• Wed 30 11 2016 •
Desert of the Real
Christian von Borries
19:00
Desert of the Real. A: The Simulacrum of War. B: Venice Vice, a franchise fatigue, 70', Germany 2016, color, English
Venue: Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig, Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Cologne
3 €
Ensuing talk in German
In cooperation with the ifs internationale filmschule köln
Funded by the Film und Medien Stiftung NRW
It’s been six years since the real estate bubble burst, and already, the glittering ruins of developer architecture are being reclaimed by nature. Entire suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona are overgrown with tumbleweed. In post-Soviet Georgia, unfinished resorts rot on the Black Sea Coast. In Abu Dhabi, palm trees are dying among half-built film studios and sports complexes. Now this is where the world’s biggest arms fair takes place – held in the same kind of desert that provides the location for most of our time’s real and virtual wars. Elsewhere, new man-made deserts take shape as shopping mall replicas of Venice, inhabited by the living dead... Christian von Borries’ new film visits these contemporary wastelands. In a rich collage of acted scenes and documentary footage, he extends the metaphor of the wasteland to today’s medial-oriented reality. At the heart of so many holographic simulations and replicas, in a world custom made for selfies and Instagram tweets, he reveals emptiness and potential violence. After the screening, von Borries joins video artist SANDRA SCHÄFER and critic CHRISTIAN HÖLLER to discuss the various strategies used by documentary film in tackling complex and often violent image politics.
Christian von Borries is an orchestra conductor, composer, filmmaker and producer of site-specific psychogeographic projects. His work was commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, the Kunstfest Weimar, the Volksbühne Berlin, the Kampnagel Hamburg and documenta 12, among others. Von Borries lives and works in Berlin.
