VIDEO ART – Gjon Mili Video Art Festival

Phantom Dance

admin — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:55:19 +0000

“I’m your phantom dance partner. I’m your shadow. I’m nothing more.” ― Haruki Murakami

Director Biography – Wheeler Winston Dixon

Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and, with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, editor of the book series Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture for Rutgers University Press, which has to date published more than twenty volumes on various cultural topics. He is the author of more than thirty books on film history, theory and criticism, as well as more than 100 articles in various academic journals. He is also an active experimental filmmaker, whose works are in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art. His recent video work is collected in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. He has also taught at The New School, Rutgers University, and the University of Amsterdam.

His recent books include Synthetic Cinema: The 21st Century Movie Machine (2019), The Films of Terence Fisher: Hammer Horror and Beyond (2017), Black & White Cinema: A Short History (2015); Streaming: Movies, Media and Instant Access (2013); Death of the Moguls: The End of Classical Hollywood (2012); 21st Century Hollywood: Movies in the Era of Transformation (2011, co-authored with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster); and Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia (2009). Dixon’s book A Short History of Film (2008, co-authored with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster) was reprinted six times through 2012. A second, revised edition was published in 2013; a third, revised edition was published in 2018; a fourth expanded and revised edition will appear in early 2025. The book is a required text in universities throughout the world. Dixon’s second expanded and revised edition of his book A History of Horror (2010) was published in 2023.

As an experimental filmmaker, his works have been screened at The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Anthology Film Archives, Filmhuis Cavia (Amsterdam), Studio 44 (Stockholm), La lumière collective (Montréal), The BWA Katowice Museum (Poland), The Microscope Gallery, The National Film Theatre (UK), The Jewish Museum, The Millennium Film Workshop, The San Francisco Cinématheque, LA Filmforum (Los Angeles), The New Arts Lab, The Exploding Cinema (London), The Collective for Living Cinema, The Kitchen, The Filmmakers Cinématheque, Film Forum, The Amos Eno Gallery, Sla 307 Art Space, The Gallery of Modern Art, The Rice Museum, The Oberhausen Film Festival, Undercurrent, Experimental Response Cinema and other venues.

In addition, Dixon’s films have been screened at numerous film festivals throughout the world, including presentations in London, New York, Toronto, Paris, Berlin, Monterrey (Mexico), Urbino (Italy), Tehran (Iran), Naples (Italy), Athens (Greece), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rybinski (Russia), Palermo (Italy), Madrid (Spain), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Australia, Qatar, Amsterdam, Vienna, Moscow, Milan, Switzerland, Croatia, Stockholm (Sweden), Havana (Cuba) and elsewhere.

Director Statement

“There are already enough images in the world. In my videos, I prefer to use existing imagery, playing with it to the point of abstraction to create an other-worldly experience. Although the original images are rooted in the real world, the final product exists in a phantom zone, existing only as long as the image is projected on the screen. At the same time, I hope to seduce the viewer into believing that however unreal these images are, they still have some sort of temporal reality. It is this gap between the actual and the imagin

Fluxions

admin — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:52:58 +0000

Fluxions is a generative audiovisual composition in which sound data controls visual processes in real time. Three tree-like figures with geometric blossom structures respond to energy distributions across the frequency spectrum. Color transitions, shape variations, and movements emerge as algorithmically determined resonances of the audio signal.

The graphical structures unfold through recursive growth—oscillating between generative order and fluctuating randomness. Inspired by natural systems, Fluxions becomes a silent poem: an abstract meditation on transformation, resonance, and the fragile harmony between structure and chaos.

Director Biography – Beate Gördes

1961
Born in Herten (North Rhine-Westphalia), Germany
Lives and works in Cologne

1987–1992
Studied Fine Art/Painting at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences.
Since 1985, regular exhibitions and participations in Germany and abroad.
Since 2006, the focus of her work has shifted toward video compositions in combination with electroacoustic sound.
Numerous participations in international short film festivals.

