Tonight's opening night gala is a sold-out Canadian premiere screening of Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present which just won the Documentary Audience Award at Berlinale. The gala includes an opening cocktail dinner reception and is followed by a celebration. The director Matthew Akers, producers Maro Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre, and documentary subject Marina Abramović will be in attendance. The film will screen again on closing night.
Other films being screened include the World Premiere of Mark Dion; the North American Premieres of Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff and Massimo Vitali; the Canadian Premiere of Moon Mirror Journey; and the Toronto Premieres of Mark Lewis: Nowhere Land, Hiroshi Sugimoto: Visions in My Mind and Oliviero Toscani: The Rage of Images.
The Reel Artists Film Festival continues until Sunday February 26 at TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King Street West, Reitman Square.
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2012 Reel Artists Film Festival Schedule
WEDNESDAY 6:00 PM
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present
CANADIAN PREMIERE
6:00 PM Cocktail Dinner Reception
8:00 PM Screening
10:00 PM Celebration
TIFF Bell Lightbox
Reitman Square, 350 King Street West
Single tickets: $195
Entertainment Package: $1,950
Artist Sponsorship: $1,950
Friendship Hospitality Package: $1,170
SOLD OUT!
Director: Matthew Akers
Producers: Jeff Dupre, Maro Chermayeff
Distributor: Films We Like
Colour, 105 minutes, English, 2012
Introduced by Ann Webb, Executive Director, Canadian Art Foundation
The artist, director and producers will be present
Testing her mental and physical limits with shocking, compelling and sometimes dangerous performances, Marina Abramović has been challenging the way people think about art for nearly 40 years. This documentary looks back on Abramović’s prolific career, and follows her as she prepares herself and a group of artists for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The centrepiece of the show is Abramović’s mesmerizing new performance, The Artist Is Present, involving her constant seated presence in the gallery space for the length of the three-month exhibition, during which she is available for one-on-one silent interaction with members of the public. Countless intimate and individual connections are made between the artist and her scores of participants; through each encounter, as Abramović says, “performance becomes life itself.”
Matthew Akers is an accomplished producer, director, photographer and cinematographer. Recently, he was the series producer and cinematographer on a National Geographic television series about the medical marijuana industry in Colorado. He has worked on several other film series and documentaries including ones for PBS and HBO.
Marina Abramović is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery, New York.
THURSDAY 7:00 PM
Candida Höfer
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Director: Ralph Goertz
Producer: Ralph Goertz
Distributor: IKS-Medienarchiv
Colour, 40 minutes, German with English subtitles, 2011
Introduced by Leah Sandals, Associate Online Editor, Canadian Art magazine
In the 1970s, Candida Höfer was one of the first students of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf to incorporate colour into her photographs, often projecting them in slide form. She has since become known for her large-scale photographs of interiors, social spaces and public buildings. Höfer’s images have gradually become void of people, yet their function within the space remains very clear. In the absence of people, the order and patterns that exist in the captured space—among furniture, lighting and architecture, for instance—become the focus. This film, the only existing documentary on Candida Höfer, shows the artist reflecting on her decades-long career, including her early black and white series and her colour projections.
Ralph Goertz is the founder of IKS (Institut für Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie) in Düsseldorf, Germany, a company specializing in documentaries about contemporary art. Starting his career as a stage director, Goertz now works as a curator, filmmaker, television journalist and producer.
THURSDAY 7:00 PM
Thomas Struth
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Directors: Werner Raeune, Ralph Goertz
Producer: Ralph Goertz
Distributor: IKS-Medienarchiv
Colour, 33 minutes, German with English subtitles, 2011
Introduced by Leah Sandals, Associate Online Editor, Canadian Art magazine
Thomas Struth began at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with a focus on painting, studying under the likes of Peter Kleeman and Gerhard Richter. After developing an increasing interest in photography, he joined Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photography class in 1976; his fellow classmates included Axel Hütte, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer and Thomas Ruff. Working with large-format plate cameras on tripods, Struth creates extraordinarily detailed images with themes of industry and globalization. This film covers the different phases of his work, including his museum photography, street photography, family portraits, his series of jungle images and, more recently, his large and complex photographs of the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Werner Raeune studied flm at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He started his career as an assistant director at the Kammerspiele Düsseldorf, but over the last 40 years he has worked as a television journalist and filmmaker for companies ZDF, 3sat and Arte.
Ralph Goertz is the founder of IKS (Institut für Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie) in Düsseldorf, Germany, a company specializing in documentaries about contemporary art. Starting his career as a stage director, Goertz now works as a curator, filmmaker, television journalist and producer.
