Kellerkino: Dane Komljen, James Lattimer und David Maljković

Dane Komljen & James Lattimer
All Still Orbit, 2016
Film HD, 16:9, colour, sound, 23 min

All Still Orbit connects two seemingly unrelated moments in the construction of Brasília: the dream of an Italian saint that served as justification for the founding of the city, and a small town built by the labourers constructing the new capital to house them and their families. What is the point of a city based on a dream? Are all dreams the same? Sometimes a documentary film can feel like a fairy tale.

Dane Komljen (* 1986, SFR Yugoslavia) studied film directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. He completed a master's programme in contemporary art in Le Fresnoy, France. His films have been screened and awarded at the Festival de Cannes, Festival del Film Locarno, IFF Rotterdam, FID Marseille, Berlinale and Sarajevo FF.

James Lattimer is a festival programmer and film critic. He started working for the Berlinale Forum in 2008 and became a member of the selection committee in 2011. Our Body, his first collaboration with Dane Komljen, screened at the 2015 Tiger Awards competition for short films and was nominated for Best Short Film at the European Film Awards.

David Maljković
Lost Memories from These Days, 2006
Video, colour, sound, 6:45 min
From the MMSU Rijeka collection

The narrative structure of the video Lost Memories from These Days refers to fairs that bear witness to the clash between the rich capitalist West and the idea of a better socialist society. In Maljković's work, this takes on a parodic distance. The psychophysical disorder and insensitivity of the tired Croatian generation is symbolically represented here by the role of the hostesses: Tired, passive women advertise cars whose wheels are fixed in concrete blocks, making it impossible to make a move for the long-awaited prosperity.

David Maljković (* 1973, Rijeka) studied at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, graduating in 2002 with a degree in painting. He has participated in more than 40 solo exhibitions and more than 100 group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad, including at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, PS1 in New York and the Kunstverein in Hamburg (2007). As a national representative, he has participated in various biennials, from São Paulo (2010) to Berlin and Prague (2008) to the Zagreb and Belgrade Salons.

The programme World - Image: Contingencies for the "Kellerkino" proposes artistic positions that address the possibilities of artistic moving image production as an international infrastructure of communication, exchange and social and artistic imagination, exploring regimes of visibility in different contexts, histories and geographies and a cinematic dialogue that addresses the relationships between the image and the world.

The moving image works of Raffaella Crispino, Dane Komljen and James Lattimer frame space and time, territory and identity, exploring social realities and how these concepts are tied to the imagination. They unfold loose connections and tensions between different spatial and temporal dynamics, people and their surroundings. David Maljković, Filipa Cesar and Louis Henderson and Rebecca Jane Arthur remind us of our active role in defining contemporary images by addressing the perspective of the visible and invisible, the narratives and stories that resonate at the edge of contingencies, historical or social renegotiations.