Film and Almost Film 2007

Although Film and Almost Film is not organised around a theme, the pieces this year share common concerns. These include history (Moments of Considered Time, Arthur Kleinjan, 2006-2007; Finally, Knut Åsdam, 2006), the appropriation and recreation of films and images (On Translation: Fear/Miedo, Antoni Muntadas, 2005; Interkosmos, Jim Finn, 2006) and displacement in the broadest sense of the word, from immigration to tourism (Lonely Planet, Julian Rosefeldt, 2005; Là-Bas, Chantal Ackerman, 2006). At times, as in the film by Marcel Odenbach (Cologne, 1953) In Still Waters Crocodiles Lurk (1995-2004), all of these ideas come together, forming a mosaic of images in which reflections on the status of the audiovisual archive and compositional procedures inevitably lead to an interrogation of history and the way in which events and memory are constructed.

The Museo Reina Sofía is also dedicating a space in Film and Almost Film to the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, which in the last five decades has become one of the most respected festivals in the world, a place where filmmakers and artists like Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Roman Polanski, Alexander Kluge and Werner Herzog, and more recently, Ulrike Ottinger, Pipilotti Rist, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and François Ozon presented their first films.