Cocoon and other Swan Songs — Felice Naomi Wonnenberg

Kvetshing (Complaining) to Gertrude Stein, Video performance, 1 min, 2007

Felice Naomi Wonnenberg's video work is a unique, sometimes surrealist collage inspired by Jewish thought and political and gender issues. It combines in an intriguing manner Middle-Eastern reality with European cinematographic aesthtics. The Tel Aviv and Berlin based artist has been showing her video works and experimental films internationally since 1998, among others at the Directors Lounge, Berlin (2005), in the MoMA Museum of Modern Art New York (2007), The Israel Museum Jerusalem (2007), the Jewish Film Festival Berlin and in Goethe Institutes worldwide. She was awarded the ARTE / 3Sat prize for artistic innovation, her work was repeatedly screened on 3SAT (German speaking art TV channel) and in over 30 international film festivals. In 2001 she graduated from the Masterclass of the Berlin Art Academy (HdK Berlin – UdK) (the highest degree in visual art in German art academies). She has been living and working in Israel and Berlin as an artist, art critic and in museums since 2005. Her experimental films are shot on 16mm film (a format launched in 1923, used by surrealist and dadaist artists and later in WW2) and she also works with digital video.
pressrelease

Video Art and Experimental Films
by Felice Naomi Wonnenberg

curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr
Sunday, 26 August 2007, 9 pm Z-Bar, Bergstr. 2


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some of the films included:

Jewel Garden
experimental documentary, digital video, 10 mins, 2006

"...a delightful...wonderfully inventive film and...great addition to our program"

writes William Sloan, curator of MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, NY

Portrait of an old 2nd-hand jewelry dealer on Berlin's shopping-mile Ku'damm. In an uncut 9 min. close-up shot, the camera glides over the glittering necklaces, war medals, Jewish Chanukah candlesticks, worn-out wedding rings and other broken dreams on sale. We never get to see the dealer, but we do hear him chat about his theories on love.

Cocoon, Performance on digital video, 9 mins, 2007

Some young men wander in the desert. In a cave they make the chance discovery of a giant cocoon with female content... In the encounter the young men devour the cocoon, but then as they penetrate into it they do not even realize that the content of the cocoon is a woman. Their actions appear as a fickle mood of fate. The men destroy the woman's fragile protective wrap for a moments' culinary pleasure and leave her behind - deprived of her protection, desinterested in her fate.

Cocoon is a video that brings visual inspirations from Man Ray's nude photographies and the sexy armpit from Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's Chien Chien Andalou onto a feminist panel. The viewers' sexual expectations are first stimulated and then playfully led ad absurdum. The cocoon is the poor worm's / woman's longing for transformation, the attempt to withdraw from the world in order to emerge as a new magnificent self.

As in many of Wonnenberg's films the puzzling sexual encounters between man and woman remain unsatisfactory. Both parties do not recognize the others needs and desires and their physical contact remains at once naive and yet cruel and destructive.

The location of the scenes is a metaphysical place in itself: Cocoon was shot on location at the caves of Qumran in the Judean desert on the shore of the Dead Sea, where in 1947 a Bedouin boy discovered, by coincidence, the oldest surviving Torah scrolls.

The Orient through Western Eyes
video collage, 8 min, 2007

A video collage juxtaposing clips from early silent movies to modern fantasy blockbusters to show how the West has constructed its own image of "the Orient". This art video commissioned by Israel's biggest art museum The Israel Museum Jerusalem was shown in conjunction with its exhibition Eden- East and West. It is a critical visual analysis of the West's cinematographic fantasies of "the Orient". The Middle East and the Land of Israel were an important locus of Western longing, curiosity, fantasy, and apprehension of the “Other”, and these feelings were articulated visually by many artists. This art video juxtaposes clippings from existing footage of Hollywood movies, from their beginnings in the early days of silent movies (such as DeMille’s monumental biblical epics) to contemporary fantasy Blockbusters (such as The Lord of the Rings). The visual confrontations demonstrate how the West has constructed its own image of "the Jew", "the Arab", "the Orient" or -in brief - the necessary and fondly hated "Other" for its own psychological needs.

