As a form of poetic and conscious resistance to a world that would like to isolate us ever more, we choose to move towards the light – the one of the projector beam – and cultivate the art of joy by gathering together for an afternoon and evening under the glass roof of POL-N. Experimental cinema is embodied in gestures that bring people together, encourage collaboration and transmission, as demonstrated by this rich programme.
A conference, screenings here and there, immersive performances, practical workshops and reading spaces… all roads lead to film.
PROGRAMME
14:30 – Projection and lecture
Tinkering, cooking, gardening, sewing: minor gestures and the politics of material fragility (in cinema) by Éric Thouvenel, lecturer in film studies.
“Making films that resist the engulfment of photochemical by digital technology means accepting, preserving and working with the fragility of the medium, and cultivating that fragility. Through the work of filmmakers, ancient gestures that we sometimes thought had disappeared but which have long structured human societies and our ability to live together are spontaneously reappearing: tinkering, cooking, gardening, sewing. These ‘minor gestures’ are now at the heart of experimental film practices and forms, and it is also through them that films express how they resonate with the world.” (É. Thouvenel)
Prior to the lecture projection of Seed, Lichun Tseng – NL -Filmwerkplaats – 2024 – 16mm – 10′
This film was created at Guandu Nature Park during the summer art festival of 2024 in Taiwan.
Guided by light—both abstract and concrete, a vital energy in the ecological environment—the work draws inspiration from natural states. It captures nature from a microscopic perspective, holding fleeting moments and connecting all senses with the living world. The images emerge through exposure—an encounter with light—developed with natural ingredients found on site, leaving traces of impermanence, observation, and moment.
Sounds were recorded at sunrise and sunset; light-sensitive emulsions were coated and exposed under a new moon, in a park free of light pollution—an open-air darkroom.
Every aspect of the process becomes an element of creative thought and possibility.
16:00-19:00 Workshops
Continuous – no registration required
Open to all !!!
Come and browse our stands, take part in our workshops on experimental cinema and linocut printing on fabric (bring your own pieces of fabric!) and while you’re here, take a look around our reading room and mini bookshop.
Distros
Brilliant selection of books, records and tapes.
by WARM & ali buh baeh.
16 mm cinema workshop – optical sound and visual music / pay what you can
Draw on the film, scratch it, engrave it, add collages, transfer letrasets (yes)
We will be taking a visual, tactile and graphic approach to film. There is only one guiding principle: think rhythm.
The patterns created, read by the projector, will transform into movements for both the eyes and ears.
In this collective joy of doing things together, everyone will be able to compose their own film loop, a small unit of visual and sound score.
Linocut workshop / pay what you can per item
Linocut workshop / pay what you want
Come and personalise your T-shirt, tote bag, etc. with special PRISME DIY merch.
Choose from three linocut stamp designs to print in the colours of your favourite festival.
In other words, classy stuff.
In these austere times, the pay-what-you-want price will go towards supporting the festival!
We will have a small stock of textiles available, but feel free to bring your own.
4pm – Cakes, candies and screening for Cool Kids
A cocktail of explosive films for little ones, but also for everyone else!
Licht und Ton, Jan Rehwinkel – LaborBerlin e.V. – DE – 2025 – 16mm – 5′
“The fascination of painting sound – a composition of visible sound and audible images.”
Portales, Elena Duque – Cinelab – ES – 2025 – 16mm – 16′
“Portales follows the course of the Guadalete river in Cádiz, Spain, from the mountains to the sea: a catalog of landscapes that hide another landscapes, a collection of interdimensional portals (and postcards) that fuses live action and animation creating an impossible fauna and flora, another history and geography for a modest watercourse.”
Blanket Statement #1: Home is where the Heart is, Jodie Mack – US – 2012 – 16mm – 3′
Discordant dysfunction down to the nitty griddy.
6pm – Projection
Terminus for You, Nicolas Rey – FR – 1996 – 16mm – 10′
“Terminus for you, by Nicolas Rey, takes us on a strange journey. That of passengers in the Paris metro. they use a moving railway which takes them from one platform to another, from one line to another and from one destination to the next. What do we actually see ? The thick grain of the black and white film composes very pictorial images. Geometric shapes come and go. The faces of people come into view and then flit away. Glimpses of words, titles torn from posters, are interspersed between these fleeting encounters. This playfully introduces different chapters. Love, solitude, couples, etc. The highly polished soundtrack artfully introduces other elements. You have to listen carefully to appreciate the subtle details, like the faces which emerge from the flames blown by a fire-eater. Thus, the soundtrack evokes a variety of atmospheres: that of fairground, of a circus, and the lazy waters of a river flowing between its banks -— the Seine no doubt — setting the pace and commenting, like the posters, on the endless stream of passengers. The filmmaker ingeniously presents people according to affinities: mocking young girls in a hurry, tired old couples… This is a real comédie humaine presented to us — in a few fragments and a small number of shots. Then, a few minutes from the end, the cinematic process reaches the outermost limit and the images disintegrate. The film itself seems to decompose and the faces only leave their final impression on the canvas. Painful spectres, during three minutes, follow one another before giving way to a last joke played by the author. This short visual essay, on the borderline between the documentary — he seizes an everyday situation — and avant-garde film — to which he pays a tribute — defies, with irrepressible joy, any narrow classification. It freely combines painting, photography and cinema and reveals a passion for reality and a love of humanity to which the filmmaker has already accustomed us.”