THURSDAY 9:00 PM
Gerhard Richter Painting
Director: Corinna Belz
Producer: Thomas Kufus
Distributor: Mongrel Media
Colour, 97 minutes, German and English with English subtitles, 2011
Introduced by Richard Rhodes, Editor, Canadian Art magazine
During the spring and summer months of 2009, filmmaker Corinna Belz was granted access to internationally renowned artist Gerhard Richter’s studio, where she quietly captured the artist as he worked on a series of large abstract paintings. This rare look at the now-80-year-old painter shows the incredible start-to-finish creation of several of his “squeegee”-style paintings. We also see Richter planning for and attending various exhibitions, and his casual contemplation of his working process with art historian Benjamin Buchloh and gallerist Marian Goodman.
Corinna Belz studied philosophy, art history and media sciences in Cologne, Zurich and Berlin. She is an actor, writer and documentary filmmaker. Belz has worked on television productions and feature-length films of various genres.
FRIDAY 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
FREE FILMMAKERS PANEL
When a filmmaker decides to create a documentary about an artist, an essential question is raised: should the artist’s work or life be the main focus? Viewing and interrogating an artist’s creative process is often at the heart of such films, but that hardly eliminates psychology and personal anecdotes, however serious the documentarian. On the other hand, too many documentaries take a facile view of an artist’s bohemian, glamorous and/or scandalous life, without examining the work that made them important. How should a documentarian illuminate an artist’s contribution to culture and society?
Discussing the issues are filmmakers Roz Owen (Portrait of Resistance: The Art and Activism of Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge), Matthew Akers (Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present) and Larry Weinstein (My War Years: Arnold Schoenberg). The panel will be moderated by Marc Glassman, editor of Point of View magazine.
Co-presented by Point of View magazine and Reel Artists Film Festival.
FRIDAY 5:00 PM
Portrait of Resistance: The Art and Activism of Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge
Director: Roz Owen
Editor: Jim Miller
Producers: Jim Miller & Roz Owen
Distributor: Vtape
Colour, 72 minutes, English, 2011
The filmmakers and artists will be present
Toronto-based artist-activists Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge have been engaging community-based and social-justice issues through their extraordinary staged photography for the last 35 years. Beginning their collaboration as a young married couple in the 1970s, Condé and Beveridge’s work has addressed themes surrounding the labour movement, the rights of migrant workers, the global financial crisis and the state of the environment. Portrait of Resistance: The Art and Activism of Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge shows the artists in action, engaging and collaborating with the community, taking their experiences to the studio, and, then, creating powerful visual narratives that challenge the way we see the world.
Roz Owen, together with her partner Jim Miller, set up Anti-Amnesiac Productions in 2006 with the aim of creating memorable, socially engaged media. In 2008, their short documentary “Community Matters” won the OAAG Visual Art Film Award. She has worked both collaboratively with Miller and independently on various projects and films.
FRIDAY 7:00 PM
Thomas Ruff
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Director: Ralph Goertz
Producer: Ralph Goertz
Distributor: IKS-Medienarchiv
Colour, 50 minutes, German with English subtitles, 2011
Introduced by David Balzer, Assistant Editor, Canadian Art magazine
This film takes us into the studio of one of the best-known photographers in Germany, Thomas Ruff. Filmed over a period of two years, Ralph Goertz’s documentary shows a range of the artist’s multi-faceted body of work, including his new “ma.r.s.” series, involving manipulated images of the planet Mars taken by a satellite camera. Ruff studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, which influenced his interest in serial photography. His work has ranged from small-scale documentary-style photographs of domestic interiors, to large-scale passport-like portraits with monochrome backgrounds, to architectural photographs.
Ralph Goertz is the founder of Institut für Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie (IKS) in Düsseldorf, Germany, a company specializing in documentaries about contemporary art. Starting his career as a stage director, Goertz now works as a curator, filmmaker, television journalist and producer.
FRIDAY 9:00 PM
Mark Lewis: Nowhere Land
TORONTO PREMIERE
Director: Reinhard Wulf
Producer: Reinhard Wulf (WDR/3sat)
Distributors: Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), 3sat Editorial Dept.
Colour, 82 minutes, English, 2011
Introduced by Barbara Fischer, Director, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Artist and filmmaker Mark Lewis, Canada’s official representative at the 2009 Venice Biennale, uses basic cinematic techniques together with often-staged, banal subject matter to create masterful and deceptively simple short films. In Mark Lewis: Nowhere Land, Lewis is shown at work creating his most recent film at a busy four-way crossing in downtown Toronto. While returning to the various locations of his previous films, both in the city and in the serene landscape of Algonquin Park, the artist shares details of his working methods, his interest in the generic urban environment, and his fascination with the notion of the non-place.
