LO SCHERMO DELL'ARTE FILM FESTIVAL

LO SCHERMO DELL’ARTE FILM FESTIVAL 2012 is enriched by a new section, Focus on, dedicated to the work of British video artist and director Isaac Julien, nominated for the Turner Prize 2001 and winner of the Semaine de la Critique prize at the Cannes Festival 1991 for his film Young Soul Rebels.

On Saturday, November 24, three of his films will be screened: Baltimore, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cologne Film Biennial of films about art (2003); True North (2004) and The Leopard, presented within the Orizzonti section at the Venice Festival del Cinema (2010).

Another first for the 2012 edition of the Festival is VISIO - European Workshop on Artists’ Cinema, a project intended to encourage the development of a network of artists and professionals who work with moving images. Requests to participate have come in from 48 artists from 17 European countries, as well as Turkey. Among these 15 young artists have been chosen, with the collaboration of international contemporary art institutions, European art schools and academies, to participate in the workshop. Two of the Workshop participants will be chosen for the Young Talents Award competition at the Kino der Kunst Festival in Munich (April 24-28, 2013); a chance to win the prize of 10.000 euro worth of cinematographic equipment, provided by ARRI, the world’s most important producer and distributor of cinematographic apparatus.

The Mobiles project, which will be held at Cango - Cantieri Goldonetta, proposes work by an international artist who works with moving images and new media. Following Omer Fast’s installation Talk Show in 2011, Franco-Armenian artist Melik Ohanian will present his video installation DAYS: I See what I Saw and what I will See for the first time in Italy. Produced in 2011 for the Sharjah Biennale, but not shown because it clashed with the interests of the sheikh who financed that major exposition, DAYS was filmed entirely in a work-camp where Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi immigrants employed in the oil fields live a life of poverty, compared to the opulent standards of the Arab Emirates. Melik Ohanian will conduct a lecture on Weds., November 21.

Focus on Isaac Julien, the Visio workshop and Melik Ohanian’s installation are an integral part of the 5th Edition of the Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival’s program, which will be held at Odeon Firenze:
Cinema d’artista with new films by artists The Otolith Group, Gillian Wearing, Yuri Ancarani, Jan Peter Hammer; and Sguardi that will feature the Italian premieres of the best and most recent production of films on contemporary art, including films on Liu Xiaodong, Mark Lombardi, Cristina Iglesias, Roman Oplaka, Thomas Ruff, and many others.

The Festival’s closing night, Sun. Nov. 25, is dedicated to Lo Schermo dell'Arte Prize for the production of a video by a young Italian artist. The winner of the 3rd edition will be announced. Immediately afterwards, the premiere of the film which won the 2011 prize: Per troppo amore - Incompiuto siciliano, produced by the Italian collective Alterazioni Video: the protagonist is anthropologist Marc Augé, who is accompanied on his visit to unfinished monuments in the Sicilian city of Giarre by an alien who has taken the form of a border collie.