Director: Deborah Stratman
USA 2008, 52 min.

'This is America!' - seen from a surreal and thoughtful perspective

The centrepiece of Deborah Stratman's visual essay is the incredible story of a jet pilot who in 1959 catapulted himself out of his malfunctioning plane at a height of 15 kilometres, and who only after an over 40 minute long fall through a pitch-black thunderstorm, surrounded by lightning and ice-cold temperatures, managed to place his feet on the ground. A fantastic story, which is told by the pilot himself, and which in itself is reason enough to buy a ticket for the hypnotically fascinating 'O'er the Land'. Stratman has named her reflection on freedom and defence after a verse in the American national anthem, and she takes an insider's look at her country's military and social self-perception. A theatrical reenactment of a historical battle in the middle of a forest becomes a surrealist climax (the spectators are sitting in small golf cars drinking coke), while a visit to a 'gun club', where weapons enthusiasts meet out in nowhere and shoot away at an invisible enemy, is an eerie and depressing sight.

Director: Richard Bartle
UK 2009, 6 min.

Eight years of global politics in six minutes

'Pow-wow' is an eight-year long project that began on the 20th January 2001, the inauguration date of President George W. Bush, and was completed on the the 20th January 2009, the date he left office. During this time, Richard Bartle has traced and documented the rise and fall of world leaders, laboriously reproducing their images on a series of small canvases through a process which reflects and measures the almost daily changes and disruptions in the political arena. Each canvas catalogues the recent political history of a specific state or republic and serves to capture each new leader''s ascent to power. Their subsequent political demise is then charted by erasing or burying them beneath the image of their successor. Political stasis is suggested in the more readable images. In others, the dense palimpsest of innumerable layers evokes a more volatile or unstable past. The images are presented with a soundtrack - the preamble to the United Nations declaration of human rights, read out simultaneously by UN interpreters in several languages - which imitates the layered and often incomprehensible nature of the images.

Director: Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Holland 2008, 30 min.

Pirate radiophonic revolt against the aural dictatorship of colonial times

In Europe, radio developed as a state controlled instrument, used to edify the masses through speeches and lectures. 'No False Echoes' recalls this history of radio and talks about Dutch radio in colonial Indonesia. On behalf of the Dutch government Philips not only exported radio technology to the colony, but also started producing the radio programmes, in order to ensure their innocent, uplifting content, and to keep any unwanted political voices off the ether. While the Dutch colonisers found nostalgic comfort in reports about St. Nicholas, the Indonesian people were busy developing their own nationalist self-awareness. 'No False Echoes' deals with these simultaneous yet opposing nationalist movements, against the background of the current revival of nationalist sentiments in The Netherlands. The setting is the former main building of Radio Kootwijk, an architectural monument to modernism and progress, yet also clearly a building that is vacant and has lost its function. The voices that construct 'No False Echoes' are not improvising or searching, but rather assertive, at times almost didactic, fitting the nature of a radio programme. As in a radio talk show, the Dutch perspective is discussed by two experts on radio history and an analyst of today''s political tendencies. The voice of the Indonesian independence movement is represented by a political pamphlet from 1913, Als ik eens Nederlander was (If I were a Dutchman). This provocative manifesto is recited by Salah Edin, the Moroccan-Dutch rap artist known for his biting criticism of today''s perception of immigrants.