AV Festival 2012: As Slow As Possible
The North East’s internationally acclaimed AV Festival returns in March with an outstanding line up of over 100 artists in 20 exhibitions, 70 special events and concerts, films, talks and walks. This year’s festival explores the theme of slowness, with some works running for 31 days, some for fleeting moments only, and others appearing to freeze or extend time. Spanning visual art, music, sound and film, the programme manifests in different places at different paces, speeds and times of day.
One of the festival’s highlights is the Slow Cinema film season, a series of over thirty landmark films from leading international filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Bela Tarr, mini-installations by Martin Arnold and John Smith, and new work from durational filmmaking pioneer James Benning, who will be present during the opening weekend of the festival.
Also in attendance to introduce and discuss his work will be Ben Rivers, one of the most distinctive UK filmmakers working today. Rivers presents his post-apocalyptic science fiction film Slow Action (commissioned by Animate Projects and Picture This) and his debut feature length film Two Years At Sea.
Check out the rest of the films, symposia, concerts and other events here. We’ll be posting more on selected highlights in the run up to the festival.
Slow Action Eleven by Ben Rivers, 2010