Still from What I Will, 2013, US-Belgium, digital video, 1 min, color, english, stereo

Oscar nominated director Johan Grimonprez visits AMIFF. Here him in conversation with the festival artist Joen Vedel, lead by art professor Knut Åsdam, after the short film programme.

For thirty-five years, Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez has been creating video art that examines how technology has shaped our collective imagination. Through an archaeological dive into media, he uncovers this hyper-mediated contemporary: what happens to the perception of reality when history, memory, and even dreams are filtered through global technocracy.

This retrospective program presents key works from Grimonprez’s film practice. Working with found footage from a wide range of sources including newsreels, Hollywood films, and home movies, he has constructed montages that reveal unexpected connections between jazz and Cold War coups, TV dinners and geopolitics, plane hijackings and media spectacle. Grimonprez demonstrates how paranoia has become normalized, how we have become avid consumers of fear, and why it is easier to imagine apocalypse than political transformation.

The program shows a selection of Johan Grimonprez’ short films from the last few decades, in addition to the acclaimed breakthrough film dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y from 1997 (screened at 2:20pm, Sunday 23 November).

Everyday Words Disappear (2016, 15min)

What I Will (2013, 1min)

Two Travelers to a River (2018, 2min)

Raymond Tallis on tickling (2017, 8min)

kiss-o-drome (2016, 1min 16s)

Looking for Alfred (2005, 10min 49s)

The program is a collaboration with Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo and curated by Ida Kierulf and Abirami Logendran. It is part of their retrospective film program SILVER SERIES, which has been running since 2018.

Age limit: 15 years