As part of the North American premiere of Leipzig photographer Ricarda Roggan's series KINO at the Goethe Media Space Toronto, we asked two former Goethe-Institut projectionists to talk us through the images of 16mm and 35mm machines in the show from their "user" perspective. The exhibition, part of the Images Festival and the Contact Photography Festival, is on view until 19 September 2020 with a forthcoming commissioned video essay by the artist called "Ricarda Roggan: The Moviegoer". Here is TIFF technical manager Andrei Gravelle pondering a projectionist's reflexes and East German industrial design:I was a professional film projectionist for 13 years and one of the things I miss most about that hands-on period of time were the exciting opportunities that presented themselves when working in a new cinema to try to figure out the operation of unfamiliar equipment. My relationship to the projector “Weimar 3” in Ricarda Roggan’s show “Kino” at the Goethe Media Space is virtual rather than tactile, but the challenge to understand the projector itself is such an ingrained reflex that studying it from images alone feels no different than handling it in person. Continue reading "KINO: An appreciation of the Weimar 3 8mm..." »
As part of the North American premiere of Leipzig photographer
Orange on blue, a dinghy overcrowded with people, surrounded by nothing but ocean. The image of refugees on the Mediterranean has become familiar over the last years, and has become a symbol of one of today’s most urgent challenges to Europe’s global role. The pictures might have been shocking in the beginning, but the media using the image over and over again soon tended to dull the audience, giving the (wrong) impression that the story is clear and long understood. German filmmaker Philip Scheffner had started working on a documentary about refugees long before the “peak” of thousands arriving in Germany in 2015. While scrolling through YouTube, he found a clip that intrigued him with the bright blue of the ocean. It was a 3-minute video taping an ocean cruiser’s encounter with a refugee boat in September 2012. The “Adventure of the Seas” reported the sighting of a damaged boat, with 13 people on board, to Spanish coastguard, and was requested to stay on-site until the sea rescue arrived. The encounter lasted 90 minutes.
