Inventive Docs and Hybrid Films Featured in FIDMarseille at Moving Image This Weekend

FIDMarseille, which takes place in early July in Southern France, is one of the world's most adventurous film festivals. Under the artistic direction of Jean-Pierre Rehm, it is a showcase for a myriad of groundbreaking documentaries and fiction films that showcase new approaches to reality. Museum of the Moving Image presents FIDMarseille Carte Blanche: A Weekend with Programmer Jean-Pierre Rehm, today and tomorrow, November 23 and 24, 2013. The program features more than a dozen films from established stars of world cinema such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tsai Ming-liang, as well an emerging talents Mati Diop, Miguel Gomes, Marie Voignier, Salomé Lamas, and others.

As recently described in Sight and Sound, "What's interesting about FIDMarseille is that it doesn't just do the whole where-fact-and-fiction-collide thing. The program has one of the most expansive perspectives of all the progressive documentary festivals, with artist's film and video, documentary and fiction film all commingling." Jean Pierre-Rehm will be present for all screenings, which include several New York premieres, and a selection of films from recent editions. The series is presented with support from the Cultural Services Office of the French Embassy, New York.

"Jean-Pierre Rehm is an extraordinary film programmer," said Chief Curator David Schwartz. "He has discovered many important contemporary filmmakers, and has also helped redefine our view of documentary, experimental, and fiction filmmaking."

Among the highlights are:
• Anthem (2006) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a five-minute slice of life set to pop music, meant as a cinema purification rite, which aptly opens the weekend
• A Thousand Suns (2013) by Mati Diop, actress (Simon Killer, 35 Shots of Rum), filmmaker, and niece of the late Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety, in which she catches up with Mory, the star of Mambety's Touki Bouki, 40 years later; presented with Diop's Big in Vietnam (2011)
• Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang's The Skywalk Is Gone (2002), a 22 minute epilogue of sorts to What Time Is It There? (2001), featuring Lee Kang-Sheng and Chen Shiang-chyi in a brief street encounter; paired with Mambo Cool (2013), the astonishing debut film from Chris Gude, set in a bustling Colombian city
• Tabu director Miguel Gomes's found-footage tapestry Redemption (2013); paired with fellow Portugeuse artist/filmmaker Salomé Lamas's No Man's Land (2012), a mesmerizing interrogation of a self-proclaimed hired killer
• UK artist/filmmaker Philippe Warnell's Outlandish (2009) a soliloquy by French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, the recipient of a heart transplant, on the body and its strangeness, juxtaposed with scenes of an organ transplant and a live octopus; presented with Mexican/Guatemalan director Julio Hernández Cordón's Even the Sun Has Spots (2011)
• One, Two, Many (2012), the latest film from Brussels-based Dutch artist Manon de Boer, exploring music, speech, and cinema; presented with The Confessions of Roee Rosen (2008), a document capturing three women who "perform" the Israeli filmmaker Roee Rosen's confessions
• French artist/filmmaker Marie Voignier's The Hypothesis of Mokélé-Mbembé (2011), in which she travels to West Cameroon with an explorer seeking a mythical creature that is a mix of a rhinoceros, crocodile, snake, and dinosaur; paired with A Third Version of the Imaginary (2012), an assemblage of footage from a Kenyan film archive by Benjamin Tiven.

Unless otherwise noted, tickets for screenings are free with paid Museum Admission ($12 adults / $9 seniors and students) and free for Museum members. Members may also reserve tickets in advance. For information about Museum membership and to join, visit http://movingimage.us/support/membership or call 718 777 6877.

SCHEDULE FOR 'FIDMARSEILLE CARTE BLANCHE,' NOVEMBER 23-24, 2013
Unless otherwise noted, screenings are free with Museum admission (and free for Museum members) and take place in the Sumner M. Redstone Theater or Bartos Screening Room at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue, in Astoria.

Even the Sun Has Spots (Hasta el Sol Tiene Manchas) and other shorts
With Jean-Pierre Rehm in person
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2:00 P.M.
Mexico/Guatemala. Dir. Julio Hernández Cordón. 2011, 62 mins. Digital projection. In Hernandez-Cordon's portrayal of the world of adolescents, comedy is overlaid with pathos, and a documentary viewpoint organizes a deliberately open fiction. The film's lost souls are implicit allegories of Guatemala's destiny; the fable-like film is stamped with Brechtian artifice, filmed in a studio with 2-D sets and actors in masks. Two characters stand out: Pepe Moco, a mentally handicapped boy who makes an ad for a presidential candidate; and Beto, a rascal who threatens people passing by.
Preceded by: Anthem. Thailand. Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 2006, 5 mins. 35mm. Two women chat by a stretch of water. They talk about music coming from a ghetto blaster. One of them says the music has been sanctified and will bring good luck to the cinema in which it is played. We then see a gymnasium: people are dancing, playing badminton, and arranging beautiful tables as if to prepare a show. This brief hymn was conceived to purify cinemas. Outlandish: Strange Foreign Bodies. U.K. Dir. Philippe Warnell. 2009, 20 mins. Digital projection. Philippe Warnell's film involves two actors: philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and an octopus. Sitting at his desk, Nancy tells us about the body and its strangeness. The octopus moves its eight limbs along the panes of an aquarium on the deck of a crewless ship that it seems to be piloting. Between these scenes, we see the process of an organ transplant. Two dances echo each other: one is the dance of language, of ongoing thought incarnated in a body; and the other is the dance of a mute animal moving about like some code's figures, trapped in a transparent prison.

