K3 Film Festival Villach

Retrospective BADY MINCK

Photo: Jörg Burger

A Deep Dive into the World of Bady Minck

In the course of the K3 Short Film Festival, which is to be held for the first time also in Ljubljana, we are very glad to present you a retrospective of Bady Minck. Internationally she made her mark for her films loaded with surrealistic images. A key to approach her films is to know the way she works: "When all the administrative stuff of the day is done – late at night/early in the morning –  and the surface is smoothened, I am able to take a deep dive into myself, into the world of thoughts and feelings. It is a state of euphoria, trance-like, and returning from this dive both of my hands are full of jewels. Then I can spend hours and hours drawing and writing down these discoveries." 
So be ready to take a deep dive into a world, where unexplored forms and feelings are expressed in a dreamlike way.
Fritz Hock

 

PROGRAMME IN DETAIL

September, 25^th, 21:00, Kinoteka, Ljubljana
at the presence of the author

 

Early films

I.  Der Mensch mit den modernen Nerven

The man with modern nerves / L’homme aux nerfs modernes

by Bady Minck & Stefan Stratil
Austria / Luxembourg 1989
8min, b&w, 35mm, stereo, without dialogues
Premiere: International Film Festival Cannes 1989

The model used in the animated rhythmic fantasy The Man with Modern Nerves is based on sketches of terraced Mexican pyramids done by Adolf Loos in 1923 for a visionary design of a city hall in Mexico-City. Known for the purity and simplicity of his style, Adolf Loos is one of the pioneers of modern architecture. The animated film with live action sequences could be described as an homage to Adolf Loos, but is, apart from being a personal, very intellectual approach, also an artistic version of a biographical detail. The step-pyramid of his sketches is not only animated in their ‚mise en scène’, but becomes involved in an abstract game of geometric forms, light and shadows, reminiscent of certain films of the 20ies. More than just an animation of the model, the film reveals Adolf Loos's architectural concepts of surface and the volume of space.
Jean-Michel Bouhours, „L’Art du mouvement“
éditions Centre Pompidou Paris 1994

 

II. Mécanomagie

Luxembourg 1996
16min, colour, 35mm, dolby stereo, without dialogues
Premiere: International Film Festival Rotterdam 1997

Mécanomagie takes a stylish, performative path through the landscape in northern Luxembourg. "Live action" pixilated animation evokes a grounded paisant consciousness of "natural forces" and folkloric myths of the humanoid Jitzerten (humanoid beings that zigzag over trails and roads without being noticed by the indigenous inhabitants of Luxembourg )...The film's success lies in its elegant blending of magical neo-surrealist otherworldliness with a fundamental earth-boundedness.
Stephen Ball
International Melbourne Film Festival 1997

 

Music Films

III. Schein Sein

 Seems To Be / Être Paraître

Luxembourg / Austria 2008
8min, colour, 35mm, dolby digital, without dialogues
Premiere of the Short Live-Version: Biennale di Venezia 2007
Premiere of the Cinema Version: Int. Film Festival Berlinale 2008

Based on a piece by modern composer Morton Feldman, Seems To Be plays with the levels of optic and aural perception, with the deception of eyes and ears as well as the tension between two-dimensional reproduction and three-dimensional spatial recreation.
Berlinale – International Film Festival Berlin 2008

 

IV. Das Sein und das Nichts

  Being and Nothingness / L’Être et le Néant

Luxembourg / Austria 2007
10min, colour, 35mm, dolby digital, without dialogues
Premiere of the Short Live-Version: Biennale di Venezia 2007
Premiere of the Cinema Version: Int. Film Festival Rotterdam 2007

What you see is what you hear in filmmaker Bady Minck's visual treatment of an original composition by Beat Furrer. The individual musicians appear only in the extremely brief moments in which they play, with their bodies representing notes on a visualised score.  As the conductor masterfully tames time and commands silence, the dominance of music over the body is skillfully illustrated while the music becomes a living picture.
Jason Buchanan, New York Times 2007

 

LATE FILMS

V. La Belle est la Bête

The Beauty is the Beast

Austria / Nederlands / Luxembourg 2005
2:30min, colour, 35mm, dolby digital, without dialogues
Premiere: Int. Film Festival Rotterdam 2005

A dream, a woman, a furred tongue: Bady Minck's The Beauty is the Beast operates on the interface between civilization and wilderness, nature and culture, human and animal. A film that raises the issue of the pros and cons of our cultivation. On the threshold between the animal inside and the civilized exterior "the beauty (la belle)" herself becomes "the beast (la bête)".
Black Book, New York 2005

 

VI. Im Anfang war der Blick

  In the Beginning was the Eye / Au Commencement était le regard

Austria /Luxembourg 2003
45min, colour, 35mm, dolby digital, German with English subtitles
Premiere: International Film Festival Cannes 2003

In the Beginning was the Eye is, with its 45 minutes of abundant avant-garde research, the figurehead of the Director's Fortnight in Cannes. It took five years to produce this cinematic UFO essentially made up of hundreds of postcards. At times a dreamlike vision, at times political, philosophical and even culinary, the film is technically perfect. The stunning sound and visuals and the hypnotic editing ensure that you don't get bored for a second.
Martin Granica
Repérages, Paris 2003

 

Especially for K3 and Kinoteka:

An exclusive two minute preview of her upcoming next film.

VII. MappaMundi (working title)

Luxembourg / Austria 2008-2012
22 min, colour, 35 mm, Dolby Digital
preview: 2 min

MappaMundi takes you on an accelerated voyage through 950 million years of continental drift and 150.000 years of human migration. The film visualises the continuous change of our world, a change that is unnoticable for a human being in a single lifetime. With over hundred world maps from the past 15.000 years, the development of our view of the world from its beginnings to this day is critically analysed and illustrated in its diversity.

 

Born in Luxembourg, Bady Minck works as an artist and filmmaker in Vienna and Luxembourg. Originally she studied sculpture at Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts and later experimental film at the University of Applied Arts. Her films have been presented in retrospectives and invited to more than 300 international film festivals, including Cannes (semaine de la critique 1989, quinzaine des réalisateurs 2003) and have received several awards and special mentions, She is founding member of Amour Fou Film Vienna and Minotaurus Film Luxembourg, where she produces films such as Matthias Müller's Nebel and Virgil Widrich's Fast Film.

Trailers and more information about the films on www.badyminck.com