A few days ago we presented our first creative partner project and our first short film, the result of a cooperation between Berlin-based composer and music producer Robot Koch and the photographer Sabrina Theissen. For “In a Creative Dialogue – Robot Koch x Sabrina Theissen for IWISHUSUN” our ambassadors got together to take a look at the topic of sight, which IWISHUSUN has dedicated its work to.

Here you can see Sabrina Theissen at work:

The result: a photographic tryptich which is shown below. The sky and the sun are the determining motifs, which, in a similarly minimalist way as the song by Robot Koch, are captured only indirectly by reflection, allowing the greatest possible space for the unexpected aspects of ones own interpretations in their complete reduction – a playing field for one’s own way of seeing and perspectives.

The process and the thoughts of the two IWISHUSUN ambassadors are documented in intense imagery in Editude Pictures’ short film, “In a Creative Dialogue – Robot Koch x Sabrina Theissen for IWISHUSUN”:

Frederic Leitzke & Andreas Lamoth

filmmakers & co-founders of Editude Pictures – Berlin

Together they are strong! Frederic Leitzke and Andreas Lamoth co-founded their own film production company Editude Pictures in late 2010. What started as a more or less improvised coalition of five friends, slowly but surely evolved into a young promising company. While music and art are definitely prioritised, both of them have also corporately worked for brands like Coca Cola, Levis, Red Bull and Converse. Nevertheless what we love the most are their urban films which are filled with their passion for street art, illustration, urban culture and music. No surprise that they are best-known for these kind of interactions. Their documentation of Berlin’s creative scene, “In The Belly Of A Whale,” is their first film and at the same time a foundation for many video works that followed.

While their first documentation strung together various filmic portraits of Berlin’s art scene members and is still complemented by new episodes, Frederic and Andreas also worked for our friend and music producer Robot Koch in the past. To unlock the exciting potential which arises from our creative supporters we teamed up with Editude Pictures and two of our other dear ambassadors – beautiful project which we will showcase very soon. Stay tuned!

In the meantime welcome Editude Pictures as one of our supporters!

You are filmmakers and therefore sight must be a very important sense to you. What other sense couldn’t be missed in your life? Why?
Andy: It’s really hard to imagine a life without any of my senses, but besides my eyes I would miss my ears the most of all I guess. For me vision is strongly connected to hearing which you can see in almost all of our films: Sound and especially Music is so important to set the right tone for moving images and are unseperable in my eyes.
Fredi: That’s for sure. Besides that I would probably miss tasting the most, because my hobby cooking wouldn’t make much “sense” anymore I guess.

What is your vision for your personal work? 
Andy: I hope to be working more in the field of documentaries in the future. There are tons of lives and people out there who are worth being banned to film and who’s stories are worth beeing told.
Fredi: Documentaries are very important to us for sure. Since our first film “In The Belly Of A Whale” lots of good things happened and we got great feedback for our work. That’s definitely a vision. Always try to do stuff that makes people happy, that entertains people, that has a purpose, that somehow “remains” in that crazy fast moving digital world.

Your personal opinion: what makes a good film? 
Andy: Authenticity. Most of the big blockbuster movies simply have no heart and are only produced for making money. So I really prefer movies with smaller or even no budgets for which the filmakers had to make a big creative effort to get it done.
Fredi: The story. Always the story. In the past, the story was the most important thing in a movie. Movies were made because writers and directors had things to say. Today it’s more about pleasing the market, the industry, the crowd with crazy effects, pompous settings, big stars, telling the same stupid stories again and again, using every cliché available. Of course today still many nice movies are made, but really good and innovative screenplays are definitely more rare than in the last century.

What filmmakers have inspired you lately?
Andy: I love Wes Anderson and am really looking forward to his new movie in January. Besides that I am really into short documentaries about everyday life, which you can find very easily by independent and hobby filmers on Vimeo.
Fredi: Yeah, Wes Anderson for sure. The filmmaker who inspired me the most recently was Malik Bendjelloui, director of the masterpiece “Searching for Sugar Man”. A man with an – again – absolutely amazing story, without a big budget, with lots of struggles during the production but with a strong vision and impressive skills succeeds in the end, brings his vision to the screen and creates one of the most beautiful documentaries ever made.

