxtaposed with the short films based on these “non-criminal” fantasies made accessible to viewers. Simultaneously, the participants’ respective replies help viewers to get better acquainted with them and their highly diverse social and professional backgrounds. It is the banality of their acts that frightens us so badly, their stabbing of innocent people, their orgiastic throttling of marriage partners or their random shooting of unsuspecting visitors to exhibitions.

Zero Killed takes the issue one step further: the film deciphers common clichés and patterns of visual violence with the aid of the protagonists’ immediate and direct comments.

The result is an unconventional hybrid of feature film and documentary that makes viewers question their personal and social positions concerning ethical and moral values and taboos.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Murder fantasies are lonely affairs. It is a fact that people have the capacity to imagine both what they desire and what they fear. Surely everyone has encountered situations where aggressions had accumulated to such an extent that scenarios of murder and mayhem seemed the only adequate option – if only in theory. In most cases these fantasies remain suppressed and most people would feel ashamed to share them with others, no doubt because they fear unpleasant situations might arise by challenging the cultural constructs and conventions that determine our everyday life.

And then, there is the banality of murder fantasies; the more banal something is, the greater the taboo it is put under in and by society. While coitus ideally may allow partners to share pleasurable emotions, sheer protectiveness would make them reluctant to share murder fantasies with the same willingness.

ZERO KILLED is my response to the continuous flood of uncommented depiction of violence in and by the media which daily undermines and erodes our capacity for empathy.

INTERVIEW

Read the latest interview (in German) with the filmmaker Michal Kosakowski on his new feature/documentary film ZERO KILLED. Published in the movie magazine SPLATTING IMAGE / Number 85 / March 2011.

Read Interview

DOWNLOAD

Zero Killed Poster
Zero Killed Flyer

EXHIBITION

NKVextra
Michal Kosakowski / Just Like The Movies

DATE

September 11th to October 23rd, 2011
Opening / September 10th, 5 to 8 pm

Using pictures from 52 different Hollywood films the Polish film producer Michal Kosakowski attempts to reconstruct the events of 9/11 in a 21-minute montage.

The topic and concept of  JUST LIKE THE MOVIES is a déjà vu experience. The pictures, spreading around the world after September 11th, seemed, because of the tangible scenarios, unreal and one was reminded of sequences from Hollywood disaster films. Since the beginning of film history American film studios have produced apocalyptic films. With the attacks on the World Trade Center the same pictures returned as shattering reality.

Kosakowski analyzed more than 600 Hollywood films produced before 2001. He used classics like “2001 - A space Odyssey” or “Taxi Driver” but also comics, action films and science fiction blockbusters.
With this material he constructed the day of disaster. Beginning with dawn over Manhattan he selected cut outs, humorously illuminating the American everyday life from the morning exercise to the office. From here the dramaturgy of the events increases up to the actual disaster. The déjà vu experience of 9/11 is reversed: the pictures of airplanes approaching New York’s skyline, worried passers-by looking up and falling bodies awaken memories of the event.

September 11th 2001 revealed how close reality and fiction are in the contemporary media reception. Based on this phenomenon JUST LIKE THE MOVIES provokes a reversal effect: A real event is described with fictional images. Like this it becomes obvious that the events of the 11 of September 2001 exceed the framework of our perception and mindset. Neither the pictures, supplied by the media, nor our own imagination are sufficient, to understand the actual dimension of destruction.

Music composed by Paolo Marzocchi for solo piano with electroacoustic sounds intensifies the irritating effect. To interlink the heterogeneous pictures of JUST LIKE THE MOVIES and at the same time to produce a “Hollywood Feeling”, he modelled the Ragtime music of the early 20 century. The bare sound of the piano contrasts the pictures of the destruction and intensifies the disastrous atmosphere of the video.

LOCATION

Nassauischer Kunstverein e.v.
Wilhelmstrasse 15
65185 Wiesbaden
Germany

LINKS

Nassauischer Kunstverein e.v.

