Our age's dominant cultural mode is one in which anything valuable has to be captured, remembered, collected, documented, safeguarded and protected - from oblivion, from time's passage, form death and decay. Indeed, by the very fact of preserving, things become valuable. Yet forgetting can be as productive as remembering. Delving into psychoanalysis (Oliver Sacks), sociology (Paul Connerton) and museology (Michel Foucault), I shall try and illustrate how and why forgetting can be useful, indeed often is a condition for getting ahead. Today's memory institutions' plight, with much of their collections not and perhaps to be on show, will be put in a new light.

Dr. Riemer Knoop is a classicist and archaeologist. He studied in Amsterdam and Rome, was graphic designer and worked as a producer with VARA television. He was responsible of national public affairs for Dutch archaeology, and manager at Rijksmuseum van Oudheden. Since 1998 Knoop is a self-employed consultant with Gordion Cultureel Advies, specializing in policy issues of museums, libraries and archives (www.gordion.nl). He became part-time professor ('lector') of Cultural Heritage at the Reinwardt Academy in 2011.

Everybody thought they were fools, that it couldn't be done, that it wasn't cinema. For Polanski the limit was two actors in a theatre. "This is where I stop", Polanski said in an interview about 'Venus in Fur'. "I'm not going to try a film about one person in a closed space." But the team behind 'Bernard' proved Polanski and all the others wrong: it could be done and they did it. The result 'Bernard': a 70 minute monologue on film!

The lecture will consist of the screening of this exceptional film and an extended Q&A afterwards with the director, producer and actor of the film.

About
'Bernard' has been produced and directed by Hidde Simons - who's also an acting coach - and his brother Joggem - who works mainly as a producer (for among others Hal Hartley, Michel van der Aa and Louis Andriessen). Thomas Wander, the lead actor in the film, works mainly in theatre, combining classical roles with experimental theatre. He has performed Bernard's monologue in the theatre for many years.

www.bernardfilm.com
www.facebook.com/bernardfilm

Directing as making sense in three stages: writing, filming and editing illustrated by fragments of screenplays and films of Urszula, including her last, yet unfinished film.

About
Urszula Antoniak is a Polish-Dutch film director. She graduated from the Katowice Film School and the Netherlands Film Academy. Her debut 'Nothing Personal' (2009) won the Leopard Award for Best Feature Film in Locarno and four Golden Calves at the Nederlands Filmfestival. Her second feature 'Code Blue' (2011) was in the Quinzaine des Realisateurs selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

Read more: IMDb

The human being is a story telling animal. On the one hand we tell stories to comfort ourselves when we have to deal with traumatic experiences. On the other we try to make a story out of our life to give it meaning. ABOVE US ALL is a fiction film about the stories we tell to deal with loss. Personal loss, but also collective traumatic events like wars. The film was shot in Australia and in Belgium with a non-professional cast and it investigates a different form of narration. 
The spectator is placed in the centre of the perspective; the camera is turning around in circles of 360 degrees and the film was shot in 3D. Time and space are not manipulated. The film aims to be “in the very moment”. In the moment that the story doesn’t yet exist. The story is what we make of it, later on. And afterwards, we delete all the ingredients that don’t contribute to that (specific) story. ABOVE US ALL gives the spectator the experience of 53 moments in time in which we encounter our main characters; their tribulations, believes and thoughts, without the filter of the story.

Read more about the film:
ABOVE US ALL website

This lecture will consist of three parts:
Albert Elings(coach) will focus on the different possible perspectives one can take when seeing this project as a research vehicle, both from a contextual point of view and from the point of view of the content.
Eugenie Jansen(director) will explain the practical consequences of the starting points during the process of the filmmaking. For example: how to combine a conceptual and rigid form with the wish to allow (documentary) coincidence to play an important role, while also using the strength of the non-professional actors?
Michel Schöpping(sound design) will share his experiences on how the 3D space of sound relates to the 3D space of image. What possibilities does the rotating camera create that can be used by sound design? What kind of choices can be made and what is the difference in the kind of impact?

Please note: we will NOT be screening the film!

Screenings:
ABOVE US ALL premiered at the Berlin Film Festival 2014 and can now be seen in the Dutch theatres (in Amsterdam: EYE and Cinema LAB111).
An English subtitled version of ABOVE US ALL will be screening at EYE on Sunday 28 September at 21:15 and at the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht on Monday 29 September at 21:00.
From 25/9 - 1/10, AHK students going to ABOVE US ALL will get 2 tickets for the price of 1 at EYE and Cinema LAB111.

