On 16 and 17 November, the Tallinn Photomonth artists’ films programme Polar Coordinates will take place at the cinema Sõprus. Ten films from eight countries will be screened during the two-day programme with themes ranging from intimate family relationships to geographic explorations and telepathic cinema. The film programme is curated by the Estonian artist and filmmaker Piibe Kolka and New York based critic and film curator Genevieve Yue. This is the first time that the programme takes place in collaboration with the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival PÖFF.
Tallinn Photomonth’s film programme Polar Coordinates, which is part of the PÖFF Expanded programme, focuses on artists’ films that are the product of a variety of collaborations. “Unlike mainstream films, which are typically made by enormous crews, experimental or artist films often imply the painstaking work of a solitary maker. This year’s Photomonth film programme explores works that were created through various partnerships and dialogues in order to reflect upon the different forms of creative collaboration. Authors of many of these films are partners beyond filmmaking duos: they are families, romantic partners, scientists, and activists,” explains the artist and filmmaker Piibe Kolka, one of the curators of the programme.
The film programme that is divided in two parts features ten films from Estonia, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Ukraine and the USA. The first part of the programme, A Frame that Holds Us (16.11) arises from the intimate spaces of the home, tackling themes of self-reflection as well as the experience of confinement and seclusion from the world. For example, Dani and Sheilah ReStack’s Come Coyote (2019, USA) which is part of a trilogy of films revolving around domesticity and desire, examines issues of queer reproduction, intimacy, and motherhood. Collaborators and partners Dani and Sheilah ReStack capture in fleeting, diaristic images the tender and terrifying feelings they have around ushering new life into the world.
Also screened during the first evening are Orbs (2016) by the Estonian artist and filmmaker Liina Siib, which plays with one of the oldest instruments of astronomy in the world – an armillary sphere –, and A Practice for Surrender (2022) by the artist and author Tõnis Jürgens, a video essay about sleep and self-surveillance.
The second part of the programme, A Question that Can Be Answered Yes or No (17.11), introduces us to researchers-artists-explorers who travel across the globe sharing with each other their discoveries, frustrations, and joys. For example, in the video work New City of Friends (2021, Ukraine) by Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk, the local teenager Maksym offers a fully improvised excursion to the families of the neighbourhood of his hometown Kolomyia bringing together unconnected areas of the city and its surroundings.
The second evening of screenings concludes with the slide-performance Distant Feeler (2022, Germany) by the Berlin-based filmmaking duo OJOBOCA which tells the story of artists who attempted to create a device for telepathic cinema.
The first part of the Photomonth film programme takes place on 16 November from 19.00 to 20.45 and the second part on 17 November from 19.00 to 21.00 at the cinema Sõprus. The second evening of screenings will be followed by a Q&A with the artists and curators. Additionally, a public lecture on the subject of feminism and film materiality will be held by Genevieve Yue, one of the curators of the film programme, in the main auditorium of the Estonian Academy of Arts on 20 November at 17.30.
Descriptions of the films and information about the tickets can be found: https://www.fotokuu.ee/en/programm and https://poff.ee/en/poff-expanded-tallinn-photomonth.