Looking at our times through the prism of the moving image.
At Fondazione In Between Art Film, we foster dialogues between video, cinema, and performance, supporting artists and institutions whose visions cross the boundaries between creative disciplines.
NEWS
Karimah Ashadu’s film “Machine Boys” (2024), which we produced for the Biennale Arte 2024 and for which she was awarded the Silver Lion for Promising Young Artist, will be presented next week at @kurzfilmtage.oberhausen (German competition) and at @indielisboa (Silvestre competition). Congratulations, Karimah!
In the words of Liedson Carvalho, who is part of the Selection Committee for IndieLisboa IFF, “Karimah Ashadu’s film ‘Machine Boys’ explores the informal economy of motorcycle taxis (Okada) in Lagos, Nigeria. Despite the government ban, many riders persist in their work, striving for financial independence. The film captures their daily struggles while examining the masculinity they project and their inherent vulnerability as part of a precarious working class. With an innovative visual style, ‘Machine Boys’ reflects on informal economic structures and the influence of patriarchal norms in Nigerian society.”
Calendar:
📍IndieLisboa IFF
May 2, 2025 h 7:15 pm
📍 Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen
May 3, 2025 h 5 pm
Info and tickets at the link in bio
Images credits: Karimah Ashadu, “Machine Boys,” 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Fondazione in Between Art Film
@jonathasdeandrade’s film “Olho da Rua” (2022), which we commissioned and produced for our exhibition PENUMBRA (2022) at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto in Venice, will be screened at @kunsthalcharlottenborg until June 8, 2025. Congratulations, Jonathas!
“Olho da Rua” [Out Loud] casts a temporary community of homeless people living in the streets of downtown Recife. Inspired by the techniques of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, the film stages a series of performative acts that focus on collective dynamics and exercises of gaze in a public square. Bordering fiction and nonfiction, the aim was to engage the cast of nonprofessional actors in debates about identity, care, family, class consciousness, and social and political visibility through actions and words. Out of the script, the images are delicately receptive to the cast’s personality and emotional worlds, and stand as a powerful testimony of contemporary Brazil, with its rich multiculturalism and structural inequalities. To accompany them is a hypnotic soundtrack by percussionist Homero Basílio that uses instruments rooted in Northeastern Brazil. The film is not only a reflection on power dynamics rooted in colonialism—and on how these may be tied to whoever holds the camera—, but also a provocation to the viewer. Using art and radical pedagogy tools to reposition the stories of people who are marginalized and made invisible, the work fosters ways to collectively rethink reality and imagine alternatives. (Text by @abinoppst)
PENUMBRA was our first exhibition at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto and it was held there on the occasion of @labiennale 2022. Curated by @alessandro.rabottini and @leonardobigazzi, the show featured commissioned works by Karimah Ashadu, Jonathas De Andrade, Aziz Hazara, He Xiangyu, Masbedo, James Richards, Emilija Škarnulytė, and Ana Vaz.
Images credit: Stills from Jonathas de Andrade, Olho da Rua (Out Loud), 2022. Courtesy of the artist, @galleriacontinua, and @galerianararoesler
Shirin Neshat’s and Shoja Azari’s film “Land of Dreams,” which we-coproduced, will be presented tonight at @cinetecamilano in the presence of the artist, who will participate in an in-conversation after the screening. Congratulation, Shirin!
Starring mattdillon, @isabellarossellini, @williammoseley, Sheila Vand (@dontworryitssheila), @theannagunn, and @realchrismcdonald, the story of “Land of Dreams” takes place in the near future in a small town in America. Simin is an Iranian immigrant who works for United States Census Bureau which has begun a program to record citizens’ dreams. Unaware of the American government’s devious plot, Simin’s personal obsession is to try to capture her interviewees’ dreams by photographing and later secretly impersonating them in Farsi, then publishing them on social media. Playful and poignant, “Land of Dreams” acknowledges in a surreal and satirical way, the greatness of the American experiment while offering a warning beacon for what could come.
Further screening dates at Cineteca Milano:
Saturday, 05-04, 4:15 pm
Wednesday, 09-04, 7 pm
More info and tickets via the link in bio
The film is presented in Milan on the occasion of Neshat’s solo exhibition at @pacmilano, curated by @diego.sileo with @beatrice_c_benedetti
“Land of Dreams” was produced by Bon Voyage Films GmbH, Palodeon Pictures LLC & Land of Dreams LLC production, and co-produced by #FondazioneInBetweenArtFilm
Photo credits: ©Ghasem Ebrahimian, Bon Voyage Films and Palodeon Pictures
Congratulations to Ari Benjamin Meyers, whose film “Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut” (2024), which we commissioned and produced on the occasion of our show NEBULA at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto in Venice, will be on view at @kunstvereinbraunschweig from March 15 until June 1, 2025
The work is centered around Marshall Allen, renowned free and avant-garde jazz musician and current leader of the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra, of which he has been a continual member since 1958. For this film, the artist composed two original scores for Allen to interpret, inviting him to engage, through music, in an intimate conversation about the spontaneity of music-making, the rigor of rehearsals, and the potentiality of collaboration. Telling a musical and visual story of transformation from the earthly to the otherworldly, the work transcends temporalities and places and pays homage both to Allen’s century-long life lived through music and to Sun Ra’s revolutionary musical vision and political utopia, which discerned in the unknown of sonic experimentation and the vastness of the universe the possibility of a transformed present and a radically different future. (Text by @abinoppst)
More info via the link in bio
Images credit: Ari Benjamin Meyers, Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut, 2024. Still from single-channel video. Commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film, and co-produced by @fluentumcollection, for the exhibition Nebula, 2024. Courtesy of the artist, Fondazione In Between Art Film, and @estherschippergallery
Saodat Ismailova’s film “Melted into the Sun” will be presented tomorrow at @batalhacentrodecinema as part of her solo show of the same name, which runs until May 11, 2025. Congratulations, Saodat!
The opening will be accompanied by a talk between the artist and Leonardo Bigazzi.
“Melted into the Sun” (2024) by Saodat Ismailova (1981, Uzbekistan) is inspired by the ambiguous figure of Al-Muqannaʿ (“The Veiled One”), a fuller who became a spiritual leader and political agitator in southern Central Asia in the 8th century.
The film meditates on the cultural and political echoes of his revolutionary ideas about the sharing of property and wealth. Adopting a cyclical vision of history and knowledge, the artist transports us to the banks of the Amu Darya River, the circular burial ground of Chillpiq, the city of Bukhara—all sites where the legendary exploits of Al-Muqannaʿ are said to have been performed. But Ismailova also takes us to places that are home to a number of pieces of Soviet infrastructure, such as the Kirov dam, and the solar furnace of Uzbekistan.
This visual journey through time betrays the skilled use of illusion and science made by Al-Muqannaʿ for demagogic purposes, and considers the central role played by technology and the manipulation of the Earth. The lyrical sequences of reflections and flashes, together with the textured soundtrack, continue to make his profound and still-unanswered questions reverberate into the modern day. (Text by @abinoppst)
More info via the link in bio
“Melted into the Sun” (2024) was commissioned by Fondazione In Between Art Film and co-produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film and Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto, on the occasion of the exhibition NEBULA, which was held at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venice, in 2024.
Images credit: Saodat Ismailova, “Melted Into The Sun,” 2024. Stills from single-channel video, color, sound, 35’ 50”. Commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film. Coproduced by Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto. Courtesy the artist and Fondazione In Between Art Film
The complete video recordings of ᴛʜɪᴄᴋ ᴀᴛᴍᴏꜱᴘʜᴇʀᴇꜱ are now available to watch online via our Vimeo channel
ᴛʜɪᴄᴋ ᴀᴛᴍᴏꜱᴘʜᴇʀᴇꜱ was a cross-disciplinary symposium held at Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi, Venice, on 17–18 October, 2024, on the occasion of the group exhibition NEBULA
Curated by @abinoppst and organized in collaboration with @palazzo_grassi, Pinault Collection Venezia, the conversations, panels, and screenings of ᴛʜɪᴄᴋ ᴀᴛᴍᴏꜱᴘʜᴇʀᴇꜱ probed questions concerning the act of seeing and the sensory experiencing of moving images; at the same time, it focused on the pervasiveness of images and media content, and the corporeal relationship they condition and create, as well as complex, planetary-scale phenomena within the continuous aftermath of the Capitalocene
We are grateful to the many people who attended the symposium to listen to the speakers and to engage with their points of view on the objects and the conditions of perception in and beyond the context of the exhibition NEBULA
The speakers included: 2050+/Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Maria Alicata, Mara Ambrožič Verderber, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Karimah Ashadu, Lucia Aspesi, Cristina Baldacci, Erika Balsom, Leonardo Bigazzi, Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Nav Haq, Sharon Hecker, Fatima Hellberg, Eleni Ikoniadou, Chrissie Iles, Saodat Ismailova, Amal Khalaf, Helena Kritis, Basir Mahmood, Diego Marcon, Lorenzo Mason Studio, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Matteo Pasquinelli, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Alessandro Rabottini, Mark Rappolt, Giulia Rispoli, Francesco Spampinato, Mike Sperlinger, Carla Subrizi, Paola Ugolini, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Valentine Umansky, and Isobel Whitelegg
ᴛʜɪᴄᴋ ᴀᴛᴍᴏꜱᴘʜᴇʀᴇꜱ was coordinated by Chiara Nicolini, Giovanni Giacomo Paolin
Educational partners Department of the Arts, @unibo; Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, @cafoscari; and @curatorial.school
Media Partner @moussemagazine
Visual identity @lorenzomasonstudio
NEBULA was curated by @alessandro.rabottini and @leonardobigazzi at Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venice, from 17 April – 24 November 2024, on the occasion of the Biennale Arte 2024
Video recs: @maco_film_venice_london
Photos: Matteo De Fina
Emilija Škarnulytė’s film “Aphotic Zone” is currently screening at @louisianamuseum within the context of the group exhibition OCEAN. Congratulations, Emilija!
As a cinematic journey across the ocean’s abysses, “Aphotic Zone” echolocates the mythological as much as the critical aspects of humanity’s avarice in its, albeit brief, stay on Earth. It crosses a trench at 4 km depth to reach the pitch black (or, aphotic) zone of the Pacific seamounts of Costa Rica on the other side. The only visible lights beam from strange, bioluminescent creatures in its inky depths. A Remotely Operated Vehicle samples deep-sea corals with its robotic arms while images of the undulating seafloor generated from 3D laser scanner data as well as of the towering Duga radar (a Soviet-era missile defense system near Chernobyl, Ukraine) shift and scale into a landscape of prehistoric creatures and advanced technology. Here, more-than-human and machinic agencies weirdly coexist with the sonic memory of a distant civilization: mixed by Oscar-winning engineers Jaime Baksht and Michelle Couttolenc, the sound was recorded in Mexico City’s main plaza during the commemorations for the 500th anniversary of Spain’s bloody conquest of Tenochtitlan. The former capital of the Aztec Empire becomes a sonic ghost reverberating with the contemporary destructions of societies and ecosystems. Oscillating between the documentary and the oneiric, Aphotic Zone imagines the future as its vantage point with the aim of looking back into the present amid the threats of the climate crisis and economic extractivism; the idealistic prospects of science; and what will survive the ravages of human greed. (Text by @abinoppst)
“Aphotic Zone” (2022) was commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film on the occasion for our exhibition PENUMBRA, which was held at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venice, in 2022.
Image credit: Emilija Škarnulytė, Aphotic Zone, 2022. Still from video. Courtesy of the artist, Dr. Erik Cordes and the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and Fondazione In Between Art Film
Andro Eradze’s film “Flowering and Fading” (2024), which we co-produced with @schermodellarte, will have its US premiere at @momaps1 in the group exhibition “The Gatherers,” curated by @rubakatrib with @sacredboi.
Congratulations, Andro!
“Flowering and Fading” invites the audience to embark upon a journey into the realm of imaginative companionship. Through its narrative and allusive signs, the film offers the viewer a sense of fellowship: exploring bonds between a human and a dog, it delves into an anthropomorphic symbiosis resonating among these two entities. By blending ghostly dreamscapes with common domestic settings, it creates an atmosphere which transcends conventional storytelling.
Image credit: Andro Eradze, Flowering and Fading, 2024, video still. Courtesy the artist, Fondazione In Between Art Film, SpazioA Pistoia, and Lo schermo dell’arte