2024

SUPERPRESENT Magazine, Fall 2024,
REgENERATE Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD, USA
RESONANS FRINGE FESTIVAL International Poetry Film Festival, Empire Bio, Copenhagen, Denmark
LIVING WITH BUILDINGS VI, LTB Space – Coventry, UK
20. INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL DETMOLD, Detmold
Zwischen.Zeit.Raum (mit Ludger F. J. Schneider) Melanchton Akademie Köln
8th Edition NEW YORK NIL GALLERY Filmscreening – neulich im Bus – (Poem by Adrienne Brehmer)

2023

SCHAU MIR IN MEIN FENSTER Videokunstfestival an und in der St. Johanniskirche
Brandenburgische Gesellschaft für Kultur und Geschichte, Brandenburg an der Havel
FRAME TO FRAMES: YOUR EYES FOLLOW Ekphrastic poetry film prize founded by Sarah Tremlett
FOTOGENIA Festival 2023, Mexico City
NATURE & CULTURE – STRUCTURES & ORGANISMS, International Poetry Film Festival
Husets Biograf, Copenhagen, Denmark
BATH OPEN ART PRIZE Exhibition
44AD artspace, Bath, UK
IN : BEZIEHUNG zusammen mit Künstler*innen des Förderkreis Milojka Beutz, Malerin e.V., Köln
Kunstraum 57, Köln
VIDEO EDITION PAVILION curated by Ebba Jahn
Kühlspot, Berlin
VORGEBIRGSPARK SKULPTUR 2023 Kunst im Park, hier nicht hier #4 (mit Dagmar Lutz)
Vorgebirgspark Köln-Zollstock
LACUNA – METAMORPHOSIS – International Contemporary Art Festival
Canary Island Lanzarote, Spain
Make Friends AND Art
Kunststation Kleinsassen, Rhön, Hessen
COLLAGE ON SCREEN
Kolaj Fest New Orleans, USA
11. BEWEGTER WIND “beyond… darüber hinaus”
Internationales Windkunstfestival in Wolfhagen, Nordhessen
HAIKU NORTH AMERICA – HAIBUN FILM Festival
Haiku North America conference 2023, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
INTERNATIONAL POETRY FILM FESTIVAL OF THURINGIA / POETRY FILMTAGE Weimar
Mon Ami Kino im Kulturzentrum
GOLDEN FERN FILM AWARDS
Darjeeling, West Bengal, India

2022

13th ZEBRA POETRY FILMFESTIVAL
Kulturbrauerei Berlin
HIER NICHT HIER #3 (mit Dagmar Lutz)
Tenri Japanisch-Deutsche Kulturwerkstatt Köln
INDUSTRIETEMPEL VIDEOKUNSTFESTIVAL 2022
Werksfassade Müllheizkraftwerk Ludwigshafen
INTERBIFEP 18. International Biennal Of Portrait
„Centar za kulturu“ Tuzla, Bosnia/Hercegovina
LINES FICTION – Zeichnung & Animation (Kuratiert von Bettina Munk)
Filmscreening, Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin
RESPONSE ART (Ein Projekt von Reni Scholz)
Künstlerforum Bonn
Internationale Thüringer Poetryfilmtage, Weimar
FESTIVAL-MEDIATHEK, Kategorie Deutschsprachige Poesiefilme
NEW YORK NIL GALLERY Filmscreening – hier nicht hier-
Nomination category: Installation

2021

OFFLINE – hier nicht hier #2 – ( mit Dagmar Lutz)
hebebühne e.V., Wuppertal
RÖSL-ROSE (zusammen mit Marget Schopka und Angelika Wittek)
Kunstraum 57, Köln
ART VISUALS & POETRY FILM FESTIVAL WIEN Factory im Künstlerhaus Wien
EXPERIMENT_RAUM Multimediales Kunstprojekt
Kulturwerkstatt/Galerie Ins Blaue e.V. Remscheid
BEWEGTER WIND change ?! 10. Internationales Windkunstfestival
Stadtbücherei Hofgeismar, Hessen
ALC VIDEOART FESTIVAL
Auditorium of MACA (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante), Spanien
CALCUTTA INTERNATIONAL CULT FILM FESTIVAL – 51st season, Indien
TAGORE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL – 23th season
GITANJALI CULTURAL COMPLEX , Birbhum, Westbengalen, Indien
OYEDRUM Weekly Art/Media online, USA

Kingdom of animals

admin — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:50:43 +0000

Grand tour of Germany’s national monuments. Thadeusz Tischbein has been on a journey to Germany’s largest national monuments, some of the heaviest chunks in the nation’s digestive tract, so to speak. And there he came across all sorts of animals, which do not accidentally come into conversation with mythical creatures and animals from legends and myths. After all, the Brothers Grimm were also involved in the fairy tale of the ancient nation called Germany.