A Turtle‘s Life in the Middle East, 16 mm and Super 8 black/white and color, 10 mins, 2003
3Sat / ARTE Prize for Artistic Innovation

This is an experimental documentary about fear and how to deal with it after a terror attack. The basis of the film is the childhood memory of a Palestinian, in which the need of protection turned into perverted and absurd violence. The child confronted his seeming enemies, the turtles. "I declared war on turtles...Until they were dead. Then I‘d be very satisfied.“ Contrasting this are an Israeli‘s angry comments. He cannot stand his German girlfriend's questioning him about terror attacks, which she needs for her documentary film, anymore. The images of the film stand in contrast to the interviews: a group of nervous birds and architectural shots of a prison relay the fear that the narrators struggle to repress. The film ends in bitter words juxtaposed with pictures of hope.

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Tonight: The Making Of • Mi wed 14 02

•18 h 30 • 6:30 pmThe Making Of a film by Viola Stephan

a documentary about vision, neuroscience and filmmaking

• Viola Stephan DE The Making OF 86 min, 35mm, 2005




How creative is science ?
How objective is filmmaking ?
Seeing is believing - a documentary about vision, neuroscience and filmmaking

Ein heiterer Essay ueber die Verbindung von Denken, Wahrnehmen und Kino, Kopfkino im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes, das anregt, Kino anders zu betrachten, als wir es bisher taten: Denn Film ist nicht nur Unterhaltung, sondern die Quintessenz unseres Denkens und Fuehlens, eine Analogie, die uns letztendlich tiefer zu uns selbst bringt.

Joachim Kurz

Starring Andreas Oehler, director of Hunger nach Heimat, to be screened afterwards.

In attendance of Viola Stephan

Nice Bombs tonight at 8pm

Director Usama Alshaibi, who loves to pose with guns, during the shooting of Nice Bombs in Baghdad

Usama Alshaibi was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1969. His work in film and video has been screened at numerous film festivals and venues across the United States and abroad. He has completed one narrative feature titled Muhammad and Jane, and more than thirty shorts.
Usama is the founder and Director of the Z Film Festival and film/video curator for specialized screenings that have received critical accolades. In addition to reaching an ecclectic audience with his video and film work, Alshaibi's photography has been included in several print and web publications.
Usama and his wife Kristie Alshaibi returned to his birthplace in Iraq to shoot his first feature documentary titled Nice Bombs. In 2004 Usama became co-owner of Artvamp, a multi-media production company founded by Kristie.

To see the trailer of Nice Bombs






Usama Alshaibi US/IQ Nice Bombs 92 min, DV, 2006 mon 12 02 8pm

Nice Bombs • Usama Alshaibi • Mo mon 12 02

• 20 h • 8 pm Nice Bombs by Usama Alshaibi

MY JOURNEY BACK TO IRAQ

Nice Bombs shows filmmaker Usama Alshaibi as he returns to Baghdad to reunite with his family after nearly 24 years. This documentary navigates through his unique relationship to an Iraq that is much different than the country of his childhood.
Usama captures the conflicting reactions to the conditions of life in Baghdad.
Through a wide range of opinions and experiences he provides a broad panorama of voices long neglected under Saddam’s regime.
His cousin Tareef enters the room upon hearing an explosion. “It’s a bomb. A Nice Bomb,” he explains. The phrase is indicative of his family’s nonchalance about their situation. As one young boy put it, “We’re Iraqis. It’s normal.” With humor and resilience Nice Bombs explores Usama’s dual role as both Iraqi and American.