Reinhard Wulf is an editor and producer with the television channels WDR and 3sat in Köln, Germany. He has worked as a freelance film journalist and has published various articles and books on prominent figures in the film industry. As a filmmaker, he has produced, directed and co-directed several documentaries about filmmakers and artists.
SATURDAY 1:00 PM
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Visions in My Mind
TORONTO PREMIERE
Director: Maria Anna Tappeiner
Producer: Reinhard Wulf (WDR/3sat)
Distributor: Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), 3sat Editorial Dept. Colour, 42 minutes, English, 2007
Introduced by Maia Sutnik, Curator, Photography and Special Projects, Art Gallery of Ontario
Japanese-born photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto is one of the most fascinating art photographers of our age. With a more-than-30-year art career behind him, Sugimoto continues to be influenced by minimalism and conceptualism—two trends prevalent during his time as an art student in Los Angeles. With the use of a late-19th century large-format camera, and sometimes without any camera at all, he creates highly technical black and white imagery that emanates silence, clarity and emptiness. Among his best-known work is the luminous “Theatres” series, long-exposure photographs of movie-theatre screens that were captured as films were being projected onto them.
Maria Anna Tappeiner is a freelance art historian and documentary filmmaker living in Frankfurt, Germany. She has made documentaries on prominent artists and filmmakers such as Nam June Paik, William Kentridge and Richard Serra, among several others.
SATURDAY 2:30 PM
Massimo Vitali
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Director: Giampiero D’Angeli
Producer: Luca Molducci
Distributor: Giart – Visioni d’arte
Colour, 50 minutes, Italian with English subtitles, 2011
Introduced by Adriana Frisenna, Acting Director, Istituto Italiano di Cultura
Taking his large-format camera along to crowded public spaces such as beaches, dunes, river banks and pools, photographer Massimo Vitali spends long days observing the way groups of people interact with each other and the landscapes they occupy. The result of these endeavours is Vitali’s crisp, unified and unmistakable style. In this film, Vitali allows himself to be observed during a series of shoots in the height of summer. Back in his studio, he goes through his prints and muses about his process and the beautiful subtleties he captures in apparently insignificant events.
Giampiero D’Angeli is an Italian director living in Paris. He has directed over 20 documentaries about contemporary artists, including Maurizio Galimberti, Mimmo Jodice and Ferdinando Scianna.
SATURDAY 4:30 PM
Oliviero Toscani: The Rage of Images
TORONTO PREMIERE
Directors: Peter Scharf, Katja Duregger Producer: Birgit Schulz, Bildersturm Filmproduktion GmbH Distributor: Bildersturm Filmproduktion GmbH, Köln, Germany Colour, 44 minutes, English and Italian with English subtitles, 2010
Introduced by Charles Reeve, Curator and Associate Professor, OCAD University
A pioneer of “anti-advertising,” Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani is known for bringing extreme forms of realism into the business of the advertising world. Partnering with the fashion label Benetton in the 1990s, Toscani was responsible for an ad campaign that consisted of imagery that bluntly and controversially addressed issues such as HIV/AIDS, war, racism and religion. The artist questions the rare public pairing of tragedy and consumption, and through sometimes-disturbing means, challenges the ideals of a media-saturated society.
Peter Scharf was born in Hagen, Germany. He studied history, German linguistics and Anglo-American history at the University of Köln. He worked for many years as a freelance journalist, mainly for music magazines and broadcasters, such as MTV and VIVA. Since 2000, Scharf has directed several documentary films.
Katja Duregger was born in Stuttgart, Germany and studied at the Universities of Köln, Tübingen and Marbug. She worked for various radio stations and television production companies, before turning in 2000 to freelance television journalism and documentary filmmaking.
SATURDAY 7:00 PM
Moon Mirror Journey
CANADIAN PREMIERE
Director: Rebecca Horn
Producers: Moontower Foundation / Rebecca Horn
Distributor: Moontower Foundation
Colour, 72 minutes, English, 2011
Introduced by Paulette Phillips, Artist and Professor, OCAD University
Internationally renowned artist and director Rebecca Horn has an impressive body of work, including films, performances, installations, photographs and drawings. In the 1980s and 90s, she began creating metaphoric, sensory and often kinetic sculptures in places charged with political and historical importance. In this retrospective film, Horn looks back at some of her most important work over the last 25 years. Moon Mirror Journey poetically chronicles excerpts from Horn’s films, footage of her site-specific installations and reflections from the artist herself. The film features works such as Concert in Reverse (Münster, 1987) and Concert for Buchenwald (Ettersberg Castle, Weimar, 1999), as well as the large retrospective of her work at the Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin, 2007), along with interviews with critic and curator Stephen Madoff and philosopher Boris Groys.