About
Albert Elings and Eugenie Jansen graduated at the Dutch Film Academy in 1991, and worked together on documentary projects such as 'Foreland' (2005), 'The Royal Wedding Tapes' (2002) and 'Bitter Harvest' (2010), and two fiction projects: 'Tussenland' (2002; Tiger Award IFFR 2002) and 'Calimucho' (2008).
Michel Schöpping is a widely acclaimed sound designer, who has worked on international film productions like 'The Broken Circle Breakdown' (2013), 'KID' (2013), 'Altiplano' (2009) en 'Vivan las Antipodas' (2011).

Jos de Putter will focus on narrative, cinematic and philosophical questions that deal with the concept of ‘truth’ in documentary cinema.
Documentary has always manoeuvred between ‘journalism’ and ‘storytelling’, or topic-driven versus auteur-driven. Both traditions make a particular claim to what is called ‘truth’. However, distinctions are not always transparent; thus, ‘storytelling’ is often confused with ‘manipulating’, while the reality claims of direct cinema have their own shortcomings. This leads to the question if we can ‘lie the truth’.

Jos de Putter will focus on this question from different angles. For a practical discussion he will show fragments from his own work and that of other filmmakers, which exemplify the dilemma.
For a more theoretical approach he will include a survey of the theory of sign and meaning as understood in the tradition of Prague Structuralism, notably the work of Jan Mukarovsky.

Jos de Putter (1959) studied political science and literature at the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, and as a post-graduate modern philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin. He worked several years as a film critic before he made his first documentary in 1993, ‘It’s been a lovely’, which was very successful. Since then he has made several other prize winning documentaries, made installations and shorts (shown at MOMA, New York), and worked as editor-in-chief for VPRO Tegenlicht. His new film 'SEE NO EVIL' (2014) is a portrait of three elderly famous chimpanzees, who ‘look back upon their lives’.

More information:
HollandDoc

Reflections of a screenwriter on the omnipresence of the past in film and the many different ways the past can be told.

From formal flash back structures to details of images and sound design; from general preconditions in the mind of the spectator to the complex mental activities that drama can prompt in the viewer and the key role memory plays in this process.

About
Born in Wierden (the Netherlands) in 1944, Willem Capteyn completed his studies as a violinist at the Amsterdam Conservatorium in the late nineteen sixties. In the seventies and eighties he wrote many radio plays, television plays and television series, often together with co-authors.

Award winning productions to which he contributed include the twelve-part television series 'Zwarte Sneeuw' (‘Black Snow’), which in 1997 received the Gouden Beeld (Golden Image) for the best drama series in the previous season. In 2002 the eight-part series 'De Negen Dagen van de Gier' (‘The Nine Days of the Vulture’) was awarded a Gouden Kalf (Golden Calf) for the best television drama of 2002.

In 1989 Capteyn joined the Netherlands Film Academy where, from 1995 to 2003 he was head of the screenwriting department and, from 2008 to 2009, was its Director.

He is currently working on the scripts for three feature film projects.

Wendelien van Oldenborgh develops works, using the cinematic format as a methodology for production and as the basic language for various forms of presentation. Van Oldenborgh often uses the format of a public film shoot – in which she collaborates with participants in different scenarios – to co-produce a script and orient the work towards its final outcome. In her lecture, and on the basis of her recent works, Wendelien van Oldenborgh will discuss her method of producing as well as look into some of the questions that the various works raise in terms of the relation between the cinematic, the theatrical and reality.

Wendelien van Oldenborgh is an artist based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She received her art education at Goldmiths' College, London, during the eighties and lives in the Netherlands again since 2004.
'La Javanaise' (2012) was shown at the Berlinale Forum Expanded 2013, 'Bete & Deise' (2012) premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 'Supposing I love you. And you also love me' (2011) was first shown in the Danish Pavilion of the Venice Biennial 2011, 'Pertinho de Alphaville' (2010) at the 29th São Paulo Biennial 2010.
Van Oldenborgh has exhibited widely; recently at Tate Liverpool 2012, RAW material Company, Dakar, Senegal, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljublijana, but also at the Generali Foundation, Vienna, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Sztuki Lodz, Van Abbemusem Eindhoven, Muhka Antwerp. She has also participated in the 4rth Moscow Biennial 2011, the 11th Istanbul Biennial 2009, the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Images festival Toronto 2010 where she received the Marian McMahon Award and participated in the 2013 Flaherty Film Seminar: 'History is what is happening' in New York. She was awarded the Hendrik Chabot Prize 2011 by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, the Netherlands.

