Mills Folly Microcinema presents Kim Kölle Valentine: Introspective Detective, a program of short films, on Wednesday, January 31, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. Admission $5.00, free for ALL members. A $1 fee will be added for single admission credit card charges, but no fee for multiple admissions ($10 or more). Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Montreal-based Kim Kölle Valentine works in video, drawing, and collage. She is interested in how we understand narratives - personal and historic - and how we place ourselves into them. Her process is based on interests in layered narrative, cinema, and literature through which she has developed an archive of images and ideas. Her work has been presented in solo shows at Dazibao (Montréal, CA), LUX (London, UK), VOX (Montréal, CA), Sporobole (Sherbrooke, CA) and k48 (Vienna, AT). Her work has also been shown widely in group exhibitions and screenings including Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, WRO Biennale, FIFA Experimental (Montréal), Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento (Buenos Aires). She has been an artist in residence at KulturKontakt (Vienna, AT), Aberystwyth Arts Centre (UK), The Red Mansion Foundation (Beijing, CN), and International Studio and Curatorial Program (Brooklyn, US).
This screening was curated by Grant Phipps, who will moderate a remote Q&A discussion with the filmmaker at the end of the program.
Today I Did Nothing | Canada | 2023 | 8 minutes
Through a whirlwind of images, Today I Did Nothing proposes a hybrid essay narrative that weaves together quotes and ideas using a collection of objects. The work creates a personal archive, repeating its imagery to entice the viewer into its visual universe while at the same time presenting difficult contradictions about desires, impulses and formation through objects.
Reading Patterns (trilogy) | Canada | 2016-2017
Reading Patterns Together | 2016 | 8 minutes
To Read In A Black Room | 2017 | 7 minutes
Third Reading | 2017 | 11 minutes
In this series, strangers brought together by a mysterious package attempt to unravel their relationship to each other. What follows is a constellation of found footage and a cinematic collection, punctuated by performances and recreations for the camera. Through altering points of view from these two characters’ positions, the narration guides us through these images of repetitive actions, rituals, desires and projections. Engaging with ideas from The Hour of the Star (Clarice Lispector) and The Space of Literature (Maurice Blanchot) the work engages with with the literary experience, but it also brings together a collage of cinematic history. Particularly notable because of their approaches to cinematic presence are Barbara Loden, an actress and director of the 1970 film, Wanda, and Juliet Berto, an actress in films by Jean-Luc Godard, and Jacques Rivette, as well as a director (Neige, 1980).
Throughout the work we are presented with distinct spaces that want their own definition, but are understood only in parallel with another. It travels repeatedly across two spaces– the interior life of reading and the exterior experience of watching (cinema), the definition of the self and the adulation of the other, and the structures of language that guide our experience and its gaps that escape our understanding.
The Coldest Day Of The Year | Canada | 2020 | 9 minutes
The Coldest Day of the Year takes place in a future where a cataclysmic event has made tracing a coherent meaning of the past and recounting a narrative of the present impossible. The narrator believes she has seen another being in this destroyed landscape. She attempts to find this figure and recounts a journey that traces the shadows of her presence. Using temporary sets, props and collaged images, The Coldest Day of the Year recounts an attempt to understand an ever shifting horizon and the possibility of dwelling. I created this work after reading The Wall by Marlen Haushofer (a female Robinson Crusoe story) as a response to some of the ideas in this book.
The Farthest Point On The Compass | Canada | 2018 | 9 minutes
Using the film Saint-Jean-Port-Joli (dir. Pierre Dumas, 1962) as a starting point, this video follows a quest to unravel a riverside mystery.
Anna | Canada | 2017 | 5 minutes
Anna presents a layered narrative through archival images and re-enactments.
ABOUT MILLS FOLLY MICROCINEMA
Mills Folly Microcinema showcases nationally recognized experimental film and video art work from the festival and microcinema circuit. We network with regional filmmakers and organizations to bring filmmakers and guest programmers to Madison for screenings. And we incubate local experimental filmmaking by providing screen time at Project Projection events.