HaFI 018 reprints a document containing the script of Skip Norman’s film On Africa (1970). Norman, born in Baltimore in 1933, had left the U.S. in the early 1960s to study German, theater, and medicine in Göttingen. In 1966 he moved to Berlin to join the newly founded German Film and Television Academy (DFFB). By 1969, he had made the films Riffi (1966), Blues People (1968), Cultural Nationalism (1969) and the graduation film Strange Fruit (1969). He shot On Africa together with Joey Gibbs after graduating from the school. The filmmaker about his film: “The starting point is the relationship between Europe’s prosperity and Africa’s poverty; Europe’s destruction of societies and cultures, and the simultaneous use of Christianity and racial theories as justification for a massive exploitation of the colonized.” On Africa was first shown at the Festival in Mannheim in 1970 and then broadcast on television by WDR in 1972.
The script is accompanied by images from the film, and followed by five short commentaries by Sónia Vaz Borges, Madeleine Bernstorff, Marie-Hélène Gutberlet, Tom Holert, and Volker Pantenburg.

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Das Heft enthält das Skript für Skip Normans Film On Africa (1970). Norman, 1933 in Baltimore geboren, hatte die USA zu Beginn der 1960er Jahre verlassen, um in Göttingen Deutsch, Theaterwissenschaft und Medizin zu studieren. 1966 zog er nach Berlin, um an die neugegründete Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB) zu wechseln. Bis 1969 entstanden die Filme Riffi (1966), Blues People (1968), Cultural Nationalism (1969) und der Abschlussfilm Strange Fruit (1969).
On Africa entstand gemeinsam mit Joey Gibbs nach Normans DFFB-Abschluss. In Normans Worten: „Der Ausgangspunkt dieses Films ist das Verhältnis zwischen Europas Wohlstand und Afrikas Armut; Europas Zerstörung von Gesellschaften und Kulturen, und gleichzeitiger Einsatz von Christentum und Rassentheorien als Rechtfertigung einer gewaltigen Ausbeutung der Kolonialisierten.“ On Africa wurde am 7. Oktober 1970 bei der XIX. Internationalen Filmwoche Mannheim in der „Informationsschau“ aufgeführt; 1972 lief der Film im WDR.
Das Skript wird begleitet von zahlreichen Bildern aus dem Film und kontextualisiert durch fünf Kurzessays von Sónia Vaz Borges, Madeleine Bernstorff, Marie-Hélène Gutberlet, Tom Holert und Volker Pantenburg.

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LIMITED ART EDITION WITH ORIGINAL ART PRINT FROM NAN GOLDIN, SIGNED BY THE ARTIST 

Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated film »All the Beauty and the Bloodshed« is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin. Told through intimate interviews, photography, and footage, central to the story is her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis. The film cuts to the bone with its incandescent celebration of life and condemnation of those who threaten it. Art and activism are one and the same. 

Helping to interweave Goldin’s past and present, multi-disciplinary duo Soundwalk Collective soundtrack her personal and political struggles to sublime effect. The contemporary sonic arts platform of founder and artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli, the pair work with a rotating constellation of artists and musicians, developing site-and-context-specific sound projects through which to examine conceptual, literary, or artistic themes. And for all the beauty and the bloodshed on show here, the duo strike the balance just right; their compositions in collaboration with Zacharias Falkenberg and Johannes Malfatti producing a trance that oscillates between grace and madness. 

Within the score, Crasneanscki draws connections with the life and work of German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who was removed from society through confinement in institutions. In his last poems, written as fragments while he was plagued by mental illness, Hölderlin renders nature, in all its fragility and ephemerality. Similar themes merge in Laura’s portrait of Goldin and serve as an inspiration for the composition of the choral songs and cantus within the soundtrack. Through the repetition of words and the layering of voices, the lyric scansion operates like a language possessed, echoing various styles from sacred music to modern minimalist techniques. The music is characterised by quivering strings and swells, de-tuning and lingering, shifting around the surreal, and creating a spectrum of musical experience. Exerts of Nan’s narration are featured in two of the tracks, her powerful narration offering a more direct approach to the storytelling. 

In »All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,« Poitras shows protest is really Goldin’s great artwork: Her entire life had been leading to this moment of passionate expression, an inspired situationist gesture which fused the personal and the political. Art can change the world, which Poitras and Goldin tell us with powerful results. While there are multiple threads in this remarkable portrait which could have carried entire films, the soundtrack provides a sonic identity that helps keep track of proceedings. Utterly unique in their approach, Soundwalk Collective have delivered a gripping and thoughtful score, helping turn Goldin’s personal pain into culture-rattling impact.

A1 Half Of Life
A2 Schimmer Sanft Den Klang Des Tages
A3 The Land And The Sea
A4 Sisters I – Feat. Nan Goldin
A5 Des Geistes Werden
B1 Before The Light
B2 Witnesses
B3 Zeitgeist
B4 To Zimmer
B5 Sisters Ii – Feat. Nan Goldin

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KALEIDOSCOPE’s new issue 42 (Spring/Summer 2023) launches with a set of six covers. 

A decade after his howling debut album—released at only 18, preciously young and totally timeless—we captureArchy Marshall aka King Krule through the lens of Mark Kean. About to release his fourth record, he sits down with Cyrus Goberville to talk about becoming a father, his move from London to Liverpool, writing on commuter trains between the two cities, and lingering in the “space between.”

Shot in Tokyo by Joshua Gordon, Japanese director Takashi Miike has gained a cult following, both in his homeland and internationally, as a filmmaker of the extremes of brutality, sex, and gore. Through a transoceanic cultural reading by Tetsuya Suzuki, we get acquainted with the cinematic icon, who, despite over 30 years work in film, retains the ethos of the permanent outsider.

Inaugurating a new carte blanche format “outsourcing” an editorial segment to like-minded global creatives,“Upstate” features original photography by Richard Kern and an essay by Olivia Kan-Sperling, within a special insert (cum foldedtwo-sided poster) produced and designed by game-changing New York-based modelling agency,No Agency.

A photographic portfolio by Bolade Banjo captures Popcaan, Jamaica’s biggest dancehall star, in London’s Savile Row—with an accompanying conversation between Jamaican academic Carolyn Cooper and Anglo-Jamaican curator Carol Tulloch, discussing dancehall style and culture across the two countries, in its homegrown and diasporic evolutions.

Throughout an artistic career dedicated to examining America‘s iconographies, religions, and utopias, Jim Shaw has experimented with almost every art form. Shot by Max Farago in his L.A. studio, he talks with Hans Ulrich Obrist about drawing, painting, playing in punk bands, working in the movies, collecting ephemera, and chronicling his dreams.

If you can’t buy the painting, why not get the T-shirt? Featuring an essay by Patrick McGraw and a special insert by Procell, the trend repot ART <3 MERCH investigates the unstoppable rise of museum and art gallery merchandise over the past decade—the cumulative point of an economic and creative process that started with Pop Art.

In the magazine’s front-of-the-book section, through the lens of Chris Lensz, we trawl Paris’ arrondissements with a new class of multi-hyphenate Situationists who are making and unmaking the city. Featuring DJ and visual artist Crystallmess, book dealer and curator Rare Books Paris, artist and musician Erwan Sene, and chef Mathieu Canet.

Presenting a new A.I. generated body of work, Jon Rafman builds virtual worlds for the viewer to get lost within. In conversation with Jak Ritger, he reflects on the profound ways technology has affected human society, while also exploring the sublime, the uncanny, the ingenuity of human creativity, and the changing role of the artist. 

Reenergising the classical forms of the institution with what they’ve termed “post-internet dance,“ Marseille-based collective(LA)HORDE departs from the exclusionary rigidity of the ballet with poetic, punk, and politically engagedworks. Words by Isabelle Bucklow and photography by Winter Vandenbrink encapsulate the power of real bodies moving. 

Also featured in this issue: American novelist Emma Cline (photography by Caroline Tompkins and interview by Lola Kramer), a new series of drawings by Aurel Schmidt (words by Sophie Kemp), Japanese photographer Hiroh Kikai(words by Jeppe Ugelvig), Italian punk band CCCP (words by Achille Filipponi), and “Five NYC Painters”(paintings by Brook Hsu, Francesca Facciola, Michelle Uckotter, Olivia Van Kuiken, and Justine Neuberger, and words by Reilly Davidson).