• Usama Alshaibi US/IQ Nice Bombs 92 min, DV, 2006


"...humanizes the situation on the ground..."
-Johnathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, Critic’s Choice

" ...a surprisingly warm first-person video diary...edited with grace and tact.”
-Michael Philips, Chicago Tribune

“Among the many Iraq docs I've seen over the last few years, Usama Alshaibi's
‘Nice Bombs’ offers a refreshing new perspective... Westerners will likely
sympathize with Alshaibi and his family in a much deeper way.Because,
after all, he is one of us, too.”
-Anthony Kaufman, IndieWIRE

"It pulls off the rare feat of being 'important' without forcing a political agenda
down the audience’s throat.”
-Time Out Chicago



The sound of a ground-shaking explosion awoke my wife and I from a deep sleep. It was about 7:00 in the morning. My cousin Tareef entered the bedroom
to find a tie for work. “What was that?” I asked. “It was a bomb. A nice bomb.”
The phrase was indicative of my family’s nonchalance about their situation. I had
been away for twenty-four years. They were used to it. As one young boy put it,
“We’re Iraqis. It’s normal.”
My Arabic is weak so I spoke to my relatives in English, both on and off camera. I
was surprised that, despite the language barrier, their meaning clearly broke through. I thought that most Iraqis would be reluctant to speak openly. It had been rumored that Saddam executed people for simply making jokes about him and they were accustomed to holding their tongues. The opposite was true.
Everyone wanted to speak, and they wanted Americans to hear them.
I left in 1980 in the midst of a war between Iraq and Iran. I was eleven years old and terrified of dying. The current war gave me an opportunity to return and revisit my birthplace and my family, and to explore a culture in which I feel both rooted and uprooted. I was frightened, but I felt that I had to go and see what TV and newspapers could not convey. I brought my camera along to document the experience.

• Usama Alshaibi US/IQ Nice Bombs 92 min, DV, 2006


Winner Best Documentary at The Chicago Underground Festival 2006




Director – Usama Alshaibi
Producers – Kristie Alshaibi, Ben Berkowitz, Ben Redgrave
Executive Producers – William Haddad, Justin Moyer, Studs Terkel
Cinematography – Usama Alshaibi, Kristie Alshaibi
Editors – Amy Cargill, Michael Palmerio, Usama Alshaibi
Music – Naeif Rafeh, Issa Boulos, Omar al-Musfi, Crumpler, Strepsata, Andy Ortmann,
G(riot)
Sound Mix – Jacob Ross, Experimental Sound Studio
Color Correction – Bob Sliga

Usama Alshaibi at placeboKatz here and here

LUST step one • Frei fri 16 02

• 22 h • 10 pm live video a guided screening by Torben Simonsen

LUST

LUST – step one, a sketch of a neverrealized video-installation.






Torben Simonsen, creator of LUST Step One will guide us through an interactive labyrinth, where the spectator in each viewing will experience something unique.

These two characters
they have this thing going on
they cannot let go of one another
he cannot let go of her
and she tells him
we cannot be lovers
we can be friends
and he says, allright then honey
lets make a movie
she says, okay babe
what should that movie be about
that movie should be about you and me
beeing lovers in the movie
oh thats a great idea she says
and so the story begins
and so they go off
out into LUST

Those are the words of the first video you encounter in LUST step one. In 2002 “he”, Torben Simonsen, goes to America to make an erotic roadmovie.


On returning to Copenhagen Torben Simonsen spends the following three years editing the recordings in his working studios situated on the outskirts of the derelict dock yards of Copenhagen. During the editing process Torben Simonsen changes his focus from the story of Herman & Sylvia to the way the story is perceived. In this
intense study of the nature of experience he experiments with different artistic genres and explores hybrids of the pictorial arts, installation and film making.

Torben Simonsen chooses the sketch as the project’s final form because he wants to focus on the ambiguous meanings of the material and because he wants to force the spectator to dwell on it’s many possibilities and uncertainties. Thus, LUST – step one, does not appear as a completed work, but as a vision of one.