On the occasion of the exhibition Michal Kosakowski presents his film JUST LIKE THE MOVIES.

EXHIBITION

The Uncanny Familiar . Images of Terror

DATE

10 September to 4 December 2011
Opening Friday, 9 September 2011 . 7 pm

“The games must go on!” Avery Brundage . IOC President . 1972
“Show you’re not afraid!” Rudolph Giuliani . Mayor of New York . 2001

A masked man looking over a balcony. An airplane flying into a skyscraper. Hearing these descriptions, we immediately picture the scenes in our minds. We know exactly what events are meant. Pictures possess a tremendous power. Not only do they capture the decisive moment; they also influence public discourse, demanding reflection and response. Particularly after catastrophes and traumatic events, the ubiquity of the images makes the events themselves seem omnipresent, inescapable. Pictures of terror have an enormous, enduring power that holds the viewer in its thrall. They burn themselves deep into our collective memory. The exhibition “The Uncanny Familiar” curated by C/O Berlin examines the meaning of photography in our contemporary visual culture by exploring the visual processing of images of terror in recent decades. The events in Munich in 1972 and in New York in 2001 establish the temporal framework for the exhibition. Through the artistic confrontation with these events, political images are called into question; and the archival images presented lay bare the construction and illusion of photography.

This exhibition was organized to commemorate the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, and is curated by Felix Hoffmann for C/O Berlin. It features approximately 200 works from Spiegel magazine’s photographic archives and around 30 artists, including Thomas Hoepker, Dennis Adams, Michal Kosakowski, Coco Kühn, Fiorenza Menini, Thomas Galler, Thomas Ruff, Simon Menner, Peter Piller, Christoph Draeger, Thomas Hirschhorn, G.R.A.M., Walid Raad, Gael Peltier, Naeem Mohaiemen, Michael Schirner, Sarah Charlesworth, Mikael Mikael, Robert Boyd, Johan Grimonprez, Luuk Wilmering, Pascale Couvert, Natalie Czech, Reymond Depardon, Michael Schäfer, Marc Volk, and Malte Wandel.

A catalog will be published by Walther Koenig to accompany the exhibition.

Sponsored by Hauptstadtkulturfonds . Philip Morris
Supported by Amerikanische Botschaft . prohelvetia
Media partners Die Tageszeitung . tip . Dinamix

LOCATION

C/O Berlin - International Forum For Visual Dialogues
Oranienburger Strasse 35/36
10117 Berlin

LINKS

C/O Berlin - International Forum For Visual Dialogues

On the occasion of the NORDDEUTSCHER JOURNALISTENTAG in the MagnusHall in Hamburg Michal Kosakowski presents his award-winning film JUST LIKE THE MOVIES.

JUST LIKE THE MOVIES (2006, 21min) is a short film that samples footage from movies that were made prior to September 2001 to recreate the events of 9/11 in New York.

DATE

June 18, 2011, 12pm

LOCATION

MagnusHall
Amsinckstrasse 70
20097 Hamburg
Germany

LINKS

Norddeutscher Journalistentag DJV
Audiofile JUST LIKE THE MOVIES - Presentation: Heike Rost

[ MULTIMEDIALE VIDEOKUNST ]
Veranstaltet von der Galerie Stephan Stumpf und Massimo Fiorito

Der erstmalig stattfindende Videokunstabend in den Räumlichkeiten der Galerie Stephan Stumpf zeigt Videoarbeiten der Künstler Michal Kosakowski, Martine-Nicole Rojina und Fiorito&Fluturel.

Michal Kosakowski:
CASTING LIVORNO, 1998, 10 Min
SLEEPERS, 2002, 3 Min
JUST LIKE THE MOVIES, 2006, 21 Min
DEEP WATER HORIZON, 2010, 9 Min

Der Videokunstabend ist Angebunden an die Finissage der Ausstellung KuSL #5 der Nachbar Galerie Massimo Fiorito und Florian Decker.

