name

title

year

length

about

Rahel Maher (AUS)

Misstar

2003

2:00 min.

Rachel Maher has produced documentaries for both radio and film. In 2002 she studied Documentary Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts, in Melbourne. Her work covers many social and political subjects, and often explores the themes of identity and survival.
In its simplest form, Misstar is film about a woman who dresses up as a man. This process appears to entirely change her identity but this film presents the question: what is her real identity? Misstar is a short documentary exploring personal identity and one person’s experiment with her own.
This film presents the relationship between Lee and Misstar as a transition in gender identity. It traces Lee’s process of dressing up as Johnny Gash and the actual preparation for
performing in drag that night. So, we watch her dressing up physically and psyching up mentally to leave the private persona Lee for a while and become publicly recognisable
Johnny Gash.

Larissa Sansour (PAL)

Happy Days

2004

3:40 min.

Born in Jerusalem 1973, Larissa Sansour studied Fine Art in Copenhagen, London and New York, and graduated with a master’s degree in Fine Art from New York University.
Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in the current political dialogue and utilizes video art, digital photography, experimental documentary as well as the internet.
In addition, she works on productions for the independently run artists’ channel TV-TV in Copenhagen.
Sansour is currently an International board member at the new concept educational school Chaos Pilots where she also contributes with her writing on arts, politics and ducation.

Unnur A. Einarsdottir (IS)

Music in Cake

2004

3:00 min.

Born in Reyjavik, Iceland 1981. Graduated from the Icelandic Academy of the Arts 2005, with a B.A. degree in Fine arts.
A young girl is sitting by a table. On the table is a pink and white cake and after a few seconds, little white mice come peaking out of the cake. A closeup shows that the girl is slowly pushing a small hook out of her mouth until it´s hanging from her mouth on a string covered in blood. With the hook hanging out from her mouth, she watches the mice run around on the table until she suddenly pulls one of them up by the tail and brings it to her mouth.

Oksana Shatalova & Alla Girik (KAZ)

Warning: Women

2006

3:12 min.

Alla Girik (1965-2006) and Oksana Shatalova (1972) live in Rudny (KAZ). They work in video, photo and installation.
In non-modernized patriarchal societies (they are still the majority of humanity) the role of cultural organizing force, "intellect" and "consciousness" is traditionally given to male.
A woman symbolizes the power of the Unconscious, intuition, chaos. It's a kind of some impersonal force. She is dangerous like the nature (= threat of disaster).
The trilogy "Warning: Woman!" is a Rabelaisian illustration for ideas on woman as a "corporal bottom". It's an ironic illustration of feminophobia; an illustration of archaic myth (about "vagina dentata"). Woman here is represented as a brutal (though funny) monster that always can deprive a male of his phallic regalia.

Beatrice Allegranti (UK)

In My Body

2005

4:00 min.

Is a performer/chreographer/director from UK..
Her interdisciplinary work during the past decade includes performance for dance. She creates autobiographical solo work where she can express her own sexual identity and sense of gender through words and movement.
Is a site-specific autobiographical solo film which explores the sensations and emotions of a woman in the nascent stages of re- constructing her identity following the death of her mother.

Ina Loitzl (A)

Snow-white and red like a rose

2005

5:00 min.

Born in Klagenfurth/Austria, Ina Loiztl studied visual media at the Mozarteum Academy at Salzburg/Austria and moved then to Vienna in order to continue these studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Regularly “SNOW - WHITE” becomes “ROSE - RED”
Takes of her clean appearance Goes wild, blooming and pulsating To return again into white silence
This metamorphosis colours the red juice blue
Blood can not be denied ALARM!!!
Womens’ tears clean their “unsanitary mons veneris”
Marias’ concentration on her body fluids Made her think of a simple analogy With the blood of her own son! Which sanguine is now allowed to be drunk, which blood is worth to be shed? Oh, don’t wish for a woman with no abdomen!
Could she serve better with a missing genital? Clean, safe, marias’ mouth can only swear….
The critical days are “my days” Activity can be gained with injections or pills The end is the absence of menorrhoea
But this hide – and – seek can take revenge With bouts of the vagina Because tampons can only stop, plug and tame
The juice floating with relish

Johanna Reich (D)

Front

2005

2:00 min.

Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain and Cologne, Germany.  „A young woman during her fight against the camera, against the observer. I made a short experimental video called “front“ (frontal attack) to portrait myself as a young artist also referring to the situation of bethlehem. Bethlem is a place full of incredible stories, different point of views, freedom and fear, things that have astonished me.
The name “bethlehem” makes me think of the essential things concerning human life - as a symbol of peace but nevertheless it is already a place of danger and fight, revealing another part of the human nature. With my short video I want to reflect myself beeing a young artist,
living in this world of media presence, that sometimes scares me, sometimes I would like to fight, sometimes I want to surprise the environment that surrounds me. But the fight indeed is always a lost one and not the solution... „

Leticia El Halli Obeid (RA)

Headphones

2001

2:33 min. 

Born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1975. Studied Fine Arts at the National University of Córdoba (1995-2001). Works mainly in video ever since.
This piece was made with fragments of songs sung by a series of persons who were invited to pick a favourite song and sing it while they heard it through headphones. The point was that the volume had to be high enough so that they wouldn´t hear their own voices. Thus, by loosing control of the result they are doing a sort of translation but, as it happens usually, the singer keeps a sort of illusion about his/her own voice: the sound that they are hearing replaces the real one and works as a sort of mask, giving them the feeling that they are singing like their loved solist or band.

Margarida Paiva: (P)

Habit

2005

5:50 min.

Margarida Paiva, born in Coimbra, Portugal, is a young artist living and working in Oslo. Her video works are based on fragmented stories that explore inner states of mind resembling dreams and memories. Melancholy, loneliness and fear are subjects that always remain in these works and are expressed through poetic imagery. Narrative placed in an imaginary space and time, in which a female character experiences the same dream several times.

Sonja Vuk (HRV)

My Way

2006

1:00 min

Born and living in Croatia. The title and initial idea comes from furious Sid Vicious' performance of the song «My
Way». Specific spitful way of singing evokes track of rebellion but yet lack of strength to change anything. It, usually, happens in everyday life. Everything depends on how and where we are raised, conscious and unconscious
consequences of our education, political climate, tradition, religion, social and historical context, family relations... What we were, what we wanted to be and what we became... 

Clair Ultimo (USA)

Inner Dialogue

2004

3:36 min.

Is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in NYC.
Inner Dialogue is an experiment in personal response, made public. This was done as an in- camera edit and the dialogue is a internal question and answer session, that mainly deals
with the questions of accountability and belief systems.
I listened and responded visually on camera to a series of metaphysical styled questions that brought me to an uncomfortable realisation at the conclusion.

Nancy Atakan (TR)

The Wall

2005

1:40 min.

Born in the United States, Nancy Atakan has lived and worked in Istanbul since 1969. In 1995 she received her Ph.d in art history from Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul. Between 1996 and 2002 she taught twentieth century art history at Bosphorus University. In 1998 Yapi Kredi Bank Publishers printed her book entitled Arayişlar (Searching for Alternatives to Painting and Sculpture).

Silvia Cacciatori Filloy (U)

Prostituto/ta

2005

4:40 min.

She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1962. Graduated in Visual Arts in the School of Fine Arts in the National University ofUruguay. She works in multimedia since 1996 and her
interest is in genre themes, discrimination and violence.
„Prostituto/ta is the thesis with which I graduate of the school of Fine Arts. It is an investigation on the Spanish language in that I looked in the dictionary for all the prostitute's
synonymous ones. The animation of 104 words develops on the front of the building of the Royal Real Academy. The language reflects the system of collective thought, and across it they transmit values.
In Prostituto/ta show some of the actors who from different places have legitimized - and they continue doing it-, supported and sentenced to the prostitute, already be from the religion, from the philosophy, from the art. The history has been created for males, for this motive, they are the principal actors in this animation. In the closing of the animation, the credits present one more controversy about the definition of prostitute: “woman of art”, that´s I am!”