Films, people - and other oddities: VIDEOEX

In 2013, I was invited by a festival in Belgrade to present a programme of current Swiss experimental films. During my research, I discovered "After" by artist Pauline Julier and was immediately taken with the film. Despite, or rather because of its simplicity. In just three visual motifs - fireworks, a house fire, blue sky - together with spoken thoughts on statements by the writer David Foster Wallace, the emotional state of our postmodern present is aptly captured: The party excess is over, hungover, we register the consequences of the devastation and struggle with our responsibility. Just over ten years later, this state of mind seems more relevant than ever.

It's wonderful that VIDEOEX is dedicating a three-part programme to Pauline Julier's work this year.
Also wonderful, the predominantly female international focus of the festival:

From Vietnam, this year's country focus, two female filmmakers will be presented in specials:

Nguyễn Trinh Thi, the pioneer of Vietnamese independent cinema, is considered Vietnam's most important contemporary video artist thanks to her thematic approach to history, nationalisms and social constructs in her home country.

Trinh T. Min-ha has lived in the USA since the 1970s, is an author, composer, professor of women's and gender studies and has been making films for over 30 years, many of which have been honoured with film awards and whose defining themes are cultural identity, gender roles and colonialism.

I am very excited about the programmes for Basma al-Sharif. The artist with Palestinian roots can confidently be described as "international": born in Kuwait, she grew up in France, Gaza and the USA and currently lives in Berlin. Unsurprisingly, she describes her working method as nomadic and deals with issues of homelessness, identity and collective memory in her films, demonstrating a fine sense of satire, poetry and technical experimentation.

I'm also looking forward to the special on Aura Satz. The artist, who was born in Barcelona and lives in London, has been combining her cinematic exploration of music, acoustics and sound technologies with her interest in feminism for years. VIDEOEX is showing her latest film "Preemtive Listening", which deals with the function, meaning and symbolism of sirens.

The US-American Wu Tsang is likely to be an old acquaintance in Zurich, as she was in-house director at the Schauspielhaus Zurich during the outgoing directorship of Nicolas Stemann and Benjamin von Blomberg. Whether her queer-feminist critique of traditional cultural interpretations comes across in her films in the same way as in her theatre productions can be found out in the festival's two special programmes