No Man's Land / Redemption
With Jean-Pierre Rehm in person
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 4:30 P.M.
No Man's Land. Portugal. Dir. Salomé Lamas. 2012, 72 mins. DCP. Is Paulo de Figueiredo a mythomaniac? Starting out as a soldier in Angola, he says, but keen to cut off the ears of black people during the war for independence from Portuguese colonization, he then worked as a mercenary here and there, and finally for various European states against the Basque movement. In a unique and stripped down interior, Paulo calmly boasts of his evilness, his efficiency, and his skill as a Samurai killer, until the camera cuts away to show him in the middle of African immigrants, cooking under a bridge, a typical pathetic tramp, suddenly disarmed to play housemaid. The real career path, whatever the details, of someone who has always confused horror with the ordinary, is explored in this mesmerizing and adventurous film by artist and videomaker Salomé Lamas.
Preceded by: Redemption. Portugal/France/Germany/Italy. Dir. Miguel Gomes. 2013, 26 mins. 35mm. On January 21, 1975, in a village in the north of Portugal, a child writes to his parents who are in Angola to tell them how sad Portugal is. On July 13, 2011, in Milan, an old man remembers his first love. On May 6, 2012, in Paris, a man tells his baby daughter that he will never be a real father. During a wedding ceremony on September 3, 1977, in Leipzig, the bride battles against a Wagner opera that she cannot get out of her head. But where and when have these four poor devils begun searching for redemption? Composed entirely from found footage, the film features four monologues, one performed by FID Marseille programmerJean-Pierre Rehm.

The Confessions of Roee Rosen / One, Two, Many
With Jean-Pierre Rehm in person
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 7:00 P.M.
The Confessions of Roee Rosen. Israel. Dir. Roee Rosen. 2008, 60 mins. Digital projection. Autobiography assumes a pact with the person it is addressed to, a contract of confidence that paradoxically authorizes the person confessing to hiding behind his revelations, and to wear, eventually, all sorts of masks. That is the chosen strategy here; three women in succession addressing the camera substitute the male subject expected on the screen. These women are immigrant workers in Israel, each coming from different countries, with a poor understanding of Hebrew that they decipher with difficulty with an autocue machine. Suddenly the restricted frame of the confessional explodes: what their words, their minimal choreographies reveal goes beyond privacy and its pathetic little secrets. This maladroit trio exposes itself in the place of artist Roee Rosen, who uses ventriloquism to voice fantasies too immense not to be shared.
Preceded by: One, Two, Many. Belgium. Dir. Manon de Boer. 2012, 22 mins. 16mm. Her previous films Sylvia Krystel-Paris (FID 2004) and Le temps qu'il reste (FID 2008) explored the spaces of music and speech in cinema, between picture and sound, seeing and listening. With One, Two, Many, she plays with political and aesthetic variations and issues, this time by tying together three gestures which eventually merge into a single one giving pride of place to the body. One: A strong blow from deep inside flutist Michael Schmid as he plays a piece by Istva'n Matus. Breath turns into a note. Two: The film opens up to multiplicity, as suggested by an off-screen discussion about a text by Roland Barthes on togetherness. Many: Clearly carried out in the finale, this community of "numbers" becomes a flowing wandering among the listeners and performers of Tre canti popolari by Giacinto Scelsi, a piece that is all piercing sounds and onomatopoeias. The film delivers a lesson in politics, parting or bringing together bodies and sounds.

