20:00, 9 June 2022
Landmark, Rasmus Meyers allé 5, 5015, Bergen
Free entry
In the 1960s, the Norwegian filmmaker Erik Borge argued the need for more “free artistic short films” in Norway, which he defined as “the deviant product – the strange, the difficult, the angry”. The Deviant Product is a series of screenings around Norway investigating the ambiguous space between art and film, and asking what kinds of deviance and dissent we should be looking for in moving images today. Guests are invited to nominate works they consider important, in some way, for renewing a conversation about alternative and experimental film in a Norwegian context.
For the Bergen edition, which is in collaboration with Asterisk film club, we have a special focus on queer and LGBTQ+ moving images. Our guests, film scholar Anders Lysne and artist Kaeto Sweeney, have nominated two exciting recent short films: one by a Swedish collective and one by French director Alexis Langlois. After the screening, Sweeney and Lysne will be in conversation with PRISMS director Mike Sperlinger about their choices. (The conversation will take place in English.)
In addition to the two films screened during the event, Norwegian artist Hamid Waheed’s History is a Black Circle (nominated by Mike) will be streamed for free via the PRISMS website from 6-20 June.
Please note: the films contain explicit sexual imagery and are not suitable for children.
Program
Terror, Sisters!
Alexis Langlois
(France, 2019, video, 28 mins)
Today is a day like any other for Kalthoum and her girlfriends. They are sipping cocktails, looking for sex on the Internet, impatiently waiting for love and once again, endure the transphobic insults of strangers. Yes, but today it’s not going to be like that. Today, between a cosmopolitan and a chardonnay, the four transgender friends will imagine their revenge.
Instinct
Mad Kate, Adrienne Teicher, Marit Ostberg, Ester Martin Bergsmark & Jasco Viefhues
(Sweden, 2019, 21 mins, video)
Instinct is a queer metaphysical love story that weaves itself through real and imagined sexual encounters across darkrooms, forest cruising zones and highway shoulders. In these fantastical playgrounds, bodies are free to imagine themselves in a multiplicity of forms as they encounter other bodies without preconceived notions of what those other bodies desire, what they will need, and how they should be touched. While trusting the energetic attraction of bodies towards each other and learning through the encounter, INSTINCT simultaneously asks: what does it mean for a queer body to actively (un)learn what it might assume about another body’s sex, gender, and desire?
About the contributors
Anders Lysne is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at the Department of Infomation Science and Media Studies in University of Bergen, working in the fields of film history, cultural analysis and media aesthetics.
Kaeto Sweeney is a visual artist educated at the Art Academy, University of Bergen, and L’École Nationale Supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy. Sweeeney’s work shapes itself around the different ways stories are told and received – stories that belong simultaneously to personal and societal perspectives. He practices this interest within performance, film and installation, with the use of projectors and green screens as both technological and poetic devices. He is the producer for the international experimental queer film festival: ASTERISK Film Klubb and queer club night: ASTERISK. Sweeney is also Production Assistant in Art and Technology at Bergen Centre for Electronic Art and works as the bachelor program manager/research assistant at the Art Academy, University of Bergen.