Swiss video artist at Dokfilm Festival in Marseille (France)
03.07.2007
At the 18th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival of Marseille, taking place in the French port city from July 4 – 9, 2007, the work of Swiss video artist Ursula Biemann will be presented as part of a retrospective and accompanied by a discussion with the author. Sabine Gisiger’s documentary film Gambit” will be shown in Marseille with protagonist Jörg Sambeth in attendance. Further presented at the festival will be Swiss films and co-productions “Il Bacio di Tosca” (1984) by Daniel Schmid, “Soigne ta droite” (1987) by Jean-Luc Godard, and “Juventude em marcha” (2006) by Pedro Costa.
In her work, the artist, curator, and lecturer Ursula Biemann deals with such topics as migration, mobility, technology, and gender. Her video essays produced since 1999, which include “Performing the border” (1999), “Writing Desire” (2000), “Remote sensing” (2001), “Europlex” (2003), “Contained mobility” (2004), and “Black sea files” (2005), will be shown in the “Filmer, dit-elle” series. These experimental videos are geared toward mixed audiences from within and outside the art world.
In her film “Gambit”, Sabine Gisiger examines the story of the 1976 Seveso environmental catastrophe. After it received the International Mediterranean Documentary and Reportage Award in 2006, the Centre Méditerranéen de Communication Audiovisuelle will feature the film at a special screening with protagonist Jörg Sambeth in attendance.
Organized by Jean-Pierre Rehm, who is the editor of the Cahiers du Cinéma journal, the documentary film festival in Marseille is a place where traditional film language is put into question, and where the confrontation of fictional and documentary approaches of filmmaking is taking place.
Zurich, July 3, 2007