RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES PARIS/BERLIN/MADRID

Prior to Madrid’s and Berlin’s editions which will respectively take place in April and July 2012, The Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid from 18 up to November 26, will offer a space dedicated to discovery and thought covering the fields of new cinema and contemporary art at Centre Pompidou and La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris.

Les Rencontres Internationales is a unique forum, creating an exchange between the three cities and an exceptional space of discovery and reflection between new cinema and contemporary art.The festival offers more than just a simple presentation of the works. It introduces an intercultural forum gathering various guests from all over the world - artists and filmmakers, institutions and emerging organizations - to testify of their reflections and their experiences, but also of artistic and cultural contexts that are often undergoing deep changes.The international program of film, video, multimedia, net art is the result of an elaborate international search for works, selected from 5000 submissions as well as by invitations made to some artists and filmmakers.

In the presence of artists and filmmakers from all over the world, this rare event will propose an international programme gathering 150 works from 40 countries, internationally-known artists and filmmakers and young artists and filmmakers presented for the first time. Indoor screenings – new films, cartes blanches, a video program – 'extra muros' with visits to several exhibitions in Ile-de-France, a cycle of debates and panel discussions gathering curators, museum / art centre directors along with programmers and distributors who will share their experiences and reflexions with the audience.

Highlights of this edition:

- Carte blanche to Pedro Costa. Les Rencontres Internationales would like to express its confidence in and its attachment to Pedro Costa’s atypical work by inviting him for a preview screening.

- Carte blanche to Mark Lewis. The work of photographer, film and video maker Mark Lewis, in which he likes to interrogate the singularity of the image, is shown in the biggest museums. We ask him to share his point of view during a special screening program; he will decide upon the content and structure.

- Special screening with Ubermorgen.com. A screening to discover the latest work by this artist duo, among the most important artists in the digital art field.

- Les Rencontres Internationales and the Goethe-Institut invite the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen to open its archives, unique in Europe, and propose 4 screenings of exceptional films from Eastern Europe with work by Walerian Borowczyk,Alexandre Sokourov, Zbigniew Rybczynski (screenings at Centre Pompidou and Goethe-Institut).

- Focus New Zealand. The way Anglo-Saxon and Maori culture meet in this country on the exact opposite side of Europe has an astonishing effect on its film making: inventive and free, far from exotic clichés. We’ll discover it through this special program.

- First screening in France of ‘‘Sea of Tranquillity’’ by Hans Op de Beeck.

- First screening in France of ‘‘Finisterrae’’ by Sergio Caballero, first price at the latest edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Complete program on : http://www.art-action.org