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Fruit de longues recherches dans les archives des artistes, l’ouvrage sera doté d’une riche documentation et offrira une relecture inédite de la production artistique italienne entre 1960 et 1975. Apparu dans les années 1960 en Italie, l’Arte Povera est une démarche artistique ; davantage une attitude qu’un mouvement. Théorisé par Germano Celant en 1966, l’Arte Povera s’inscrit dans une volonté de défiance à l’égard des industries culturelles, portée par une nouvelle génération d’artistes incarnant des manières inédites d’appréhender l’art et la création.
S’opposant à la consommation de masse et réhabilitant la place de l’homme et de la nature dans l’art, l’Arte Povera en renouvelle les thématiques (l’homme, la nature, le corps, le temps), les matériaux (naturels, de récupération, périssables), les techniques (artisanales), les gestes et l’intention. Il s’agit de repenser les critères d’esthétisme, de se défaire des artifices, de revenir à l’immédiateté des émotions et des sensations.
A travers la production de livres, d’affiches, de projections et d’impressions sur toile, les artistes italiens de cette époque se sont appropriés le pouvoir narratif de l’image photographique et filmique afin d’explorer de nouveaux possibles de l’art. Transdisciplinaires, mêlant photographies, films, vidéos, affiches, livres, objets, sculptures et peintures, l’ouvrage, qui l’accompagnera l’exposition, présentera plus de 300 oeuvres de figures majeures de l’Arte Povera, parmi lesquelles Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Luigi Ghirri, Jannis Kounellis, Piero Manzoni, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto…
Conçu comme un livre d’art et non comme un catalogue d’exposition, il donnera à voir l’extraordinaire richesse d’une période où les artistes italiens ont compté parmi les plus importants interprètes de la transformation des langages visuels. Ce nouveau regard sur une démarche artistique majeure des avant-gardes du XXe siècle proposera également une immersion visuelle dans le contexte politique et culturel de l’époque avec des portfolios dédiés au cinéma, théâtre, soirées littéraires, extraits de presse présentant les grands enjeux socioculturels d’alors.

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First published in 1961, Lorenza Mazzetti’s The Sky is Falling (Il cielo cade) is an impressionistic, idiosyncratic, and uniquely funny look at the writer’s childhood after she and her sister are sent to live with their Jewish relatives following the death of their parents. Bright and bucolic, vivid and mournful, and brimming with saints, martyrdom, ideals, wrong-doing and self-imposed torments, the novel describes the loss of innocence and family under the Fascist regime in Italy during World War II through the eyes of Mazzetti’s fictional alter ego, Penny, in sharp, witty (and sometimes petulant) prose.
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First translated into English as The Sky Falls by Marguerite Waldman in 1962, with several pages missing due to censorship, the novel has been out of print in the anglophone world for many years. We are proud to reissue the text in a beautiful new translation by Livia Franchini that carries over the playfulness and perverse naivete of the original Italian.
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Il cielo cade is so much more than just a book about the horrors of the Second World War. It is as much a loving homage to the picture-perfect childhood Mazzetti’s aunt and uncle provided for her and her sister before circumstances beyond their control overwhelmed them, and thus also a moving portrait of the cruel loss of childhood innocence” – Lucy Scholes, The Paris Review

LORENZA MAZZETTI (1928 – 2020) drew, made films, wrote novels and towards the end of her life ran a puppet theatre in Rome.
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Mazzetti first discovered filmmaking in the U.K.. Upon arriving in London in the late 1940s, Mazzetti was admitted in unconventional style to the Slade (the day before term began and having not enrolled, she went to the director and told him she was a genius) and swapped her sketchbook for celluloid after finding some film equipment in the school’s store cupboard. She was the first woman to receive public funding in the UK for her film Together (1956), which was presented as part of the first Free Cinema programme at the National Film Theatre in 1956 alongside films by Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz.
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When Mazzetti returned to Italy in the late 1950s, she gave up filmmaking and turned to writing. Her first novel, Il cielo cade (1961) was awarded the prestigious Premio Viareggio prize, and still appears on the Italian school curriculum.

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Dear friends,

Motto is very excited to announce that Mizna Publications are now available as part of our catalogue. 

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Mission

Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production, centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than twenty years, we have been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.

Named City Page’s Nonprofit of the Year in 2020 and a Regional Cultural Treasure in 2021, we publish Mizna, an award-winning SWANA lit and art journal; produce the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, the largest and longest running Arab film fest in the Midwest; and offer classes, readings, performances, public art, and community events, having featured over 400 local and global writers, filmmakers, and artists.

Vision

Mizna seeks to be a local, national, and international leader in providing excellent artistic platforms for emerging and established SWANA artists, connecting their work to engaged and thoughtful audiences.

Through Mizna, audiences have the opportunity to engage in the work of Arab and Muslim artists on its own terms. And our community has a critical opportunity to see some facet of their own experience reflected on the page or the screen.

History

Mizna was co-founded as a grassroots organization by Kathryn Haddad and Saleh Abudayyeh who identified a need for an artistic space dedicated to Arab and Muslim writers to narrate their own stories and make work on their own terms. Along with a small group of other Arab and Muslim writers, artists, and scholars, Kathy and Saleh established Mizna during vibrant time in the ‘90s when Asian and black Twin Cities artists and activists were creating collectives and working together to imagine a more socially just and representative arts scene.