7:00 p.m. – Surprise banquet
€10 – booking recommended at mariane(at)mire-exp.org
Food and cinema often go hand in hand. Come and see for yourself at a surprise banquet with a PRISME twist.
9pm Screenings and Performances
An evening reflecting the times we are living in, imbued with the gravity of the past and present moment, but where hope creeps into the unexpected, humble gestures like so many zones of temporary utopia.
A first a 16 mm performance, traversed by the golden darkness of the port of Rotterdam, from which emerges a silhouette struggling against the coming storm, liquid roughness. A second to take us on a journey through the memories of places shaped by European colonial extractivism. Whether it’s film or scarred soil, what remains when all the money has been extracted?
Between these two live forms, a breath: a programme cobbled together by several people in response to the gestures evoked during Éric Thouvenel’s lecture. When cinema humbly shows other ways of making the world.
– Performance
Maasvlakte Delight, Laurent Reyes & Erwan Tracol, sound: Clinch – Filmwerkplaats, Mire, Labo l’Argent – FR – 2025 – 25′ – performance
“Thick smoke swallows the horizon, flames consume it. A storm is brewing.
A flickering silhouette attempts to make its way through.
The frenetic pace carries us away.”
— Film programme
Super 8 Girl Games, Ashley Hans Scheirl & Ursula Pürrer – 1985 – AUT- 3′
Ursula Pürrer and Ashley Hans Scheirl began shooting short Super 8 films together in 1984. Presented by the filmmakers as ‘home movies,’ these short films, which record brief performances, leave a strong impression, blending intimacy and freedom. Bodies—and the relationships and exchanges between bodies—are at the heart of their cinema. These bodies are fetishised both by the editing and framing, which isolate selected parts, and by a kind of cult that is expressed through inventive costumes, vivid colours, make-up, tattoos, accessories, and more.”
Pellicule Salée, Elodie Ferré – Mire – FR – 2022 – 16mm – 5′
Various emulsions in contact with salt that I collected in the summer of 2021 in the salt marshes of Guérande.
K (Désert), Frédérique Devaux – FR – 2004 – 16mm – 4’
Explores the fragmentation of a culture through the populations of the Algerian desert.
Windmill 2, Chris Welsby – UK – 1972 – 16mm – 8′
The camera films a park landscape through the blades of a small, hand-built windmill. Each of the eight blades was covered in mirrored plastic. The film was shot ona windy day in the park, with three 100-foot takes being shot on the same day. The camera angle remained the same throughout. Variations in wind speed and direction cause a constantly shifting relationship between the landscape in front of the camera, as seen between the blades of the windmill, and the reflection of the camera with the landscape behind it. The rhythm of this movement between foreground and background is created by variations in the strength and direction of the wind.
Kitchen Beets, Bea Haut – UK – 2011 – 16mm – 2′ 45
Never-ending tidying up turned into rhythmic beat and magic trick.
A brief structural film cut to the rhythm of the gap between the optical sound head and the image.
The Kiss, Ian Bourn et John Smith – UK – 1999 – 16mm > digital – 5′
A depiction of the forced development of a hothouse flower. Organic growth is progressively overtaken by a more sinister, mechanical process.
Capitalism Slavery, Ken Jacobs – US – 2006 – 14′
(WARNING: This work contains throbbing light. Should not be viewed by individuals with epilepsy or seizure disorders.
Ken Jacobs writes: “An antique stereograph image of cotton-pickers, computer-animated to present the scene in an active depth even to single-eyed viewers. Silent, mournful, brief.”
In Capitalism: Slavery, Jacobs uses a Victorian stereograph (a double-photograph) of slaves picking cotton under the watchful eye of a white overseer as the source for this wrenching silent work. Through digital manipulation, Jacobs creates a haunting illusion of depth and movement. It is as if he has “entered” the image and reactivated this historical moment; he moves among the figures and isolates individuals, creating a stuttering, pulsing effect that suggests motion even as it animates stasis.)
– Performance
Submemorias de un rollo, Georgy Bagdasarov et Alexandra Moralesova – Labodoble – CZ – 2025 – 16mm – 40′ – performance
“The memory stains of the places where silver had been extracted for centuries. That silver gave Europe the opulence and shaped its insolent images. There is no more silver left in those places. There is no more silver left in this films. It was there but we bleached it out so you can see the colors.”