South by Southeast is a survey program that presents new film and video work from the area to the South and the East in Europe. The countries located in this area have alternately been classified as Balkan and Mediterranean, as capitalist and socialist, and as European and non-European. They share in common historical and cultural links that move in multiple directions. They also share in common a lower profile in the international culture of cinematic arts that comes from a lack of interest and care on the part of the dominant institutions and curators in Western Europe and North America. This program as such represents an intervention. It is a strategy for forging productive transnational links and also a method for mapping a new conception of Europe for a new generation.
South by Southeast presents work built for cinemas, galleries, online, and other cross-disciplinary exhibition spaces. The artists included in the selection engage in practices that blur boundaries and challenge the conventions of contemporary visual culture. In 2020, for the first time, this program will be a special part of the festival’s international competition.
Greg de Cuir Jr
Selector
Quarantine Self Portrait
Thomas Valianatos, Greece, 2020, 2 min.
This video is based on self portraits captured during the coronavirus lockdown. It was composed with Touch Designer & Magic Music Visuals software. Electro music created by the artist.
Empire State Streaming
Călin Boto, 2020, Romania, 8 min.
An audiovisual essay featuring a live-stream excerpt of Andy Warhol’s EMPIRE with a reflection on the phenomenon of zapping in the era of Instagram Stories.
Seven Seven
Miljana Niković, 2020, Serbia, 14 min.
Using mostly excerpts from “Airport ’77”, a film shot to promote the US Navy, this video collage offers a trivialization of the most recent large-scale events. With as much narrative replications as visual repetitions, this blockbuster — considered by some to be one of the best “disaster movies” — offers a reinterpretation of our erroneous perceptions in a hopeless context with no escape.
DNA
Niko Novak & Matevz Jerman, Slovenia, 2020, 5 min.
Have you ever been in love?
Colonello Futurista
Vladislav Knezevic, Croatia, 2019, 19 min.
The launch of an espionage balloon from an Italian village, located opposite the southern part of the Istrian peninsula, marked the beginning of a most unusual adventure for aviation officer Giuseppe Rosignoli. The decision to go on a reconnaissance mission over the heavily fortified Austro-Hungarian military zone of Pula was made several months before the Kingdom of Italy entered World War I in 1915.