DATE

1. April 2011, 19.30 Uhr

LOCATION

Galerie Stephan Stumpf
Schweigerstrasse 8
81541 München

LINKS

Galerie Stephan Stumpf
Kunst und Schmerz Los

Sonderveranstaltung
»f-LUX - TRENDTAG FOTOGRAFIE 2011«
Samstag, 19. März 2011, 9 bis ca. 20 Uhr
Halle 27, Kochan & Partner, Hirschgartenallee 27 Rgb., 80639 München

Die Konferenz richtet sich an Art-Direktoren, Grafiker, Bildredakteure und natürlich Fotografen und ist hochkarätig besetzt.
Es erwarten Sie Vorträge, Präsentationen und Diskussionen mit:
MARTIN PARR, MARIE UND GHISLAIN DAVID DE LOSSY, MARKUS RASP, HORST MOSER, MARTIN SUMM, TOM FÄHRMANN, ERIK KESSELS, MICHAL KOSAKOWSKI, ANDREW SAUNDERS, BENJAMIN BENSER, ANTHONY HARRIS UND  THOMAS KRULL von den Otto Studios…

Gemeinsam wollen wir den Fragen nachgehen:
Welche Trends sind erkennbar? Welche Auswirkungen haben flickr, ffffound & Co? Welches Bild ist international einsetzbar und welches nicht? Was ist bei crossmedialen Projekten zu berücksichtigen? Was ist eigentlich Skia und die magische Dichte 3.0?… und vieles mehr.

Michal Kosakowski präsentiert seinen Experimentalfilm JUST LIKE THE MOVIES (2006) und präsentiert danach das Konzept für seinen Fortsetzungsfilm SO OTHERS MAY LIVE.

Gebühr
115 Euro für tgm-Mitglieder
135 Euro für Nicht-Mitglieder
65 Euro für Studenten und Rentner (Platzkontingent begrenzt)
(die Gebühren enthalten Tagungsgetränke und Mittagsimbiss)

LINKS

f-LUX

MULTIPLICIDADE imagem_som_inusitados

presents

MODERN WARS 1999-2010

EXHIBITION, FILMS AND LIVE PERFORMANCE IN RIO DE JANEIRO

by Michal Kosakowski
Music: Paolo Marzocchi

HOLY WAR (1999)
SLEEPERS (2002)
JUST LIKE THE MOVIES (2006)
THE HEART OF IT (2010)

+

WORLD PREMIERE

DEEP WATER HORIZON (2010)

The music composer Paolo Marzocchi performs the music of JUST LIKE THE MOVIES live on the piano.

Curated by Batman Zavarese
_________________________________________________________

“MODERN WARS” - Introduction by Uli Aigner

Through Michal Kosakowski’s eyes we see the wars that are daily waged within every single person‘s existence.

It is not in the remote distance that Michal Kosakowski is searching for the extent of the world’s globalisation – he detects the battlefields in the microcosm of our own existence.

The idea for JUST LIKE THE MOVIES (2006) was born in a living room, in front of a TV set when, on September 11, 2001, those two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, generating images that were endlessly repeated over the following days and weeks all over the world.
Just like almost everyone else, Michal Kosakowski had a sort of instant déjà vu in this vertiginous moment – a feeling of having already seen all these images before. Thus began a long and arduous examination of hundreds of Hollywood movies, on the search for pertinent moments, clips of which were then assiduously assembled into a 21-minute reconstruction of the events of 9/11, all made from found footage shot long before that infamous date.
The film’s soundtrack, composed and produced by Paolo Marzzochi, recalls the first silent movies, hearkening back to the very birth of cinema itself.

A view of the sky over Munich, Germany, from his bedroom’s balcony, inspired the film DEEP WATER HORIZON (2010). The cloud formations recall drifting oil films, seeping oil leaks in deep waters. The catastrophe caused by the eponymous oil rig’s collapse in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was built up into a global disaster by the media. The news mercilessly exposes the contrast between unmanageable ecologic damage and weeks of helplessness caused by the failure of human technology to contain the disaster.