Director Biography – Thadeusz Tischbein

Thadeusz Tischbein is a Germany-based video artist. He is interested in cruel intersections of history and everyday live. When not sitting in a cafe he is making films with documentary material along with self built models. He tries to develop a fictionalised version of a documentary, a forensic speculation. Thadeusz Tischbein studied between 2008 and 2016 in Leipzig, Braunschweig (Germany) and Bucharest (Romania) with Candice Breitz, Clemens von Wedemeyer and Günther Selichar. He lives and works in Leipzig/Germany.

Misericorde

admin — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:48:53 +0000

In the Middle Ages a misericorde was a weapon used to put a wounded knight out of his misery. As a theological term, it refers to forgiveness and compassion. In French it has been used as an invocation, notably in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: “Christ have mercy on us!” That there may be no one listening (or arriving) remains a central anguish, felt in the depression, addiction and other disorders, that are normal responses to increasingly abnormal culture.

This film strikes the chord of even deeper anxiety, moving through a dreamscape of distorted mirrors, fluctuating boundaries, and uncertain identity. A man fractured in narcissistic multiplications, a woman overtaken by sorrow and grief, are lost both to themselves and to each other.

Yet there is a beauty to their shared ordeal, a nature pulsing with possibilities as near and intimate as they seem out of reach. It suggests the accord that comes with awareness, the passion that springs from despair.

Director Biography – Natasa Prosenc Stearns

Slovenian born visual artist and filmmaker Nataša Prosenc Stearns earned her BA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. She moved to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Grant for her MFA at California Institute of the Arts. Her body of work ranges from single and multi-channel videos, video installations, short and feature films, video objects and print media. She is known for creative use of non-gallery spaces and large multi-channel installations. Her films Souvenir, (released by Cinema Epoch), The Trial of Socrates, (collaboration of 23 filmmakers), Hotel Diary, Živa and others explore innovative strategies in storytelling and visual expression.

Nataša’s films and artworks have been shown internationally. Her work was also featured in the contemporary opera CodeL.

List of festivals, exhibitions, awards and grants at the link below.

https://www.natasastearns.com/_files/ugd/e05b60_a14c4d6527ee41ae9a59ade0118dc87b.pdf

Nataša lives in Los Angeles and in Ljubljana Slovenia.

EQUAL

admin — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:11:35 +0000

EQUAL is a cinematic exploration of Richard Serra’s sculpture of the same name on display at the Museum of Modern Art.

The sculpture consists of eight forged-steel blocks stacked in pairs. Each rectangular block measures 5 feet by 5 and 1/2 feet by 6 feet and weighs 40 tons. The blocks are rotated and stacked so that the top and bottom blocks align differently. Yet the four stacks are each 11 feet tall.

This simple form makes me think about space, mass, weight, and time. Like the sculpture, my film seeks to both overwhelm the viewer and invite contemplation.

THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD IN A DARK ROOM

Director Biography – Tom Bessoir

Tom was born and raised in the Astoria section of Queens in New York City in 1957. From there he commuted by subway to attended The Bronx High School of Science. Tom studied mathematics and electrical engineering at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. While attending the Engineering School, he took advantage of Art School classes, focusing on film theory and studying experimental filmmaking with Robert Breer. In the late 1970s, he started photographing the downtown music scene. His photographs have appeared on dozens of records as well as in films, books, magazines, and newspapers.

Tom Bessoir’s experimental films often use mathematics and randomness to explore perception and the structure of cinema.

In the arts, Tom Bessoir is best known for Microfilm (1979), Digits of Pi (2019), and his photography documenting downtown NYC.

Linija Među Nama/ A Line Between Us

admin — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:06:48 +0000

The work A Line Between Us stems from the artist’s personal experience of loss, symbolically emphasizing the need for connection with the absent and the act of remembering. The artist performs a walk through inaccessible, rocky terrain, leaving behind a turquoise fabric as a line/river in the landscape – a trace of her passage and a symbol of invisible bonds.
At the end of the performance, the artist plants a willow on the lakeshore, in dry and stony soil, and wraps around it the fabric that was part of the performance. This gesture leaves a lasting trace – both visual and symbolic – that unites body, space, and time, while marking memory, renewal, and resilience. Captured by drone, the line and the willow become visible from a bird’s-eye view, highlighting the relationship between intimate experience and universal meaning.