What themes do you find yourself exploring over and over again?
Both: We have a really strong bond into Berlin’s art scene, so it’s almost natural that we are exploring themes like creativity, making a living from what you love and collaborations between different kinds of people in our films. Besides that we are planing a new documentary about the new age of making music – hopefully we will start filming in 2014, watch out!

What is the most beautiful thing you ever saw?
Andy: That’s a tough one. I believe when you look close enough you can find beautiful things happening around you everyday, even (often mostly) in the most random and trivial situations.
Fredi: Impossible to answer.

Sunrise or sunset – what do you prefer?
Andy: Sunrise.
Fredi: Sunset.

As a seeing person it is hard, if not impossible, to imagine the world from the perspective of a blind person, and the same applies in reverse. How would you describe our world and surroundings to a blind person?
Both: We don’t think it’s fair trying to tell a blind person what the world looks like. We would rather try to find advantages which blind people have. For example we believe they have no problems with prejudice and are able to experience the world in very different but also exciting ways.

What would you like to see more often?
Andy: Justice.
Fredi: Humility.

What is your tactic for making the world a better place?
Andy: There is so much screwed up stuff happening around us that one person really can’t handle all types of it. So I guess you just have to concentrate on 2 or 3 things that matter most to you and try to make a change. Lately I am trying to boycott mass animal farming by not eating any meat no more; it’s really hard to see animals suffering because of massive exorbitance in our ways of living.
Fredi: Making the world a better place is a hard task. I rather focus on little things in my daily surroundings, that you really can influence and that make a small difference. Treat people nicely and with respect, be honest, be humble to the environment and in my daily life. Things like that.

When was the last time you gave back and what did you do?  
Andy: I am trying to support Unicef on a regular basis to help them fight the problem of stranded refugees all over the world.
Fredi: The last time? I guess that was some money I gave to the fantastic street musician on Warschauer Straße, that I pass every morning.

In the past Ralf Schmerberg‘s ads for Levi’s, Lufthansa and Nike stood out in Cannes, two of his films are part of MoMa’s permanent collection, his film and photo works won several international awards, his film “Trouble – Teatime in Heiligendamm” which documents 2007′s G8 summit was awarded the “Most Valuable Documentary of the Year” prize, in 2012 he received the title “Creative Leader of the Year” in the context of one of Germany’s most important media awards, Lead Awards – in short: Ralf Schmerberg is an internationally renowned and acclaimed artist and filmmaker. But most importantly the Berlin-based Schmerberg is a very sensitive person whose work and life is based on sight which is the most important sense to him. His personal and artistic vision is not about any aesthetic theories but is based on his own personality and visual impressions as well as the search for community and new ways of freedom.

FashionDaily.tv met the artist at his studio in Berlin-Kreuzberg and to those of you who German we recommend to watch their video interview!

When checking NOWNESS, we can always be sure that we will come across lots of new short films, often touching, always compelling. This time we were confronted with Jem Goulding‘s “Sergei Polunin: The Fragile Balance” – a short film about Sergei Polunin, the youngest-ever principal dancer in the history of the Royal Ballet who left Ukraine at the tender age of 13 to join London’s Royal Ballet School and is often compared with 20th century greats Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev. Capturing the inner world of the “Restless Prince of Ballet,” poet, artist and filmmaker Jem Goulding portrays this highly talented young man by stringing together atmospheric fragments and monologic snippets.

Shooting on Super 8 and her 16mm Bolex camera, Jem Goulding depicts a seldom seen side of Polunin who either is seen dancing or talking while walking, hanging around or sitting on a sofa, bare-chested and putting his numerous tattoos on display.

Watch “Sergei Polunin: The Fragile Balance” here:

Photo: Screenshot / NOWNESS.

“I am the student, Bootsy the teacher,” declares IWISHUSUN ambassdor Jamie Lidell right at the start, obviously still impressed by his get-together with music legend Bootsy Collins who has already collaborated with James Brown, Funkadelic, Parliament, Snoop Dogg, Sly, LL Cool J, Bobby Womack and Keith Richards among others. German-French television broadcaster arte brought these two talented musicians together – one of them a British electro/soul singer, the other one a legendary funk musician; the result is a new episode of their popular series “Durch die Nacht mit / Au cœur de la nuit avec …” which is worth watching.