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When Eye Touches Cloud is the first monograph dedicated to the manifold oeuvre of Romanian artist Constantin Flondor (born 1936, in Czernowitz), the leading protagonist of the art groups 111, Sigma and Prolog. This richly illustrated publication takes a closer look on the influential body of work he had produced in painting, kinetic & Op art, land art, action, experimental film & photography from the 1960s until today. It surveys the various steps of his practice: from the lyricism of the first pictorial constructs to the optical and kinetic art of the Group 111, from the study of form and land art characteristic of the Sigma Group, defined as the effort to connect within a single equation visual research and experiment, to the Prolog Group’s spirit of communion and conviviality.

The book offers a comprehensive overview of the principles that shape Constantin Flondor’s art, of reflecting and theorising starting from the inventory of terms, themes, and concepts that have guided him as an artist over seventy years of uninterrupted work and of restoring them to the international context of art through the contributions of invited authors, Dieter Roelstraete & Abigail Winograd, Rainer Fuchs, and Katarzyna Cytlak. Besides the commissioned essays, the book includes a selection from the artist writings and several archival materials which enlarge our view on artist’s singular mode of thinking.

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P+4 Publications is an independent publishing programme dedicated to the promotion of Romanian contemporary art, photography and architecture, exploring the book medium as a point of encounter between theoretical research, graphic design experiment and artists’ ideas and subjects present in their practice. Presently, the programme brings together the Artist Book Series and the Architecture Book Series, supported between 2013–2021 by the PEPLUSPATRU Association, and Parkour and Exhibition-Dossier series, developed by the Institute of the Present since 2017. Starting from 2021, P+4 Publications is coordinated by the Institute of the Present.

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This is the first publication on the plays of New York–based experimental theater director and playwright Richard Maxwell (born 1967) and his company New York City Players. His plays have been commissioned by The Wexner Center, Columbus; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Performance Space 122, The Kitchen and Soho Rep in New York; and The Barbican Centre, London. The book captures the experience of actually watching the plays by way of screen-grabs and captions, and in doing so documents nearly 20 years of work.

Text by Jim Fletcher, Emily Hoffman, Richard Maxwell, Robert Snowden.
Published by Westreich Wagner and Greene Naftali.

€45.00

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FÁBRICA. Daniel Blaufuks. Pierre von Kleist Editions.

“One cannot walk through an assembly factory
and not feel that one is in Hell.” – W.H. Auden

‘Fábrica’, a new book and film by photographer Daniel Blaufuks, is a collection of images composed into an expanded scenery of memory, a walk through the abandoned spaces of one of the largest factories in Europe in an once flourishing industrial region, that never recovered from the loss of the textile market to the Chinese exports.

Blaufuks worked the book and the film (which comes with this edition) as a documental piece, collecting different kinds of memories, crossing old photographs, manuscripts and objects with images of the present state of the building interiors and surroundings.

The result is a reflection not only on the idea of a ‘factory’ in itself, most generic and abstract, but also about forgetting and abandonment, thus creating a significant memento about labor and the disappearance of the working class in Europe in the last century, which is one of the reasons for the present crisis in the region.

* This title was co-published with Guimarães 2012.

More about the artist: www.danielblaufuks.com

Color, B&W, 172 pages, 2013
DVD + Postcard included.
Language: Portuguese and English.

Price: €28.00

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Casa de Lava – Caderno. Pedro Costa. Pierre von Kleist Editions

During the course of the production preparation for his film ‘Casa de Lava’ (1994), Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa compiled what he saw, what he read, his many ideas and images into a scrapbook instead of a screenplay.

Paintings, movie stills, letters, newspaper articles, scribbles, quotes from novels, postcards, lines of dialogue, snapshots, that guided him throughout the shooting of the film and that he continued – and finished – after returning to Lisboa.

This green covered notebook became an autonomous object, a visual record of Costa’s way of thinking. Reproducing the original book in full color, we’ve included an exclusive interview with Nuno Crespo and a text by Philippe Azoury (both in Portuguese, English and French).

Born in Lisbon in 1959, he left his course of studies in History to attend classes taught by the poet and filmmaker António Reis at the Lisbon Film School. His first film ‘O Sangue / Blood’ had its world premiere at the Mostra Cinematografica di Venezia in 1989.
‘Casa de Lava’, his second feature, shot on the Island of Fogo in Cabo Verde, was shown in Cannes, ‘Un Certain Regard’, in 1994.
His other feature films include ‘Ossos’, ‘In Vanda’s Room’ and ‘Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?’, on the work of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub.
Recently he directed ‘Sweet Exorcist’, a segment of the omnibus feature ‘Centro Histórico’, with Manoel de Oliveira, Aki Kaurismaki and Victor Erice and he was of the invited artists of the Cuban Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2013.
His work has been presented in galleries and museums around the world.

More about the artist: www.pedro-costa.net

Price: €28.00

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