The necessity for HOLY WAR (1999) presented itself to Michal Kosakowski during the Christmas season while riding an escalator in an Austrian shopping mall, in which thousands of shoppers were busy clearing out quickly emptying shelves in hustle and bustle – a behaviour that reminded the director of the hoarding typical of imminent humanitarian disasters. Thus begins a process of build-up and provisioning that will find its first culmination in the gift giving on December 24 and will continue until the turn of the year. What Michal Kosakowski does in HOLY WAR is basically a documentation of how the battle is waged.

Other battlefields were identified by Kosakowski in his hometown Vienna, as on the national holidays, which are partly organised by the army – see SLEEPERS (2002). Each October 26, the Austrian army presents its heavy machinery and equipment to the public. Tanks, artillery, missiles. Families stroll through the exhibition area in harmonious community. However, once one isolates the children from the alleged protection of their families, the army’s weapons can be identified as instruments of an armament industry whose aim it is to socialise society’s youngest members for the benefit of the country’s defence. Thus the state’s concern for the normative power constituted by the family is unabashedly confirmed in such military activities on national holidays.

Michal Kosakowski pays a visit to a friend’s hometown, Novi Sad in Serbia, five years after the Kosovo war and the NATO air raids. THE HEART OF IT (2010) shows images of a destroyed city and scenes of the continuing functioning of the agronomy-based life of a post-war society. The quest for the HEART OF IT relates to the realities of contemporary life between loss, love of life, and survival techniques both physical and mental.

The consequences of modern war permeate everyday life. The battlefields of daily life demand an identification of complicity/responsibility and the acknowledgment of guilt or success within one’s own microcosm, caught as it is inside a globalised world. And this is perhaps what all Michal Kosakowski’s films, diverse as they are, have in common: in one way or another they all strive for insights into the nature of universal truths.

Fight the MODERN WARS!

DATE

18th December, 2010, 7.30 pm
19th December, 2010, 7.30 pm

LOCATION

Oi Futuro Ipanema
Visconde de de Pirajá, 54/3and Ipanema
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

LINKS

Multiplicidade
Oi Futuro

WATCH

DEEP WATER HORIZON
JUST LIKE THE MOVIES

DOWNLOAD

Poster HOLY WAR
Poster SLEEPERS
Poster JUST LIKE THE MOVIES
Poster THE HEART OF IT
Poster DEEP WATER HORIZON

FRUCHTHOF CO.WORKING presents

RHYTHM SECTION IM FRUCHTHOF

16th - 19th December 2010

A project on the subject “rhythm” in visual arts.

With Sofia Arvaniti, Elisabeth Eberle, Fotini Gouseti, Gonghong Huang, Michal Kosakowski, Oleksiy Koval, Yuliia Koval, Koho Mori-Newton, Kuros Nekouian, Olaf Probst, Stefan Schessl, Marco Schuler, Petros Sianos, Florian Weichsberger, Veronika Wenger.

Michal Kosakowski presents his film SLEEPERS (2002)

SYNOPSIS

Children operate and marvel at the arsenal of the Austrian Army during National Holiday in Vienna. By juxtaposing scenes from computer-games the children become figures of a simulated war-game. The ballet-like style amplifies the illusion of war we learn to consume as given facts from an early age on, and at the same time shows the folly of it.

Short Film/Experimental, 3 Minutes, Austria 2002, Colour/Stereo

Written, directed, edited and produced by Michal Kosakowski
Music by Apocalyptica, A. Kisser, Igor G. Cavalera

AWARDS

BEST SOUNDTRACK AWARD - 8th Milano Film Festival 2003, Italy
NOMINATION - INTERNATIONAL ART MEDIA AWARD 2003, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany

OPENING

16th December, 2010, 6pm

LOCATION

Fruchthof
Gotzinger Straße 52
81371 München
2. Innenhof
2. Stock

DOWNLOAD

Flyer RHYTHM SECTION
Poster SLEEPERS

LINKS

Rhythm Section