2013
GHOST TOWN #3
Last year Ghost Town #1 and Ghost Town #2 elicited reactions from the artists who submitted their recent films to us. So the programme is being carried on in 2013. What remains of cities gutted by the constraints of political conflicts and economic recessions? Famagusta-Varosha in Cyprus, a city guarded by the army, looms up from its sea front. The American city of Cairo, lying at the confluence of the river Ohio and the river Mississippi, is breaking apart. A new vision of the Berlin-Tempelhof airport is being proposed by Sun Noh. It echoes the one proposed by Maria Frycz, last year. In Tangiers, project and reality eye one another.
Marcel Dinahet
Famagusta-Varosha 1, Chypre (côté turc)
2009, 4 mn 33
Production Suspendedspaces, Amiens
The city of Famagusta-Varosha in Cyprus was emptied of its inhabitants by the Turkish army in 1978. It is an empty ghost town which you are notallowed to photograph or film. It is guarded by the army. MD
Pieter Geenen
Nocturne #2
2012, 12 mn
Production : Cultuurcentrum Brugge with the support of Flemish Community
Registered with a mobile phone camera in the spring of 2011, Nocturne #2 shows the central lanes, squares and streets of Tehran at night, at the most quiet moment of the day. In recent history, the area around the infamous Azadi Tower (Freedom Tower) was the backdrop of various protests, demonstrations, and violent repression. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the nationalistic and patriotic demonstrations during the following Iran-Iraq War, or the aftermath of the 2009 presidential elections are part of our collective memory. At the moment of filming, the so called “Arabic Spring” determined life in the Arabic world. Revolutions in these countries started after acts of resistance on the infamous local streets and squares. PG
Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan
Cairo : the breaking up the ice
2009, 16 mn
Cairo features 19th century ornithologist John James Audubon’s tale of the six weeks he spent stranded at the frozen confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, in 1810. Today this is the location of Cairo, a town at the southernmost tip of Illinois. Wedged between the two rivers, and encircled by levees, the once prosperous Cairo is today a largely abandoned and derelict town. The film explores both manmade and natural environments along the frozen upper Mississippi, leading to a concluding segment where Audubon’s dramatic narrative of hardship is set against the desolation of Cairo’s historic commercial centre. JC&NJ
Safia Benhaïm
Cap Tingis
2012, 6 mn
Production : Red Shoes, avec l’aide du CNAP
In Tangiers, beside a road, a board invites people to visit a show apartment in a residential complex under construction. On the poster, there is a drawing of a man, a virtual occupant of the residence overlooking the sea. The man, with his elbows propped on his balcony, is looking out. There is a dull creaking sound: two children are playing on a swing. The eyes of the living children and the virtual man intersect, overlap—inhabitants of a same inbetween world. SB
Sun Noh
Tempelhof
Janvier 2012, 2012, 11 mn
Resulting from shots of the old Berlin-Tempelhof airport, the film opens with a monumental skyline. It was indeed right here that Hitler delivered a speech before more than a million people. The film offers us a contemplation of this landscape which is both empty and filled, as a ghostlike monument, by projecting the invisible part which steeps this historic place. SN