Rebecca Horn lives and works in Berlin and Paris. She has exhibited extensively over the past 40 years, with a recent solo exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. In 2010, she received the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Prize in Sculpture from the Japan Art Association. Horn is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York.
SATURDAY 9:00 PM
HOW ARE YOU
Director: Jannik Splidsboel
Producers: Henrik Underbjerg, Stefan Frost
Distributor: Forward Entertainment / Radiator Film
Colour, 70 minutes, English and Danish with English subtitles, 2011
Introduced by Barr Gilmore, Creative Director, Barr Gilmore Art + Design
Working under the moniker Elmgreen & Dragset, the sharp and witty Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have been partners in life and work for over 15 years. Jannik Splidsboel’s remarkable documentary brings us back to the couple’s early collaborative years, and shows a strong selection of their often highly controversial works, including their 2008 monument to homosexual victims of World War II in Berlin’s Tiergarten. The film’s focus is on the production of their installation The Collectors in the Danish and Nordic Pavilions at the 2009 Venice Biennale, which involved meticulously planned domestic settings, complete with real-estate agents who uncovered and described the uncanny details of their fictional inhabitants.
Jannik Splidsboel grew up in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has worked as an assistant director and production manager on several projects and has been mainly making documentaries since 1999. Aside from filmmaking, Splidsboel teaches in various international institutions.
SUNDAY 1:00 PM
Afternoon of Shorts Program 1
Festival premieres
Introduced by Bryne McLaughlin, Managing Editor, Canadian Art magazine
SHARY BOYLE: HEARTBURN PORCELAIN
Director: Ewa Stern
Producer: Ewa Stern (CastYourArt)
Distributor: CastYourArt – Kunstverein
Colour, 9 minutes, English, 2009
Using escapism as a transformative attempt to extend beyond the bounds of historical periods and reality forms, Toronto-based artist Shary Boyle creates intricate and fantastical porcelain works. Reconfiguring the iconic form of the porcelain figurine through gendered and political frames, Boyle’s work is engrossing through its visual presence and narrative structures.
Ewa Stern is Production Manager and Chief Editor at CastYourArt in Vienna, Austria, a company that makes documentaries about artists, museums, exhibitions and other art-related themes. After immigrating to Canada from Poland in the 1990s, Stern studied in Montreal and worked as a visual researcher there at Images en Boîte.
MARK DION
Director: Ralph Goertz
Producer: Ralph Goertz
Distributor: IKS – Medienarchiv
Colour, 16 minutes, English, 2011
Mark Dion’s work critiques culturally constructed ideas about the natural world. His “cabinet of curiosities”–style exhibitions channel early-Enlightenment theories that praise the gaining of knowledge through first-hand interactions with things. Filmed during the setup of Dion’s “Oceanomania” exhibition at two museum spaces in Monaco, the artist discusses how the history of knowledge informs his work.
Ralph Goertz is the founder of IKS (Institut für Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie) in Düsseldorf, Germany, a company specializing in documentaries about contemporary art. Starting his career as a stage director, Goertz now works as a curator, filmmaker, television journalist and producer.
MICHEL DE BROIN: MATTERS OF CIRCULATION
Director: Ewa Stern
Producer: Ewa Stern (CastYourArt)
Distributor: CastYourArt – Kunstverein
Colour, 6 minutes, English, 2008
Canadian artist Michel de Broin playfully challenges our understanding of objects and ideas that influence daily routines. His artwork subtly pokes fun at the ironic nature of progress and efficiency, often by highlighting an object’s discordant qualities by restructuring and re-contextualizing it. A brief look into the basis and creation of his work, this film focuses on de Broin’s public interventions and sculptures.
Ewa Stern is Production Manager and Chief Editor at CastYourArt in Vienna, Austria, a company that makes documentaries about artists, museums, exhibitions and other art-related themes. After immigrating to Canada from Poland in the 1990s, Stern studied in Montreal and worked as a visual researcher there at Images en Boîte.
CHRISTINE SUN KIM, A SELBY FILM
Director: The Selby
Producers: Lauren Sherman, Dave Saltzman
Colour, 10 minutes, English, 20111
This is an atmospheric and intimate portrait of artist Christine Sun Kim. Deaf since birth, she explores the physicality of sound through her practice, which involves making sound tangible. Using lo-fi experiments and performances, Kim attempts to translate sound though movement and images. Made during a performance in her Brooklyn studio, this film is an insightful glimpse into the artist’s creative process.