Janis Rafailidou will use this occasion to screen her most recent film-trilogy project, 'Three Farewells' (2013). It’s a work consisting of three separate visual narratives all concentrating on the notion of ‘loss’ and ‘death’ outside an anthropocentric understanding. An analysis on the work will be followed by an examination of the possibilities of narration within a visual art’s use of moving images and the importance of artistic research. Rafailidou’s project was developed during her residency at the Rijksakademie with the support of AFK funds.

Janis Rafailidou (1984, Greece) lives between Athens and Amsterdam. Her practice focuses on video art, video installation and narration through the moving image. Rafailidou completed her Doctoral in Fine Art at the University of Leeds (2011) and has participated in international exhibitions, such as Manifesta 8 and Thessaloniki Biennial (2009). She has presented work at Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou and Reina Sofia National Museum (2010). She is currently an art resident at the Rijksakademie voor beeldende kunsten with a scholarship by Onassis Foundation.

www.janisrafailidou.co.uk
http://www.rijksakademie.nl/NL/resident/janis-rafailidou
Cinematography by Thodoros Mihopoulos GSC

The sub heading of Patricia Pisters’ lecture is ‘Temporality of the Neuro-Image of Cinema in the Digital Age’. Starting from the position of the French (film) philosopher Jacques Rancière that the end of images is behind us, she will suggest that after the ‘movement-image’ and the ‘time-image’ – terms developed by another great film philosopher, Gilles Deleuze – we are now surrounded by a third kind of image, one that ‘speaks from the future’.

Patricia Pisters is professor of media culture and film studies and chair of the department of Media studies of the University of Amsterdam. She has published numerous articles and books on issues at the cross roads of film and philosophy, particularly in relation to contemporary screen culture. She’s a specialist on the works of Gilles Deleuze.

www.patriciapisters.com

First Renzo Martens made Episode I, in which he travels to war zones in Chechnya, taking on the role of the television viewer, the single most important actor in any contemporary war. Then he made Episode III, Enjoy Poverty, which took him to the Congo, aiming to teach the poor how to benefit from their biggest resource: poverty.. In both films Renzo Martens investigates the mechanisms of complicity of the documentary maker with the situations they’re trying to portray. Martens is now taking his quest one step further – reason to invite him for an extended interview.

There will be an extra screening of ‘Enjoy Poverty’ at 17:30 in the Film Academy cinema.

Renzo Martens (1973) studied at the Rietveld Academy. His work has been shown at many of the major venues and festivals and has been the subject of many publications and debates. Presently Martens is doing a PhD in Ghent.

www.rmma.nl

Ibrahim Quraishi will discuss the normativity of how movement and physicality are highlighted through the camera lens. How does the camera look at bodies – what does it see or not see? What’s the role of time in this? And how can the process of making a film be incorporated in the film itself?

Ibrahim Quraishi (1973) is an artist who works with different mediums like photography, photo painting, video, film, installation, performance, dance and theatre. His approach is that of a traveller, moving into the unknown. One of his latest works is ‘Wild Life Take Away Station’, a 24 – 72 hour live performance, edited immediately after the performance. Quraishi studied philosophy, worked with Edward Said, has done numerous research residencies and teaches all over the world, including at the Fine Arts Department at the Rietveld Academy. Presently he teaches at the SNDO-department of the Theatre School of the AHK.

www.ibrahimquraishi.org

Using ‘Kan door huid heen’ by Esther Rots (2009), for which film he made the sound design / music, Dan Geesin will guide us through his ongoing research into the relation between image, sound and meaning. How does sound relate to the body or the tactile senses; is there a real distinction between sound and music; what’s the role of the subjectivity of the person who records the sound, et cetera – all these questions, and more, will be dealt with from the perspective of Geesin’s own (sound) work.

Dan Geesin is a visual artist and musician. He studied in England, continued at the Ateliers in Amsterdam and slowly moved from visual arts to film. His short film ‘Olifantenvoeten’ won a Golden Calf for best short film at the Netherlands Film Festival in 2011. His sound design for ‘Kan door huid heen’ was nominated for a Golden Calf.

www.geesin.nl

Nenad Fiser will examine the phenomenon of human vision, focusing on film art and its reception. The lecture will explore the implications of the facts of human vision – for example the relation between the center of vision and the center of attention, phenomena of color perception and the way the human mind constructs rather than ‘reads’ visual information. The problems discussed in the lecture open up a number of philosophical questions.

Nenad Fiser studied and taught philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, before the war forced him to flee to the Netherlands, where he taught philosophy as well before being employed at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague as researcher and analyst, studying the role and workings of propaganda. He lectures regularly on a wide variety of philosophical issues.

"Nonsense is all that interests me" is one of the key notes of the diaries of the Russian writer Daniil Kharms (1905-1942). After reading his short absurd stories and his diaries 20 years ago, philosopher and filmmaker André Schreuders fell in love with Daniil Kharms. He decided to study Russian to be able to translate the philosophical texts of Kharms. He went to Saint Petersburg to work in the archives, but got lost for 5 years in the Saint Petersburg court yards - finding Kharms admirers everywhere in the city and his spirit all around. Kharms inspired Schreuders to make 2 short films, write a few articles, write a script for a feature film and a manuscript about Kharms' metaphysical aesthetics. Kharms infected him with the avant-garde ideal to change people’s perception by art.

In his lecture, André Schreuders will speak about the miraculous adventures Kharms lead him into and about the texts and aesthetical metaphysics of Kharms. Schreuders will also show the 2 short films he made that were inspired by Kharms: 'On phenomena & existences No.3' and 'Manifesto for a free Fall'.

André Schreuders (1967) is a filmmaker, philosopher and consultant in urban planning. Since 2001 he developed his personal film language as a director, scriptwriter, cameraman and editor of poetic and philosophical documentary and fiction films. His work is mainly screened at international film festivals like, Cannes – Quinzaine des Realisateurs -, ISFF Hamburg, IFF Rotterdam, and sometimes in galleries and museums, among which Russian State Museum in Saint Petersburg.

http://www.patriciapisters.com/andre-schreuders.blogspot.nl

'Sunken Garden', Michel van der Aa's latest opera, polarised opinion when it was first performed in London in March. There were those who loved it ("A Gesammtkunstwerk for the age of Technology"), there were those who hated it ("Interminably long and boring"). In the opera, Van der Aa introduces a (wannabe) filmmaker who's making a film about a missing person but finds himself entering the same dream as the person he's looking for. 'Sunken Garden', like Van der Aa's earlier work 'After Life' (based on the film script by Kore-Eda Hirokazu), employs a distinctive combination of live action and video projections to tell its story, but this time he includes 3D film. 'Sunken Garden' was performed earlier this month during the Holland Festival.
 
Tracing his development, Van der Aa will discuss his views on the combination of opera and film. As part of the lecture, Van der Aa will show the making of of Sunken Garden - 'Sunken Garden - het maken van een moderne opera' - made by Lucas van Woerkum and master student Ruben van Leer.

Michel van der Aa (1970) is a truly multidisciplinary figure in contemporary music, combining composition with film and stage direction, and script writing. Among his earlier works are 'One' (2002), 'The Book of Disquiet' (2008) and the acclaimed opera 'After Life' (2005–2006). He recently received the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize.

www.vanderaa.net

If we accept Robert Bresson's observation that some films use the camera to reproduce, but others use the camera to create, can we then agree that all films shall be written in the same way, with the same tools? How to introduce the aspect of experienced time, of duration, so that a reading experience can mirror the intended viewing experience? The paradigms of scriptwriting have to be questioned to serve and reflect the more unconventional formats filmmakers try to explore.

Franz Rodenkirchen (1963) is a well-known script consultant, working among others for the Binger Filmlab and different festivals. The film projects he advised on include Lourdes (Jessica Hausner), Women without Men (Shirin Neshat), and Lore (Cate Shortland). Many of the projects made it to the competitions of the major film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Sundance...). Rodenkirchen's lecture marks the start of his Artist in Residency-period at the Netherlands Film Academy and its master's department. During his residency Rodenkirchen will investigate the need for a different conception of what we call 'a script'. read more