A wall is a screen
A Wall is a Screen is an art project in which short films are projected onto surfaces in public spaces.
concept
The A Wall is a Screen project shows short films at night in the center of large cities, using light-colored house walls and other public spaces as a screen . During a performance, films with a maximum length of 12 minutes each are shown in six to seven different locations in the city. The location is changed after each film. The project employees set up the technical equipment (projector, generator, loudspeakers), play the film and then go to the next location. The group of spectators follows them.
Each performance has a specific focus. In addition, the films selected are often related to the location at which they are shown. Before the event, the starting point and topic of the evening will be published, but not which films are involved in detail. The selection of the locations of the film screening is based on the one hand on the theme of the evening, on the other hand the audience should get to know their city better through the project. Therefore, it is preferred to little-known places off the main roads. Not only house walls are used for projection, but also other public areas such as advertising pillars, garage doors and billboards.
A special feature of the project arises from the fact that the film and its surroundings are related to one another. The nature of the screen affects the presentation. Noises of city life mix in the movie scenes. Uninvolved people come across the project and react in different ways.
The performances are free of charge, no registration is necessary. Spectators can join or leave the show at any time. These are legal, registered projects that usually take place in the context of higher-level events, such as film festivals.
history
The founding members of the project, Antje Haubenreisser, Kerstin Budde and Peter Stein, got to know each other in 2003 during the International Short Film Festival in Hamburg, where they worked on the technical implementation. The idea arose to show short films in the open air and in this way to convey an artistic and political message. Four other employees later joined the team.
Since the project can fall back on the archive of the Hamburg Short Film Agency, sufficient film material was available from the start. Further short films were found through contacts at film festivals, with local filmmakers and on the Internet, or were later sent to the increasingly popular project by the artists themselves. The group attaches great importance to having the screening rights for all films shown.
At first the performances were limited to Hamburg (and participation in the local short film festival should always remain a tradition of the project), but then expanded to other German cities such as Berlin, Osnabrück and Cologne. A performance took place in Zurich in 2006, and numerous other European cities followed in 2007. In 2009 the project took part in the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas , and the following year it showed short films in Hyderabad, India . A Wall Is A Screen has already been shown in 23 countries.
In 2010 there was a special performance in the form of a boat trip through the port of Hamburg, with the films being projected onto quay walls and ships. This event (A Wall is a Screen Maritim) deviated from the concept in that the number of spectators was limited and entry had to be paid. In 2011 a boat trip was carried out a second time with a new route and a newly compiled film program. The boat tours took place as part of the "Open Monument Day" and mostly historical footage was shown.
The 100th performance took place in September 2010.
Performances (selection)
- 2003 Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg as part of the »gocreateresistance« series of events on the subject of "Public Space"
- 2003 19th International Short Film Festival Hamburg
- 2004 Training seminar of the Goethe-Institut during the Berlinale "Offers and ideas for working with short films"
- 2005 Attac Summer Academy, Goettingen
- 2005 Dok-Filmfest Leipzig
- 2005 Independent FilmFest Osnabrück
- 2006 Domplatte / Roman-Germanic Museum, Cologne
- 2006 performance in Zurich, Switzerland, a wall is a screen: screen down asylgesetz
- 2006 performance during the Kunstherbst Berlin, Kurfürstendamm
- 2007 performance in Ústí nL, Czech Republic
- 2007 Performances as part of the "Instant Urbanism" program, Basel
- 2007 Cork Film Festival, Ireland
- 2007 Urban Screens in Manchester
- 2007 LUX International Festival of Lights, Vilnius, Lithuania / Lithuania
- 2008 performance in Debrecen, Hungary
- 2008 Bonn Biennale
- 2008 Documentary Film Festival Prizren, Kosovo
- 2008 performance in Chisinau, Moldova
- 2008 Open Monument Day in Hamburg
- 2008 "Nuit Blanche", Brighton
- 2009 South by Southwest Festivals in Austin, Texas, USA
- 2009 Performances in Ankara, Turkey
- 2009 performance in Odessa, Ukraine
- 2009 ALCINE Festival, Alcalá de Henares and Madrid, Spain
- 2009 Interfilm Short Film Festival , Berlin
- 2010 Conference "Performing Tangiers" of the International Center for Performance Studies "in Tangier, Morocco
- 2010 performance in Zurich, Switzerland, on the occasion of the Red Factory's 30th anniversary
- 2010 A Wall is a Screen Maritime, boat tour through the port of Hamburg as part of the Open Monument Day
- 2010 performance in cooperation with the Goethe Center Hyderabad in Hyderabad, India
- 2011 CPH PIX Festival , Copenhagen, Denmark
- 2011 Long Night of the Museums, Frankfurt am Main, in collaboration with the German Film Museum
- 2012 tours in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai in India in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut
resonance
According to the organizer, the number of participants in the film screenings is an average of 200. In 2008, a record attendance of 1000 people was achieved.
The project was often announced or discussed in German newspapers, for example in the TAZ .
In May 2008, an article about the performance of the project at the Hamburg International Short Film Festival was published in the culture magazine "Stage Fever" on Hamburg 1 .
The project took place on 3sat on February 7th, 2009 in the program vivo on the topic Does cinema have a future? Mention.
On February 20, 2009, Arte broadcast an article about A Wall is a Screen in KurzSchluss - Das Magazin .
On November 9, 2009, a team from the Kulturzeit (3Sat) program accompanied a performance of the project in Berlin-Mitte.
In the same year, Ukrainian television reported about the A Wall is a Screen tour in Odessa.
swell
- ↑ a b Facebook page A Wall is a Screen
- ↑ a b A Wall Is a Screen: Der große Rummel ( Memento from February 2, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), website of the KurzFilmFestival Hamburg, accessed on June 2, 2012.
- ↑ Short films on large walls all over Mümmelmannsberg , Hamburger Abendblatt, September 3, 2010
- ↑ Hamburg, seen with different eyes: "A wall is a screen" at the International Short Film Festival , TAZ, June 10, 2004
- ↑ Film guerrilla between house walls , TAZ, September 25, 2009
- ↑ Program of February 7, 2009, 3Sat.de
- ↑ Article about broadcast Kulturzeit from November 9, 2009, 3Sat.de
- ↑ Compilation of the media coverage on awallisascreen.com