MONITOR 12: Figures Pointing Outside the Frame

Auxiliary Mirrors
Director: Sanaz Sohrabi

The Rain After
Director: Mohammed Fauzi

Speculations on India
Director: Harkeerat Mangat

Landscape Series no. 1
Director: Nguyen Trinh-Thi

Alex & I: Moving Pictures
Director: Sumugan Sivanesan

Scene 38
Director: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit

About the Films:
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Auxiliary Mirrors
Iran, 12 mins, 2016, HD Color video with sound
Director: Sanaz Sohrabi

The Rain After
Indonesia, 12 mins, 2016, HD Color video with sound
Director: Mohammad Fauzi

Mohammad Fauzi film The Rain After explores this relationship in the midst of producing an image. For the duration of the film, a group of children in a residential area in Jakarta pose in front of the video camera in a manner that subjects typically pose for still images.  . The subjects inside the frame possess a communal consciousness about the ambiguity of the work of camera (still or motion). As the actors wait for the creator and the audience waits for the actors, the absence of an event builds on everyone’s anticipation. The reciprocal provocation from the director to both subjects and audiences becomes clear.

Mohammad Fauzi is a researcher and filmmaker. His work has been shown in OK. Video “FLESH” 5th Jakarta International Video Festival, Indonesia Art Festival (ARTE), Hamburg International Short Film Festival, ARKIPEL Jakarta International Documentary & Experimental Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival (Experimenta).

Speculations on India
India, 29 mins, 2016, HD Color video with sound
Director: Harkeerat Mangat

A spectator’s subconscious expectation to be presented with the ‘truth’ is forwarded in Harkeerat Mangat’s Speculations on India. By using reenactment as a strategy, Mangat provides a space for fifteen Indian actors to reiterate common narratives about social, political, gendered, and economic issues. Shot on a train heading to Mumbai, the multiple cameras and microphones that record the actors’ performances on various train comportments are repositioned by various travellers. The repositioning of the camera affects the way  viewres  perceive the reality of the film, biased with the reality of location

Harkeerat Mangat is an artist and musician from Vancouver, Canada. His work engages with a dichotomy between improvisational structures in music and the technical apparatus of recording and reproduction in film production. He is currently based in Düsseldorf, Germany where he studies with Christopher Williams at the Kunstakademie.

Landscape Series No. 1
Vietnam, 5 mins, 2013, Found Online Press Photographs
Director: Nguyen Trinh-Thi

A director’s ability to repurpose narratives is mirrored in Nguyen Trinh-Thi’s video Landscape Series no. 1, which  provides spectators with  a series of found online press photographs in which a subject points in or beyond the frame. Trinh-Thi’s choice of sequencing these still images constructs a narration that each image did not possess individually. The viewer works to understand the repeated gesture of pointing in relationship to the act of witnessing in various landscapes.

Nguyen Trinh-Thi is a Hanoi-based moving image artist whose work engages with memory and history. Her works transcend the boundaries between cinema, documentary and performance. She has exhibited her work internationally. including Jeu de Paume, Paris; the Lyon Biennale; Asian Art Biennial Taiwan; Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial; and Singapore Biennale.

Alex & I: Moving Pictures
Australia, 12 mins, 2015, Digital Video
Director: Sumugan Sivanesan

Similarly using found images to narrate a story, Sumugan Sivanesan’s Alex and I: Moving Pictures traces the movements of Alex, a refugee of the civil war in Sri Lanka. Pictures of Alex include clippings from newspapers, self portraits and news items that circulated in online media, as Alex became an internationally recognised figure. Through the voice-over of Sivanesan, we are given the filmmaker’s view of Alex intentions through an analysis of self portraits and interviews, his own reflections as a consumer of both Alex’s personal images as well as the media’s, and finally what it means for Sivanesan for making this work. As the title hints, the film can be understood as a loose collaboration between the filmmaker and subject, who both counter the narrative offered by the media.

Sumugan Sivanesan is an independent researcher, writer and artist working across art, activism and academia. Often working collaboratively, he has produced videos, performances and installations for art spaces and festivals internationally. In Australia, Sumugan regularly contributes to the arts and cultural press. He also prints zines.

Scene 38
Thailand, 7 mins, 2015, Digital Video
Director: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit

The issue of creator’s authority, and their relationship to their subject, is further discussed in Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s Scene 38. In this short film, the director is self-aware of his own authority. He teases that control with playful experimentation.

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit is a new generation film director in Thailand. His first feature film ‘36’ (2012) won New Currents Award at Busan International Film Festival. His second feature ‘Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy’ (2013) screened at Venice Film Festival. Working with the film studio GTH, his film ‘Heart Attack’ (2015) won 8 awards including Best Picture from Thailand National Film Association Awards.