Roland Graf and Robert Platt: AVIFF Art Film Festival
Roland Graf and Robert Platt’s experimental film Arising from the Surface is part of the official selection of the 2016 AVIFF Art Film Festival in Cannes, France.
Shot entirely in slow motion, the film shows seven scenes from a taxi ride to an art residency in the heart of Mumbai. Both camera movements and subjects are intrinsically orchestrated by the traffic flow and rhythm of city life. Taking cues from Indian avant-garde filmmaker Mani Kaul, the camera’s focus on peripheral imagery and lateral visions creates complex narratives and fluid urban panoramas that go beyond perceptual limits and generalizations produced by the eye.
This film festival was established in 2010 to promote contemporary art in the field of Artists’ films associated with a changing art market and the “Cannes Film Festival”.
The films we’re going to talk about can’t be easily defined. They’re unique because they don’t correspond to any definitions the reviews would like to use. In fact, you recognize these films when you watch them but it’s not possible “à priori” to determine their meaning or the “genre” they belong to.
- Richard Conte, Chairman of the AVIFF Jury