Monday 10.03.2025
19:00 – screening
English
FORDE SCREENS #4
Forde Screens is a new monthly event offered by Forde at the Spoutnik cinema every second Monday of the month, dedicated to films by artists exploring various cinematic forms and visual perspectives. The Forde team is pleased to have collaborated with Eliott Villars in developing the program. The screening will be followed by a presentation and discussion with the artist.
About the films presented:
The Dent, 19min, 2014
Starting with shining rooftops and ending with the seemingly insignificant death of the last circus elephant of its kind, The Dent weaves vaguely connected events and irrational occurrences to reflect on collective failure and hope. A small, anonymous town struggles for international recognition as it becomes clear that failure is a monster too large to be slain. The mayor turns to hypnosis in the form of a circus. An ambiguous dream that defies any interpretation leaves the circus owner perplexed. He wakes up to put his clowns and their wives to work. The consequences of this series of events strike the elephant where it hurts. Fate becomes its enemy.
13 Essential Rules for Understanding the World, 5min, 2011
Tulips with faces deliver harsh truths and remind us of our place on this planet. With dark humor and a touch of cynicism, the work parodies the instructional film format and subverts it by informing us that inaction can be the most effective way to be.
My Father Looks for an Honest City, 5min, 2010
In his short film My Father Looks for an Honest City (2010), the protagonist, torch in hand, walks amid the rubble of his dreams—acting as a premonition of a fantastic dystopian future that is, in fact, the present. The film revolves around three key elements: The intimate quality of the title, referring to his own father; a reenactment of an anecdote related to the Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic, who was known for walking around with a lamp during the day, supposedly to find an honest man; and a bleak landscape of crumbling modernist apartment buildings that are part of the rapid expansion of Cairo. As in his other works, the film carries an unsettling quality, but the familiar humorous and playful imagery is absent here. The very real landscape, combined with the tragic, abandoned desolation of this identifiable man, confronts the viewer with the reality of a city that has failed before even having the chance to be born.
FEARDEATHLOVEDEATH, 17min, 2022
A hallucinatory journey that evokes the absurdity of death without attempting to understand it. A new one-word language is invented to describe the contents of a room belonging to a recently deceased man. A cave city where a civilization has flourished brings up memories of pockets overflowing with anxious smiles. An alligator mysteriously appears in the clouds while ARPANET is remembered as the precursor to the internet. Death looms in the distance, galloping between the stars. Against all odds, it seems to carry an alligator's tail.
Time Laughs Back at You Like a Sunken Ship, 9min, 2012
The film deals with our understanding of time and how we construct our memories, examining how they subtly unfold and blend into one another. This quiet hymn exists without narration and is accompanied by a delicately composed soundtrack by Magdy.
New Acid, 14min, 2019
Several animals discuss via SMS. Amid their banal exchanges of words devoid of life, conflicts and rivalries emerge. Their mirrored physical appearance suggests they are trapped in a reality show, where uncertainty and doubt prevail. The insecurity and escape induced by social media become proof that at least some of them are not robots. They question selfishness, self-love, and self-destruction when the \"ugly\" ones arrive with their \"tacky sunglasses.\" Is tradition an alter ego of racism? What about nostalgia and nationalism? Have they become what they’ve always despised? Mankind? The escape attempt of a group of ring-tailed lemurs censored steals the spotlight. A giraffe finally understands why it's been hell from the start.
About the artist:
Basim Magdy (born in 1977 in Assiut, Egypt) lives and works in Basel, Switzerland, as an artist and filmmaker. His films, paintings, and photographic works are imbued with poetic gestures and unusual observations that turn absurdity into an everyday event. His work blends fiction and historical references with humor, all seemingly trapped in a confused sense of time where the past, present, and future are in constant flux.
His work has recently been the subject of solo and group exhibitions in museums such as the Kunsthalle Bern, Frac Bretagne in Rennes, KM21 Museum for Contemporary Art in The Hague, and M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. His works are part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Centre Pompidou, among others. His films have been screened at Tate Modern, Locarno Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and International Film Festival Rotterdam, among others.
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