Films by Mati Diop: A Thousand Suns / Big In Vietnam
With Jean-Pierre Rehm in person
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2:00 P.M.
A Thousand Suns (Mille soleils). France. Dir. Mati Diop. 2013, 45 mins. Digital projection. Inheritance is a choice, and a quite demanding one, since it requires you to go back in time. This is precisely the journey that the young but seasoned filmmaker Mati Diop embarks upon here, by looking back at Touki Bouki, the cult film made by her late uncle Djibril Diop Mambety in Dakar in 1972. In Touki Bouki, two lovers dream of a heaven they picture in Paris. One follows the dream and goes into exile, while the other chooses to stay. This "Journey of the Hyena" (as translated from the Wolof) deals above all else with choices. In Mati Diop's journey, the story of her family is entangled with the history of cinema and the history of Senegal, as embodied by Magaye Niang, the protagonist of the original epic. Temporalities juxtapose as 40-year-old characters make their comeback. Somewhere Between naturalism and fantasy, tribute and investigation, humor and melancholy, Mille soleils (One Thousand Suns) keeps the promise of its title, and shines.
Big in Vietnam. France . Dir. Mati Diop. 2011, 27 mins. Digital projection. In the middle of a dappled forest near Marseille, a crew is shooting an adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, but the actor playing Valmont disappears. In her search for him the director comes across places, bars, streets in a Marseille that echoes the Vietnam she comes from. As she moves from one place to another, underground liaisons rise to the surface, while the shoot continues on its own, virtually without her. Mati Diop paints a portrait of a woman between two worlds, between her desires and her memories, wandering through a cosmopolitan Marseille with a ghostly colonial past.

Mambo Cool / The Skywalk Is Gone
With Jean-Pierre Rehm in person
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 4:30 P.M.
Mambo Cool. Colombia. Dir. Chris Gude. 2013, 62 mins. Digital projection. White powder, dealers, and female poseurs in a shady city barely glimpsed. A man who introduces himself as a warrior talks to spirits. In this highly skillful first film, meager plots are collected in bare settings, marked out by fixed frames with straight lines and pure colors. An amazing, almost threatening quietness prevails, reinforced by serene voices and stylized action that gives each meeting and each line of dialogue the weight of necessity. In the nooks and crannies of a claustrophobic city, whose hustle and bustle can be heard from afar, an unexpected body trade is taking place, with a 32-year-old prostitute claiming to be a virgin, with alleged clients simply offering massages, and the story of a friendship between a man and a gorilla. We know nothing for sure, except that this world goes by the melancholic and nagging rhythm of mambo.
The Skywalk Is Gone (Le Pont N'est Plus Là). Taiwan/France. Dir. Tsai Ming-liang. 2002, 22 mins. 35mm. Taipei, the ultra-modern bustling capital of Taiwan. A disorientated young woman wandering around in search of a bridge over a busy road comes upon a young man who is going to the casting session for a pornographic film. Their link? There is none, except chance. In this epilogue to And what time is it over there? (2001) Tsai Ming-liang captures in sequential shots the bodies lost in a maze-like town, filming its smooth surface, its distractions and reflections.

A Third Version of the Imaginary / The Hypothesis of the Mokélé-Mbembé (L'hypothèse du Mokélé M'bembé)
With Jean-Pierre Rehm in person
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 7:00 P.M.
The Hypothesis of the Mokélé-Mbembé (L'hypothèse du Mokélé M'bembé). France. Dir. Marie Voignier. 2011, 78 mins. Digital projection. With Hinterland (FID 2009), shot in East Germany, Marie Voignier introduced us to spaces with multiple strata in which layers of history, the present, and the imaginary cannot be distinguished. The Hypothesis of the Mokélé-Mbembé ploughs similar ground, while carrying us far from Europe, to south-eastern Cameroon. The explorer Michel Ballot has meticulously mapped out the jungle and the muddy riverbanks in search of a mysterious animal Unknown to zoologists: the "Mokélé-Mbembé," a prehistoric hybrid of rhinoceros, crocodile, snake, and dinosaur. Is it a real animal or a mythological beast? Ballot questions the Pygmies, installing a camera to film the river during his absence, seeking traces, trying to find clues. From this obsessive quest the contours of a ghostly Africa are drawn in negative, more imaginary than real, an object of fantasy, a mental space made of silence, stamped with a colonial vision, discrete but insistent.
Preceded by:
A Third Version of the Imaginary. Kenya. Dir. Benjamin Tiven. 2012, 12mins. Digital projection. The question of language, its representation, and its links to the image are brought forth through poignant and revelatory means in this very short and intense film. Set in a film library in Nairobi and guided by the manager of the site, we follow a presentation of archival footage shot in Kenya. Tivens's enigmatic film-an assemblage that makes subject of the archive and its containing materials inextricable its own-develops complex questions around the politics of the conservation and preservation of images.

Museum of the Moving Image (movingimage.us) advances the understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media. In January 2011, the Museum reopened after a major expansion and renovation that nearly doubled its size. Accessible, innovative, and forward-looking, the Museum presents exhibitions, education programs, significant moving-image works, and interpretive programs, and maintains a collection of moving-image related artifacts.

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Pictured: Still from Big in Vietnam. Courtesy of FIDMarseillies International Film Festival.