a collaborative film
Jūrmala, HD (transferred from Super 8) Color, Stereo, 9 Min collaborative film
Riga / Berlin, 2010 / 2016
A FILM BY:
Laura Horelli
Nina Lassila
Agnese Luse
Angela Melitopoulos
Eléonore de Montesquiou
Tanja Ostojić
Meggie Schneider
Isabell Spengler
Gitte Villesen
PERFORMERS: / in order of appearance: Laura Horelli, Tanja Ostojić, Nina Lassila, Brigitta Kuster, Angela Melitopoulos, Isabell Spengler, Gitte Villesen
IMAGE: / selected fragment, camera, idea & direction: Meggie Schneider
SOUND:/ one minute compositions /in order of appearance / by:
Meggie Schneider
Agnese Luse
Angela Melitopoulos / plays a piano piece by Jacques Ibert
Tanja Ostojić / Russian voice Sveta Dorojkina
Laura Horelli
Gitte Villesen / music Irmelin & Felia Gram-Hansen
Nina Lassila / computer voice Alex
Isabell Spengler
Eléonore de Montesquiou / homage to John Smith
About Jūrmala:
In September 2010, Latvian curator Agnese Luse invited nine Berlin-based female artists to Riga for a week, in order to present their films at the Survival-Kit Festival. After five days of discourse and lively discussions about the precarious realities of women artists in the workplace, they decided to spend the last Sunday of their visit at the historical beach in Jūrmala. The trip began with a Super8 Camera, and during this trip they decided to try a possibility of developing a small collaborative work: each artist shall have a minute of Super8 film at their disposal and devise a scene to film, while the others participate.
The resulting film owes its dramatic composition to the idea of the refrain: each of the authors individually conceived and personally created a soundtrack to a one-minute film fragment. The cohesiveness of the film is rooted in the soundtrack montage, which relates to and reinterprets the picture track as it repeats itself. The visual narrative of a given clip thus presents unforeseen events and unfolding surprises.
Just such an occurrence uncannily captures the situation of creation and its conditions. While the women are performing on the beach, wandering in and out of portable toilets installed at the beach and slamming the doors of the cabins – presumably reflecting the discussions of their week together in Riga – a woman passing by on the beach joins their choreography, entering the frame shortly before the clip ends. She poses an existential question: she asks if the toilets are free to use, and then enters a cabin. Staging, chance, and reality go hand-in-hand.
The authors are 9 predominately Berlin-based women artists and filmmakers of different origins and of different generations engaged with diverse discourses, topics and methods of work, including documentary and experimental filmmakers, visual-, video- and performance artists, genealogical researcher and cultural activist.
TANJA OSTOJIĆ 