Director Biography – Milena Jovićević

Born in Cetinje, Montenegro, 1976
Works at Faculty of Fine Arts Cetinje, University of Montenegro

EDUCATION

2012 PhD in Fine Arts, University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia
2008 MFA in the Academy of Fine Arts, Cetinje, Montenegro
2004-2005 Postgraduate studies at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux- Arts, Paris, France
2004 Graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux- Arts, Paris, France
1999-2000 Specialization Ecole Supérieure des Beaux- Arts, Le Mans, France
1999 Graduated at Academy of Fine Arts, Cetinje, Montenegro

Leisure/Labor

admin — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:04:30 +0000

Leisure/Labor is a single, unbroken 8-minute video shot from the director’s studio window that documents the intensely dense street Blocos de Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro. The film documents the disputed public spaces where collective playful celebration and economic necessity overlap.

Director Biography – Artur Silva

Artur Silva is a filmmaker, visual artist and educator, born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

His work has been displayed at institutions such as the Van Abbe Museum in The Netherlands, the Ludwig Foundation in Havana, the Smart Museum in Chicago, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Centro Cultural de España in Mexico City, Indiana State Museum, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, among others.

Artur has received a number of awards including a Pollock-Krasner Grant (NYC), NALAC grant (San Antonio), Efroymson Contemporary Art Fellowship (Indianapolis), two times recipient of the Christel DeHaan Artist of Distinction Award (Indianapolis Arts Council), Foundation for Contemporary Arts (NYC), Nominated for a Joan Mitchell Award, among others.

Some publications featuring Artur’s work include The New York Times, Art in America, Forbes, PBS’ Many Rivers To Cross series, among others.

As an educator he has taught at Indiana University in South Bend, DePauw University, Herron School of Art & Design and he currently teaches at CSU Stanislaus, California.

The Power of stream

admin — Sun, 10 May 2026 15:55:24 +0000

The story of the search for “POWER” in the form movie meditation based on the song contained in “Gitanjali” book written by Rabindranth Tagore and the poem “Tryptyk Rzymski” aut. John Paul II. Rabindranath Tagore, awarded in 1912 with the Nobel Prize, was a special master, for whom the theater was the most important element shaping the personality of a man. He urged his students to work on themselves through art and beauty. On the other hand, the poem of John Paul II was a surprise for theologians, canonists, and serious hierarchs who asked the question of if the Pope should write poems? The Holy Father considers this work as a personal meditation. These two GREAT THOUGHTERS changing the world with their attitude and creativity very often came to similar conclusions, through poetry they tried to capture what is difficult to understand the mystery of existence.

Director Biography – Małgorzata Szyszka

Director (ZASP diploma 2004) graduate of Theatre Studies program, Academy of Theatre, A. Zelwerowicz, Menagement of Media in Kozmynky Academy, radio and television program analyst. Scholarship recipient – Minister of Culture and National Heritage, the Polish Film Institute, Warsaw of City. In recent years she has directed plays, documentary films and reportage and has also written drama and film scripts and conducted workshops for children and teenagers.

AWARDS

The best cinematography – documentary Mexico awaiting for souls … – XVI-th International Ethnographic Festival- ZLATNA- Romania
Special prize for documentary The story of an engraving – CINEMAWAY – Ukraine
Award for the spectacle Letters to Skręcipitki – Entree Festival Chorzów
Twice two – performance – the first prize at the Festival of one Actor in Wrocław
A distinction at the Garden Theater Festival
Actor’s Award in the play Portrait of a Young Actor – Windowisko Festival Gdańsk
The award knows the Comedy Festival Talia in Rzeszów

Resin

admin — Sun, 10 May 2026 15:53:03 +0000

Seduction, deformation, hardening.
The brutality of the accelerated and constantly available media of our present – the era of remixes, remakes and sequels – is concentrated in endless repetition. It shifts temporality. ‘resin‘ explores the resulting possibilities of depicting deformations and breaks in our sense of time and our memories.
This second part of the Viscous Matter Fear Trilogy is inspired by the structural film movement and also reveals media´s inherent sensationalism for disasters, suffering and violence once again.

