BEEF Presents: Conspirators of Perception Part 3

This third part of the BEEF Presents programme showcases the work of national and international artists who work within experimental film, experimental documentary and expanded cinema, and each in their own way push the boundaries of the medium.

BEEF Presents: Conspirators of Perception Part 3 will take place at the Watershed Cinema, Bristol, and is made possible by support from West of England Visual Arts Alliance (WEEVA) and The Brunswick Club.

PROGRAMME OVERVIEW

  • Tuesday 28 March 2024, 6.30pm, Watershed – The Commonplace Unravelled: The Films of Tara Najd Ahmadi + Q&A
  • Thursday 25 April 2024, 6pm, Watershed – Katrina Daschner: Hiding in the Lights + Q&A
  • Date & venue to be announced – David Leister and Friends Expand Cinema

 

The Commonplace Unravelled: The Films of Tara Najd Ahmadi

Tuesday 28th March 2024, 18:30

Watershed Cinema, 1 Canon’s Rd, Bristol BS1 5TX

Book tickets here: Watershed

Listing: Headfirst

Tara Najd Ahmadi is an Iranian artist and filmmaker who creates non fiction, experimental and documentary films.

Her work creates a sense of intimate closeness and at the same time raises alertness towards what lies beneath the layers of daily life. There is a subtle humour, a deliberate lightness of touch in how film after film she delves deeper into conditions in which commonplace is mixed with social and political complexities. She uses different mediums from analogue formats, home movies, segments of cinematic references, direct on film painting and animation techniques. Her narration is casual and intimate like reading a diary. Her short sharp sentences along with the punctuated editing style, leaves us with parcels of thoughts and images. Just as in the game of pass the parcel, we unpack layer upon layer of untold memories, histories and conflicts that are deemed to be too minor to be told, or doomed to be forgotten

The films in this retrospective present her work in the last 12 years. Each film in an indirect way, frames a moment in the recent history. She gives us hints and we are left to follow her lead long after the films are finished.

The screening is followed by a Q&A with Tara Najd Ahmadi moderated by Niyaz Saghari

The films in the screening are:

1- Measuring the Level of Resistance (2011)

2- Three Minutes of a Headless Life (2014)

3- Productive Frustration (2016)

4- A Week with Azar (2018)

5- An Art Historian Recipe (2022)

6- My Sleepless Friends (2023)

7- Surfacing Images (2023)

 

Hiding in the Lights and Q&A with Katrina Daschner

Thursday 25th April 2024, 18:00

Watershed Cinema, 1 Canon’s Rd, Bristol BS1 5TX

Katrina Daschner was born in Hamburg and since 1995 lives in Vienna working as an artist and filmmaker. Her  films and installations are internationally shown in art shows and at film festivals.

Hiding in the Lights (2020) is Katrina Daschner’s first feature length film is the culmination of a series of experimental shorts since 2008. Omitting all dialogue, Daschner creates with the luminence and sound inherent to the filmic medium an erotically charged, visceral and visually obsessive web of bodies, architectural details and fetishised materials. Full of irony and humour, it draws the viewer in to explore their own bodily boundaries and with it the tension between desire, permission and restriction.  As a fantasy it is loosely based on Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream novella yet also reflects on early cinema and its links to vaudeville, the fun fair and the burlesque.

The screening is introduced by Ren Scanteni and followed by a Zoom Q&A with Katrina Dashner

 

David Leister and Friends Expand Cinema

Time and Venues to be announced

David Leister is a filmmaker, collage and performance artist based in London, UK. Taking references from a photographic background, his work explores the diversity of the analogue medium with the use of hand processing, photograms, archive and performance. His recent body of works reflects on his photographic heritage, and pays close attention to a more personal space and history. His moving image work often uses film based references found in his extensive collection of 16mm archive material.

The Kino Club was a one man cinema cabaret which featured David Leister’s films, weird found footage, competitions and musicians playing live improvised film soundtracks ( Reekie, 2007). Accompanied by filmmaker friends, Leister will resurrect his distinctive approach to expanded cinema in Bristol.