Catch RESFEST in Cape Town
Filmakers, music video people, creatives, designers, dops, animators, runners, grips, dreamers, commercials directors, commercial wannabes – if you love celebrating brilliance in film, get down to the RESFEST that is stopping off in Cape Town on it’s way from Canada and moving on to Austria on it’s 43 city 10th anniversary tour. We’ve got our girl Canda to go and check it out and will let you kno…
w how it goes. Website here.
RESFEST 10TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR
Labia on Orange
29 Nov – 2 Dec
RESFEST’s 2006 global tour marks the 10th anniversary of the pioneering film and digital arts festival, which kicked off this year with a special presentation in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, from October 19-22, followed one day later by its Paris debut at the esteemed Pompidou Center. The festival will continue on to more than 43 cities on six continents around the world, captivating audiences with its signature mix of innovative film screenings, informative panels, experiential parties and cutting-edge performances. Resfest will be screened in Cape Town at the “Labia” on Orange from 29 Nov – 2 Dec.
The festival received a record 2,200 film submissions this year, with programmers viewing hundreds more in assembling a stellar collection of outstanding short films, dynamic music videos, experimental animation and cutting-edge motion graphics. In addition to Paris, RESFEST will debut in Berlin, Eskisehir, Jakarta and Lima. The festival will culminate for the first time ever in the United States, with a series of expanded seven-day events to take place in March and April 2007 in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In another first, the festival will be presented in high-definition during these spring engagements.
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
To celebrate this commemorative year, RESFEST will feature a pair of special anniversary programs looking back at its decade-long history of revolutionary filmmaking. Unsung Heroes: Music Video Gems from the Archive gathers directors who’ve turned the music video into an art form, with classic promos for Air, Cornelius, UNKLE, Phoenix and others, while A Decade of RESFEST: 10 Seminal Short Films compiles milestone short form work that has become the stuff of RESFEST lore, including Michael Overbeck’s Tongues and Taxis, Bob Sabiston’s Snack and Drink and Stefan Nadelman’s Terminal Bar.
Three more thematically arranged short film programs highlight intriguing new work: State of the Art offers a collection of live action, animation, motion graphics and documentary that will point the way for filmmakers in the years to come; Out of the Box highlights the adventurous, absurd and eccentric; and Fear and Trembling examines the horror trend that has swept the film world of late. Programming includes world premieres from festival veterans Richard Fenwick, Eric Henry, Johan Kramer and Stefan Nadelman, and recent work by Sam Arthur, Bert and Bertie, Jonas Odell, PES, Chris Shepherd, Run Wrake and many more.
This year’s feature film, Rock the Bells, will be premiering at numerous RESFEST locations internationally, including Cape Town. This thrilling documentary from directors Casey Suchan and Denis Henry Hennelly offers a fast-paced insider’s account of one concert promoter’s seemingly impossible quest to reunite all nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan on stage at the 2004 California festival Rock the Bells, just months before the death of ODB. The film, which also includes performances from the likes of Redman, Dilated Peoples, MC Supernatural, Sage Francis and others, has been described as a Woodstock for the hip-hop generation. Additionally, several more yet-to-be-announced feature films will play at select RESFEST engagements.
RESFEST’s eternally popular music video showcases, Cinema Electronica and Videos That Rock, collect the last year’s most noteworthy and entertaining efforts, with work from an international coterie of directors, including Fluorescent Hill, Olivier Gondry, happy, Chris Hopewell, Minivegas, Monkmus, Ace Norton, Pleix, Cat Solen, Joel Trussell, Dougal Wilson and others, for a diverse array of artists, including Basement Jaxx, Bright Eyes, Coldcut, Death Cab for Cutie, Gnarls Barkley, Hot Chip, The Knife, Massive Attack, The Presets, Jamie Lidell, Tiga and Zero 7. By Design, the festival’s annual motion graphics and broadcast design compendium, also returns for its sixth year, with the latest from Leftchannel, Grant Orchard, Ben Stokes and Graham Wood, plus numerous notable newcomers.
Following last year’s first-ever artist showcase collecting Beck’s music video corpus, this year’s special artist retrospective, Radiohead, the Visionaries: A Decade of Breaking New Talent, celebrates the British quintet’s proud history of championing the latest and greatest visual innovators. Another special program, Everything Under the Sun: Filmmaking with a Purpose, focuses on issues-based short-form work, with directors like Neill Blomkamp, Fenwick, Simon Robson and Three Legged Legs grappling with topics ranging from environmental degradation to stem cell research.
RESFEST will also feature numerous panels, including the popular Icon Chef designers’ showdown and the seminar Inside Music Videos, and an array of performances and events celebrating RESFEST’s first decade of existence.
RESFEST’s 10th anniversary identity is the creation of Venice, CA-based Transistor Studios, and was inspired by the diversity of the places around the globe that RESFEST visits.
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF INNOVATIVE CREATIVITY
When RESFEST began, the first DV cameras and desktop editing systems were just reaching filmmakers. Back then, some commentators were already forecasting the onset of mobile video playback on handheld devices of the day, while others wondered if the Internet could open up new distribution avenues for independent filmmakers. Ten years later, those predictions about the ways technology would enable creators to link to their audiences in exciting ways have come true.
Meanwhile, RESFEST has become a global beacon for innovative creators everywhere. In this new cultural arena, the live, physical events offered by RESFEST take on new importance. In at time when we have unprecedented access to concepts and content from all over the globe and the world feels smaller than ever before, there’s still nothing better than meeting up in person to exchange new ideas and experience new approaches to making art. This year’s RESFEST anniversary tour brings the global creative community together to experience and celebrate 10 years of innovative cinema, and to explore the future together.
RESFEST | 10 TOUR:
2006
Chicago, USA October 19-22
Paris, France October 20-22
Bristol, UK October 25-29
Rome, Italy November 3-5
Jakarta, Indonesia November 5-11
Singapore November 10-12
London, UK November 14-19
Treviso, Italy November 17-19
Vancouver, Canada November 17-19
Tokyo, Japan November 23-26
Montreal, Canada November 24-26
Cape Town, South Africa November 29 – December 2
Vienna, Austria November 29 – December 3
Toronto, Canada November 30 – December 3
Rotterdam, Holland December 1-3
Kyoto, Japan December 3-5
Seoul, Korea December 6-10
Madrid, Spain December 7-10
Amsterdam, Holland December 8-10
Torino, Italy December 14-17
Cadiz, Spain December 14-17
Barcelona, Spain December 21-24