After broadcasting the entire show on TV, you can now watch it online:

 

It’s well known that people in big cities live a hectic life. You wake up early, swallow your first coffee being still half asleep, rush to the office fighting the traffic, arrive home late. While most people would prefer to avoid the crowd on the subway, its wagons can become a place of rest too! To proof this, photographer, filmmaker and creative Nicholas Barker shot the short film “Tokyo Dreams”. Winner of the Los Angeles Sunset Film Festival 2013, and currently a Vimeo Staff Pick, the nine minutes long video might be voyeuristic since we observe tired workers, students and families but at the same time “Tokyo Dreams” resembles a visual meditation.

Editor Ray Stevens calls “Tokyo Dreams” “a journey behind closed eyelids” describing it as ”a short Zen-like film about sleeping commuters on the Tokyo subway. Shooting 12 hours a day for two weeks, UK director Nicholas Barker contemplates the stillness and vulnerability of his fellow passengers and wonders whether they will wake in time for their stop…”

Although seemingly simple in its subject matter, the film takes a patient look at the (involuntary) personal and intimate moments in the thick of a busy city life. Nicholas Barker who shot 12 hours a day for two weeks explains in his short mission statement on his site:

I like to film things that I find amusing: questions of taste, hetrosexual fiasco, domestic absurdity, acts of idiocy, all forms of self-delusion. Anything in short that is somehow funny, painful and true.

I shoot this material in a detatched, observational manner, which has often been described as voyeuristic. I make no apologies for this. I need to stare at things in order to make sense of them.

Images: Screenshots / vimeo.

Grass is no longer green but pink. Trees, stones and the wide landscape, they all changed colours but what sounds like a fairytale wonderland, fails at second sight: armed soldiers in uniforms cross the landscape; people run through the streets; the atmosphere gets more and more disturbing. This is not surprising because the location and circumstances are anything but beautiful: Richard Mosse’s film „The Enclave“ ranges between documentary journalism and contemporary art as he captures life in Congo by using a discontinued military surveillance technology, a type of colour infrared film called Kodak Aerochrome. Originally developed for camouflage detection, this aerial reconnaissance film registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light, rendering the green landscape in vivid hues of lavender, crimson, and hot pink.

Richard Mosse’s „The Enclave“ is the Irish contribution to the current 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia and will be opened until November 24th 2013. As a major new multi-media installation, which was commissioned and curated by Anna O’Sullivan, Director of the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny, the Irish artist collaborated with cinematographer Trevor Tweeten and composer Ben Frost to create a highly immersive five-screen multimedia installation that is a mythic conflation of many discrete enclaves in Eastern Congo. Inserted as journalists within armed groups, which fight nomadically in a war zone plagued by frequent ambushes, massacres and systematic sexual violence, the trio documented their environment by film, photography and sound. What could have been a two-fisted documentation turned into images that carry a fascinating and irritating atmosphere at the same time.

One reason for that is Mosse’s use of the Kodak Aerochrome film. Even though its origins can be found in military context and has found civilian uses among cartographers, agronomists, minerologists, and archaeologists to reveal subtle changes in the landscape, also Rock musicians like the Grateful Dead or Jimi Hendrix appropriated the medium in their artworks, making use of the psychedelic effect that follows the variation in colour. More than 50 years later, Richard Mosse utilises this paradox too: “Mosse uses this film to reveal a cancerous yet unseen humanitarian tragedy with a disturbing psychedelic palette, posing aesthetic questions in a situation of profound human suffering.”

The resulting imagery, shot on 16mm colour infrared film by Trevor Tweeten, renders the Sub-Saharan jungle war zone in sickly hues of crimson, purple, teal blue and hot pink. Entirely comprised of organic Congolese sound recordings, Ben Frost created an appending audio composition that adds to the visitor’s experience the sense of hearing. Altogether they push past the boundaries of adequate representation to create “a discomfiting and sinister world to penetrate sensibilities and make this ineffable nightmare visible.”

Richard Mosse: The Enclave, June 1st – November 24th 2013, La Biennale di Venezia, The Pavilion of Ireland. 

Image 1: Still from ‘The Enclave’, shot on 16mm color infrared film in Eastern Congo, by Richard Mosse, 2012. A young soldier from Mai Mai Yakutumba poses in Savannah at a secret location near Lake Tanganyika, South Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2012. Images 2+3: Richard Mosse, The Enclave, 2013. Six screen film installation, color infrared film transferred to HD video. Filmed in Eastern Congo. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo © Tom Powel Imaging inc. 

A list of organizations the artist suggests for anyone looking to contribute to relief efforts in the Congo: