Stuttgart
FilmWinter

January 18 - 21 (Germany)

The
Stuttgarter Filmwinter proudly presents its 14th edition with plenty
of innovations. For the first time ever, there´ll be an extended
exhibition and "Warm up" phase beginning on January 11th.
A presentation of installations and performances, workshops and
music events will take place in the ballroom and other rooms of
the Filmhaus in order to set the mood for the Stuttgart audience
for an international festival of Media Art. According to the great
demand of the last years, the International Competition for Film
and Video with 61 films from 20 different countries will be repeated
at Treffpunkt Rotebühlplatz. Dark comedies such as My Mother
was a Butcher, Queer Cinema with Rosa von Praunheim´s Can
I be your Bratwurst, Please and meditative reflections as in
Hong Kong, a film by Dutch director Gerard Holthuis, to name
but a few of the works.

The
international jury includes Dietrich Kuhlbrodt (actor and film essayist - Hamburg),
Alessandro Rais (festival director - Palermo), Hito Steyerl (filmmaker - Berlin),
Andrea Wurth (member of the board Kommunales Kino Stuttgart) and
yuri a. (artist - Zurich).

The
festival will award prizes of DEM 29.000, via audience and different
international jury commissions. Stuttgart will award prizes for
an installation donated (valued at DEM 5.000) and for New Media
(Internet, CD-ROM, DVD). For the project sound-space there is a
donation of DEM 10.000, for five nominated projects in the field
of Virtual Reality, chosen from 50 submissions.

In
the three-part film and video program "Framing Globalities,"
the filmmaker and curator Hito Steyerl questions the formal strategies,
chosen by female filmmakers to narrate the development of film in
an era of increasing racism and nationalism. The special program
PerfAct focuses on interaction of acting and performance in film.
Guests
include Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, film essyaist and actor in films by
Christoph Schlingensief and Lars von Trier and the duo Daniele Cipri
and Franco Maresco from Italy, whose controversial feature films
Lo zio die Brooklin and Totoë che visse due volte
kept the Italian censors busy.

Each
day of the festival is dedicated to one issue. Thursday, 18th of
January is dedicated to Online-Film and Web-TV. Guests include Aaron
König, manager of the Hamburg-based company "bitfilm" that deals
with distribution as well as aesthetic principles of Online-Films.
A 2.3 MB broadband connection provided by LFnet and Speedlink will
offer maximum conditions for online screening. The second day highlights
interaction of art and e-commerce. Artists, entrepreneurs and media
theorists will debate differences, proximities and strategies of
economy and culture in the time of digitalization, with invention
intervention as a motto. Saturday´s program (January 20th) is "Pretty
Ugly Privacy" which deals with the tension field of video observation
and data mining, privacy and media publicity as in "Big Brother."

The
last day of the festival will be the most advanced regarding technology:
VR-Art is going to show new tendencies of the multimedial 3D Multi-User
technology, i.e. developments in the area of virtual reality will
be presented. That this is not only about subjects for "techies"
is demonstrated in the presentation of Kathy Rae Huffman, head of
the Hull Centre for Time Based Art, who will speak about cultural
possibilities in virtual space. VR-Art will be concluded with the
presentation of the sound-space award winners.

Last
but not least, the Filmwinter is well known for its packed parties
and events, combining advanced art and contemporary sound. This
year the jazzy Les Gammas from Augsburg will hit the scene on Thursday
and Friday, featuring Klangkrieg from Berlin playing experimental
Techno as well as Germany´s most interesting visualist VJ Safy.
The London-based media artist and sound specialist Scanner is going
to honour Filmhaus on Saturday with his presence. His dancable electronic
music uses i.a. recorded tapes of mobile telephone conversations
(see also: Pretty Ugly Privacy). Throughout the whole festival the
Smirnoff basement bar will be featuring more quiet sounds.