The Selby is a project by Brooklyn-based artist Todd Selby that offers an insider’s view of creative individuals in their personal spaces. Over the last few years, The Selby has gained increasing popularity, contributing to several well-known publications and collaborating with top companies such as Louis Vuitton and Hennessy.
SUNDAY 3:00 PM
Afternoon of Shorts Program 2
Festival premieres
Introduced by Ann Webb, Executive Director, Canadian Art Foundation
TACITA DEAN
Director: Zara Hayes
Producer: Jane Burton
Distributor: Tate Media
Colour, 11 minutes, English, 2011
As the most recently commissioned artist to confront the challenge of the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, Tacita Dean created Film, a silent, 35-mm looped film projected onto a monolith standing 13 metres tall. This documentary explores her process throughout the development of Film, as well as her advocacy for the protection of the celluloid-film medium.
Zara Hayes has worked as a documentary filmmaker ever since her graduation from Cambridge University in 2004. She has made films about visual arts for BBC Four and Tate Britain. One of her latest projects involved making a film with artist Ai Weiwei.
CHRIS OFILI: EXPLODING THE CRYSTAL
Director: Caroline Deeds
Producer: Kate Vogel
Distributor: Tate Media
Colour, 15 minutes, English, 2010
Chris Ofili is known for his brightly coloured ornamental paintings, which have included everything from collage cutouts to dried elephant dung. As a feature of a survey exhibition organized by Tate Modern, this film documents the artist as he speaks about the narratives and media that influenced his earlier work, and the development of his more recent work following his move to Trinidad in 2005.
Caroline Deeds studied fine art at the Central St. Martin’s School of Art. Upon her graduation, she taught and ran storytelling workshops in Nigeria, before returning to the UK to be an assistant editor for commercials and promos. Deeds has experimented with different storytelling traditions in the making and shooting of her films.
GABRIEL OROZCO
Director: Susan Doyon
Producer: Kate Vogel
Distributor: Tate Media
Colour, 9 minutes, English, 2011
Gabriel Orozco looks to the urban landscape to compile his collections, capture his symmetry-laden photographs, and create his playful sculptures. Shown in his studio and at his 2011 exhibition at Tate Modern, Orozco ponders the elements of good art, and explains his mission to relate to a broad audience by making light-hearted and accessible work.
Susan Doyon graduated from the Theatre Department at Montreal’s Concordia University. She has lived in Japan and Canada working as a producer and a freelance theatre director. She works on a variety of broadcast programs for ACA Films, BBC, Tate, Channel 4 and Discovery International.
RACHEL WHITEREAD
Director: James Price
Producer: Kate Vogel
Distributor: Tate Media
Colour, 8 minutes, English, 2010
Rachel Whiteread uses different methods of drawing in order to make connections between her collections of objects and the sculptures that result from them. The drawings serve as a way for the artist to “worry through” her work process, with the idea of stopping objects and spaces in time in order to study them. This film takes a look at a selection of Whiteread’s work, and through the artist, we discover how the act of drawing became an integral part of her observational process.
James Price received his MA in Documentary Direction at the National Film and television School in the UK. He has been a lecturer in filmmaking at the School of Arts and Media at the University of Brighton and, since 2008, he has run the production company Field Studies Ltd.
SUNDAY 5:30 PM
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present
Director: Matthew Akers
Producers: Jeff Dupre, Maro Chermayeff
Distributor: Films We Like
Colour, 105 minutes, English, 2012
Introduced by Jane Perdue, urban planner and critic
Testing her mental and physical limits with shocking, compelling and sometimes dangerous performances, Marina Abramović has been challenging the way people think about art for nearly 40 years. This documentary looks back on Abramović’s prolific career, and follows her as she prepares herself and a group of artists for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The centrepiece of the show is Abramović’s mesmerizing new performance, The Artist Is Present, involving her constant seated presence in the gallery space for the length of the three-month exhibition, during which she is available for one-on-one silent interaction with members of the public. Countless intimate and individual connections are made between the artist and her scores of participants; through each encounter, as Abramović says, “performance becomes life itself.”
Matthew Akers is an accomplished producer, director, photographer and cinematographer. Recently, he was the series producer and cinematographer on a National Geographic television series about the medical marijuana industry in Colorado. He has worked on several other film series and documentaries including ones for PBS and HBO.
Marina Abramović is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery, New York.
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