Director Biography – Daniel Weismüller

“Filmworker since 2001 – filmmaker as long as I can remember“

Daniel Weismüller is a germany-based filmmaker and humanities academic who studied at the University of Trier and Frankfurt am Main (under Prof. Martin Seel). His academic interests lie primarily in film philosophy, aesthetics and film sociology. He undertakes film projects both in his spare time and through commissioned work.
In his favourite discipline, experimental film, Daniel Weismüller often seeks to explore the structures of filmmaking and the nature of film as both a medium and an idea, particularly with regard to editing. His film work includes experimental films, short films, music videos and corporate films, covering a range of genres and themes. He has also worked as a VJ – known as ‘frame crash’ – and as an assistant director for other short films. Some of his films have been invited to festivals and screened internationally. His film ‘resin’ has earned him several film awards.
Salient projects and collaborations are “The reading” (orig.: “Die Lesung” / 2011), „syrup“ (2013), “The Fluorescent Marker” (as suppoting film of the 1st Children’s and Youth Film Festival Fulda / 2012), the essay film “The dance of life” (orig.: “Der Tanz des Lebens” / 2014) and the (anti-)YouTube channel “start off” (launched in January 2021).

Daniel Weismüller was also involved in organising film events in an on-off collaboration with the culture- and cinema-initiative Fulda (Germany) since 2013. He currently lives in Mannheim, near Frankfurt am Main

THE ARTIST DIES IN ART | SELF PORTRAIT

admin — Thu, 07 May 2026 12:09:28 +0000

In the video ‘The Artist Dies in Art’, within an existentialist philosophical vision, the perfor-mer problematises the relationship with Being and Art, taking up the Greek metaphysical origins. The investigation of Being, within the performer’s poetics, is the very search for Art, for the Self and the I in Art. In this light, the golden mask of archaic funerary tradition (think of the mask of Agamemnon and the mask of the Egyptian pharaohs), like the title given to the work, takes on multiple meanings: it is the death of the artist’s ego in the search for Art and its rebirth in the sa-cred light of the same, as a sacred vehicle of connection with the deepest layers of Being. The artist creates by exploring his body, his soul, his identity’ to be reborn in the light of knowledge.

Director Biography – Marco Balbi Dipalma

M. Balbi Dipalma is a performer, video artist, photographer and painter with a master’s degree in theatre from the Department of Art, Music and Performing Arts at the University of Bologna. In 2018, he completed advanced training in socio-cultural education at the Department of Education Sciences at the University of Bologna. In 2020, he completed advanced training in contemporary archives at the Central State Archives in Rome. Since 2001, he has been studying and collaborating with M.° D. Pasquali, from whom he has learned theatrical, cinematographic and vocal techniques. In 2004, he met Rena Mirecka, one of the most important actresses of the past century and a founding member of J. Grotowski’s Teatr Laboratorium. He collaborated with R. Mirecka for 18 years. Since 2004, he has continued to participate in Mirecka’s research on paratheatre, first as her assistant and then as the leader of “THE SUN – The School of Rena Mirecka”. From 2017 to 2022, he directed “The Sun” at the Grotowski Institute (Wroclaw|Pl). In 2022, he brought to light the Master’s archive collection. The Master passed on to him the training of the Teatr Laboratorium, in particular the plastic exercises and the creation of ritualistic performative actions. Balbi Dipalma has had various experiences in traditional rituals and meditation, which led him, in 2021, to begin new research into ritual performance arts. In 2022, he returned to Italy, where he focused his research on the format of ritual performance video art. In 2025, he began photography and oil painting projects. He studies modern and contemporary dance at the Balletto di Varese and painting with Pippo D’Elia. Since 2025, his work has been supported by M. Corazzini’s CSA Farm Gallery in Turin.

Director Statement

My art stems from the need to explore Being with my body, in search of the ontogenesis of Love. My works investigate autobiographical experiences, focusing on pain as a source of knowledge and spiritual transformation. I study ritual techniques as tools to elevate personal creativity in a vertical, cathartic and existential reflection sense. Through performance, video art, photography and oil paintings, I seek to make visible the light of the soul through the plasticity of flesh. I contemplate red. The eternal pathos of red. Action, colour and form embody existential human feelings, expressing a sense of abandonment and surrendering to Being. The body is a language of slits, revealing its own existence in silence: “Being with”. I consider my works to be carnal prayers, seeking an instinctive relationship with the viewer to take them, through aesthetic reflection, into the depths of the soul, towards a common place present in the heart.