aemi & IFI present: TRANCE FILMS
aemi presents a very special international programme of experimental ‘trance films’.
The films selected here bypass comprehension, these are works that are experienced first and understood later (if at all). In his notes on Austrian filmmaker Jung an Tagen’s A Flock of Rotations Christian Höller describes how ‘there is no boundary here, no outside, no escape’ and this applies across a selection of films that take us from an explicitly digital realm to the far more earthly realm of the Atacama Desert in Daïchi Saïto’s EARTHEARTHEARTH (screening here in a beautiful 35mm print). As Alejandro Bachmann notes in relation to Happy Doom ‘the boundaries between inside and outside, me and the world, the virtual and the material, all become permeable, ambiguous, irrelevant’. A perfect descriptor for a programme that skirts the outer realm of psychedelia and cinema.
The screening includes two works screening from 35mm prints, both courtesy of Light Cone.
FILM INFO:
A Flock of Rotations, Jung an Tagen, 2026, Austria, 11 mins
Fuddy Duddy, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, 2016, Austria, 5 mins
Happy Doom,Billy Roisz, 2023, Austria, 3 mins
Ville Maria, Alexandre Larose, 2006-2009, Canada, 12 mins
EARTHEARTHEARTH, Daïchi Saïto, 2021, Japan, 30 mins
Total running time: 61 minutes
A Flock of Rotations – Jung an Tagen
Continuously falling pitches – descending into infinity.
Fuddy Duddy – Siegfried A. Fruhauf
In Siegfried A. Fruhauf´s Fuddy Duddy, something resembling a big bang is seen, with an energy resulting from the struggle between order and chaos. Everything we see takes place within a linear force field – whatever happens in the black and white images that arise from invisible sources of artistic creativity, whatever reveals its presence the instant it disappears. The lines themselves begin to flicker. It is as if they emerge from lidless eyes – were it only possible – yet they do not give way. The crucial grid underlying classical aesthetics of harmony and measurement begins to glow, but it does not go up in flames- Bert Rebhandl
Happy Doom – Billy Roisz
HAPPY DOOM is an audiovisual poem, an ode to color intoxication and vertigo. The screen a vibrating membrane that simultaneously spits and swallows colors and noisy beats – a hypnotic deformed circumpolar psychedelic short trip.
Ville Maria – Alexandre Larose
This film is inspired from a dream during which I fall from the top of a high-rise building facing the sky- Alexandre Larose
EARTHEARTHEARTH – Daïchi Saïto
Dawn breaks where land is flesh
And bones’ echoes;
You’ve lived through extinctions –
Stars, skies, sand and seas;
Future is catching us up at last,
And all the dead are ahead of us.
A major film from a singular artist, earthearthearth is a pulsing, painterly tour de force. – Michael Sicinski
With special thanks to our colleagues at SixpackFilm and Light Cone