Cinenova Now Showing: Kerstin Schroedinger & Susan Stein

For the September Cinenova Now Showing, artist-filmmaker Kerstin Schroedinger has chosen to show Tracks by Cinenova filmmaker Susan Stein alongside her new film Bläue (Blueness).
This will be the first ever showing of Stein’s finished film (made over the course of five years from 1984-9), and the first screening of Bläue (Blueness) after its premiere, where it was exhibited at this year’s Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival.
Bläue (Blueness) – Kerstin Schroedinger
(UK/Italy/Switzerland/Germany, 48 min, 2017)
From the exposure of images to sunlight to their development and fixation under running water, we witness the transformation of matter into image.
Blueness is an experimental video that reflects upon the synthesis of image production processes. The film revisits sites that are related to the history of Prussian Blue, a blue dye stuff, in Seveso, Italy, and Basel, Switzerland. Connections to the pharmaceutical-chemical industry are drawn, which although are latent in the imaging of the blue print, may however only become visible in-between the images and in-between the periods of exposure and development. The video creates a network of historical events, chemical-material realisations and medicinal-physical experiences of and through the post-industrial body.
But through the process of immaterialisation of labour as well as the production of a re-embodied image space, a figure proceeds through the steps of exposing and developing a cyanotype, performing against chemical substances and a neoliberal take-over of their movements, lingering between the roles of scientist, athlete, pharmacist, patient, woman.
Tracks – Susan Stein (UK, 1989, 24mins)
Tracks uses the character of a struggling female teacher in order to connect areas of feminism such as the suffragette movement, contraception and abortion rights, motherhood, later feminist writings and poverty, whilst highlighting the contradictions and differences within feminist discourse at the time. It’s a collage film which combines photographic, animated and live-action parts, black and white and colour footage. The voice-over soundtrack is partly a reworking and rewording of individual experiences and also a reflection on perceived actions of women due to historical and contemporary circumstance. It draws on a rich collection of personal and public imagery, re-made and manipulated, layered and textured, while taking a critical look at certain feminist theories.

With kind support of the Goethe Institute London.

Cinenova Now Showing: Kerstin Schroedinger & Susan Stein

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