Through a multidisciplinary selection of 156 works from 52 countries, the 2023 edition brings together internationally renowned artists and filmmakers, alongside emerging artists and young artists presented for the first time. The programming includes various approaches, from documentary to experimental fiction, videos in hybrid and multimedia forms, thematic screenings, retrospectives, white cards, VR programming, forum and round tables.
Designed as a space for exploration and reflection
For the founders and directors of the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin: "As images saturate our daily lives, it is urgent and necessary to rediscover the ability of our gaze to travel the world and understand it through what artists tell us, explore and reinvent. Nathalie Hénon and Jean-François Rettig specify: Their works challenge us, shift our gaze and invite us to an experience of seeing differently. Reflection and the invention of new audiovisual forms are all possible worlds and utopias needed to reinvent our time. '
The Paris/Berlin International Meetings are a free event and offer all audiences (professionals, amateurs, neophytes) an exceptional opportunity to dive into the world of contemporary audiovisual creation. 8 institutions in Paris host these meetings: Centre Pompidou, the Jeu de Paume, the MEP, the Wallonia-Brussels Centre, the Fiminco Foundation, the Museum of Hunting and Nature, the Guimet Museum and cinema Luminor City Hall
The highlights of the Rencontres
Yvonne Rainer
A major retrospective of the American artist’s films Yvonne Rainer. His cinematographic works were restored by MoMA in early 2023 and are presented in Paris in their entirety as part of a retrospective for the first time in 10 years. The retrospective takes place at the Centre Pompidou, the MEP, the Jeu de Paume and the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles from 1 to 4 November.
Retrospective Yvonne Rainer © dr for Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin 2023
Settled in New York in 1956, Rainer acquired a solid training in dance, working with influential choreographers such as Merce Cunningham. In 1962, Rainer co-founded the Judson Dance Theater, a group of performance artists inspired by the avant-garde of John Cage and Merce Cunningham. The group, precursor of the postmodern movement, revolutionizes choreography by introducing experimentation, improvisation, daily movement and multimedia. She unveiled her latest choreography, "Hellzapoppin': What About the Bees?" in October 2022.
Peggy Ahwesh "OR119"
Preview of the latest medium-length film by American artist Peggy Ahwesh, emblematic figure of contemporary video. In her latest creation, co-directed with Jacqueline Goss, the artist Peggy Ahwesh, seizes the intellectual legacy of controversial scientist Wilhelm Reich and offers him an unprecedented musical treatment. OR119 is a theoretical musical that explores Reich’s complex relationship between psychoanalysis and Marxism in a playful and liberating way. Peggy Ahwesh’s medium-length film takes quotes from the scientist’s work, set to music by composer Zach Layton, and imagines dialogues between the scientist and contemporary feminist thinkers.
Peggy Ahwesh, OR119 © dr for the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin 2023
The work of Peggy Ahwesh and Jacqueline Goss was filmed in Reich’s home and laboratory in Rangeley, Maine. The film depicts the notion of this invisible positive energy, believing in its universality. OR119 is a celebration of the life potential inherent in immersion in nature, the cosmos and energy interactions. Location: MEP European House of Photography
Isabell Spengler "Die Hörposaune"
Thanks to a floating camera movement, the film invites us to a reading circle or a vocal performance in memory of the countertenor and queer icon Klaus Nomi, one of the first public figures to die from the AIDS pandemic.
"Die Hörposaune", Isabell Spengler © dr for the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin 2023
Through her work, she explores social and media changes, gender constructions and power relations in everyday situations. Its fantastic-looking protagonists try to adapt, appropriate, transform or simply live in the real environments they face. Location: Luminor City Hall
Kaisen Halmang "Jane Jin"
Halmang revolves around a group of eight women aged 70 to 80 on the coast of Jeju Island, near an islet of lava rock that once served as a shamanic sanctuary for the wind goddess Yongdeung Halmang. The women, who worked and made their living together for most of their lives as haenyeo marine divers, used to go out to the sea together from that very spot.
"Halmang", Jane Jin Kaisen © dr for the International Meetings Paris/Berlin 2023
It is also the term Jeju for "grandmother" and a form of respectful address for a woman. It is also in this region that Kaisen’s grandmother used to go to sea as a haenyeo diver during her lifetime. Wednesday 1st November 2023, European House of Photography. Location: MEP European House of Photography
Lubanzadyo Mpemba "Sirenes Opacas de São Paulo"
In Sirenes Opacas de São Paulo, we observe the tension between the city as an anonymous concrete that occupies space, and the world as an accumulated experience in the body. But the city is also the world and space is also the body, and each carries the anatomy of opaque memories.
