New Film International
Pop Culture and Film Making
In the 80s, a new form of media called video had appeared, and coincidentally helped new forms of expressions and artists to emerge. By using methods commonly found in scratch videos, and by gaining advantage of the reproductivity in this new media, those artists exemplified pop culture in a cheap and kitsch manner in an attempt to reveal messages hidden within disposable media. This had immensely affected art in the 90s, and its traces can be found in pop culture itself. In the special program THIS IS NOW – POST PUNK IN FILM AND VIDEO, we put the spot light on these types of films, taking place in England after the punk movement.
Mark Leckey, who had received praise from the art world with his pop-artistic style, clearly states in his mash-up works FIORUCCI MADE ME HARDCORE (1999), and DREAM ENGLISH KID 1964-1999AD (2015) that he himself is a product of pop culture.
Mike Kelley, who is considered to be one of the most important artists who had emerged from the US in the 80s, had created his monumental work DAY IS DONE by studying pop culture as ethnology, eventually finding a ritualistic way of approaching group therapy.
The Critical Point of Portraits
Helmut Berger, former film celebrity, secludes himself in an apartment in Salzburg. Praised by John Waters as “the best picture of the year is also the worst,” the film HELMUT BERGER, ACTOR is a must-watch documentary that depicts the perverse conflicts between the ferocious subject Berger and the Director. In THE KIDNAPPING OF MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, author Michel Houellebecq, a man known to stir controversy through his works, creates a mysterious yet humorous atmosphere through his complicit ways of filmmaking. In TERRA NULLIUS OR: HOW TO BE A NATIONALIST, the director travels to the Senkaku Islands with Taiwanese, Chinese, and Japanese nationalists in an attempt to reveal what a nationalist actually is, by making the subjects confront their own nationalism that haunts each other. We will screen the aforementioned three films that capture the true identity of their subjects through their own unique ways of approach.
