A Fountain Which Never Stops: Films by Ute Aurand

Ute Aurand is one of the most significant filmmakers working in the traditions of film diary and portraiture today. Her work, handheld 16mm photography imbued with grace and poignancy, emphasizes private moments among friends and family, photographing minute portions of time that attracts her attention. In Aurand's words, “The source of inspiration is daily life, the fountain which never stops and offers itself to everyone. It is a great joy and challenge to transform my inner dialogue into film.” This program brings together a number of Aurand's portrait works, including a section of her feature film Rasendes Grün mit Pferden(Rushing Green with Horses, 2019), a work shot between 1999 and 2018 which offers many points to enter and leave, as though joining Aurand on a leg or two of her global journey through life. Also screening will be Aurand's first film, Schweigend ins Gespraech vertieft (Deeply Absorbed in Silent Conversation, 1981), her portraits Sakura, Sakura (2015) and Four Diamonds (2017), and her homage to the late Scottish filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait, Glimpses from a Visit to Orkney in Summer 1995 (2020). 
 
“Aurand's films derive much of their unique and often exuberant energy from their remarkable editing and structure, a kind of precision frame-by-frame montage, at times rapid-fire, that evokes the specific rhythm and personality of the people and places described by her camera.” (Haden Guest, Harvard Film Archive)
 
Ute Aurand (b. 1957) has completed more than 40 films which have been widely exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals internationally, including Tate Modern, Austrian Film Museum, New York Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Harvard Film Archive, Pacific Film Archive, International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Toronto International Film Festival. She is a subject of the monograph Ute Aurand, Helga Fanderl, Jeannette Muñoz, Renate Sami, published by Punto de Vista Festival to coincide with major surveys of the artists’ work (2020). She co-founded and programmed for the screening collective FilmSamstag from 1997–2007, organizing several retrospectives with a particular focus on female filmmakers such as Marie Menken, Margaret Tait, Maria Lang, and Utako Koguchi, among others. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Featuring Ute Aurand in person for a post-screening conversation. This event is free and open to the public. Doors will open thirty minutes prior to showtime.