Experimental video Brazil, Lubanzadyo Mpemba © dr for the International Meetings Paris/Berlin 2023
Lubanzadyo Mpemba, born in Angola in 1989, is an artist whose work covers a range of practices ranging from video art to photoperformance, performance and documentary. Her work focuses on issues of migration, urban gentrification, institutional violence and collective memory. Location: European House of Photography
Natacha Nisic "And be only mist"
The artist creates a two-day performance in the tower of the city of Malakoff, named after Alexandre Chauvelot, an entrepreneur of the early 20th century. This tower was built on the model of the tower of the fort of Malakoff, located in Sevastopol in Crimea. The tower of the fort of Malakoff is famous for having been besieged by the French army in 1854-1855, ending in its capture on September 8, 1855 after many deaths. This event became the symbol of the victory of the armies of Emperor Napoleon III, but also of an unprecedented massacre. And to be only mist" is a hybrid and liberating cinematic object, containing the seeds of a method of "putting into action" that transcends the history of war and memory.
Natacha Nisic "And be only mist" © dr for the International Meetings Paris/Berlin 2023
Natacha Nisic continuously explores the invisible, even magical, relationship between images, words, interpretation, symbol and ritual. His work weaves links between stories, stories of the past and the present, to reveal the complexity of the relationship between what is shown and what is hidden, the spoken and the unspoken. Location: Museum of Hunting and Nature
France premiere
Monira Al Qadiri, "Crude Eye"
Having grown up in Kuwait near an oil refinery by the sea, the artist poured her imagination over a road bridge: vast panorama of lights, fire, smoke and towers, she imagined that it was a metropolis, filled with beings and ghosts from another world.
Monira Al Qadiri, "Crude Eye" © dr for the International Meetings Paris/Berlin 2023
This film recalls his childhood memories, associating images of a miniature refinery recreated with poems on the city lights and industrial landscapes. The work attempts to reconcile a sense of childish wonder with the toxic destruction of the environment that the refinery intrinsically represents.
Monira Al Qadiri is a Kuwaiti visual artist born in 1983 in Senegal and trained in Japan. Covering sculpture, installation, cinema and performance, Al Qadiri’s multifaceted practice relies primarily on research into the cultural histories of the Gulf region. Experimental film, 2022 Germany. Location: Centre Wallonie Bruxelles
Carte blanche to Pedro Costa
Carte blanche to the Portuguese director Pedro Costa who received the Golden Leopard in Locarno in 2019 for "Vitalina Varela". After studying history at the University of Lisbon, Pedro Costa studied cinema at the School of Theatre and Cinema of Lisbon (Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema), where he was a pupil of António Reis, Paulo Rocha and Alberto Seixas Santos. After being the assistant of several directors such as Jorge Silva Melo, Vítor Gonçalves and João Botelho, he directed his first feature film, O Sangue (The Blood), in 1989. He is acclaimed for using his ascetic style to portray marginalized people in desperate life situations. Many of his films take place in a neighbourhood of Lisbon inhabited by socially disadvantaged people and are shot in a natural and discreet way in a documentary format. Location: Centre Wallonia Brussels
Moving Image Art Prize
The award of the Moving Image Art Prize by an international jury on Sunday 5 November. Initiated in 2021 by the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, the Moving Image Art Prize recognizes a singular work in the field of moving images. It is awarded by an international jury to one of the works of the program. The selection committee selected 14 exceptional works from the proposals received, to be submitted to the jury. The Moving Image Art Prize will be awarded, in the form of a scholarship, on Sunday, November 5 at the Fiminco Foundation.
The Paris/Berlin 2023 Rencontres Internationales were created in 1997 and each year the event reveals new talents, often presented in major artistic events a few years later. We will quote here : Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Palme d'Or in Cannes in 2010, presented for the first time at the Rencontres in 1998; Anri Sala, presented at the Rencontres also in 1998 and which represents France at the Venice Biennale in 2013; Clément Cogitore, selected at the Directors' Fortnight in 2011 and presented by the Rencontres since 2006; Neil Beloufa, First Prize of the Oberhausen Festival in 2011 and presented at the Rencontres in 2006; Justine Triet, presented for the first time at the Rencontres in 2004, and Palme d'Or in 2023. For each edition, the program is presented in Paris and then in Berlin to celebrate the diversity of artistic expression through screenings, exhibitions, performances and debates. Each year, the Rencontres Internationales open an international call for proposals for the search for works. |
Discover the full program of Rencontres
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