The genre of the film or video performance, as well as the performance-film and the performance-video is gaining importance. What is refered to here is not the classic expanded cinema but the blending of moving image and stage performance. The bodies behind and in front of the camera merge and form a unity. The cinema becomes a stage, the stage turns into a cinema event.
The lifelong friends Antonia Baehr (choreographer/ performer) and Isabell Spengler (filmmaker/ performer) analyse the spatial and temporal interlacing of cinema and stage situations in their works. Using an overhead projector, they chart diagrams of events and effects in the space between the audience and the stage or the audience and the film respectively.
Antonia Baehr is a choreographer and performer. Her productions include: 2000: Holding hands; 2003: Un après-midi; 2005: Larry Peacock; 2006: Merci; 2008: Rire; and 2009: Over The Shoulder. In 2008 she published the book Rire/ Laugh/ Lachen.
She is the producer of the horse whisperer and dancer Werner Hirsch, the musician and choreographer Henri Fleur, and the composer Henry Wilt.
Isabell Spengler, born 1972 in Berlin, works with film, video, photography and performance. From 1999 to 2004 she lived in Los Angeles. She currently teaches experimental film at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her work has recently been exhibited at Images Festival Toronto, KunstfilmBiennale Köln, Kunsthalle Exnergasse (WUK) Wien, Experimenta Bangalore, Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo and at LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World in Berlin.
Filmography (selection): 1998: Psychic Tequila Tarot; 2004: The Natural Life of Mermaids; 2005: Permanent Residents; 2006: Mummy; Lantouy; 2007: Syncpoint; Telepathy Experiment I (Forum Expanded 2007); 2008: The Pitch; 2009: LINT LENT LAND (Forum Expanded 2009); Osmosis of the Unicorn.
Contact: www.make-up-productions.net
