XV International Exhibition of
Video and Cinema Beyond

Reverse Images

This year Invideo, the annual exhibition-event dedicated to video and film arts and "cinema beyond", brought to Milan for the fifteenth time the best of national and international production in the field of video art and advanced experimental digital filmmaking. "Reverse images" was the title this year: films and videos playing with the illusion of reversible time, but also a metaphor for a counter-tendency, running against the mainstream of today's audiovisual media. A gaze happily turned inside out in terms of theme and language. Socially committed, radical, visionary creativity from all over the world.

Out of the more than 700 entries received this year, 172 works were finally selected for Invideo. The program of screenings and discussion sessions was as rich and varied as ever. The advance opening night was held in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland, thanks to the cooperation of the Philippe Saire dance company and Théâtre Sevelin 36, which provided the venue. INVIDEO marked the occasion with an evening of dance videos, a special program of works drawn from its permanent archive. Both Swiss and Italian filmmakers attended the Invideo premiere: Philippe Saire, Fernand Melgar, Claudio Prati and Ariella Vidach.

In Milan, audiences were able to take part in a number of forums with Italian and international videomakers and in discussions on experimental film and videomaking, centered on the aesthetic approach of the works presented by the directors themselves, as also on the opportunities created by new technologies. This year the number of guest directors attending the sessions was particularly high: from Italy we welcomed Luna Amato, Vincenzo Beschi, Nicola Fanini, Carlo Isola, Giorgio Longo, Chiara Martina, Antonello Matarazzo, Valerio Murat, Gianluca Paoletti, Antonio Poce, Sepideh Salehi, Michele Sambin, Daniele Segre, Lorena Tortora, Giuseppe Tumino, Domenico Zàzzara, while the international visitors included Robert Cahen, Vincent Chabrillat, Dominique Comtat, Alain Escalle, Jérôme Lambert, Valerie Malek from France, Patrick Chen and Terry Flaxton from the UK, Rafael Doctor Roncero from Spain, Jem Cohen from the USA, Syl Betulius and Lorenz Merz from Switzerland, Dirk Szuszies from Germany and Antonin de Bemels from Belgium.

A number of public seminars and panel discussions were organized to explore the issues involved. Robert Cahen presented the two versions of his recent work Plus loin que la nuit, filmed in Vietnam. A Retrospective was dedicated to British artist Terry Flaxton, formerly assistant director to Ridley Scott and now a director with the BBC in London. Rafael Doctor Roncero, director of Musac, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Castilla y León, led a forum on Video Creation in Spain, the Musac Model. Daniel Segre met the audience for the screening of his video CRT Foundation Project for Modern and Contemporary Art. An award ceremony was held for the winner of the "Time and the Ego" competition, run by the Friends of Invideo Association. Three important special screening programs were organized: Video and painting, a one-man show by Alain Escalle, attended by the artist himself and Antonio Costa; the videos of Lynn Fox, the architecture of sound, presented by Lynn Fox member Patrick Chen; lastly, for the fifth year running, Carlo Isola offered us a personal vision of things in Poetronics.

For the first time INVIDEO also made a foray to a different Milanese venue from the now traditional Spazio Oberdan arts center, using the AnteospazioCinema movie theater to hold a Video Night of music, video art, animation and shorts from Europe and beyond. The prestigious theater was chosen by INVIDEO as an ideal space for the non-stop screening of experimental videos, European music videos and highlights from INVIDEO 2005. More than 50 works were presented, from Europe and overseas. The predominantly young audience enjoyed an all-night audiovisual marathon which started Saturday 12 November and ran through to 5 o'clock on Sunday morning, when coffee and cakes were served free to spectators.

The regular Invideo audience was thus joined by a crowd of videomakers, critics and performers throughout the event, defined above all however by the videos themselves, the true protagonists, which as every year were acquired for the permanent "Medialogo" archive of the Province of Milan.

Invideo is an AIACE project supported by the Film Dept. of the Ministry of Culture; the Region of Lombardy, Department of Culture and Regional Identities and Autonomy in Lombardy; the Province of Milan, Department of Culture; the City of Milan, Department of Culture, Museums, Performing Arts and Tourism.