Individual residencies / Olot

KAREN SZTAJNBERG

From Tuesday, 24 October 2023 to Tuesday, 31 October 2023

KAREN SZTAJNBERG
PhD Researcher and Filmmaker
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Bio

Karen Sztajnberg is a Brazilian doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam and working artist who first graduated from Bard College (Film, B.A, 1997), then Columbia University (Film M.F.A, 2006). Her research topic is audience engagement events of South American films in a transnational festival and arthouse context.

Recent conferences include New York University’s Windows, Frames, Mirrors Conference (2021), Visible Evidence, Frankfurt (2021), PILAS, Cambridge (2022) and REBRAC, Leeds (2022). She has also contributed articles to Mistral Journal, Free State Review and MAI Feminism.

Credited as director, editor, screenwriter, and video artist, her work has been screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival, Lincoln Center Film Society, DocFeed, HotDocs, Visions du Reel, and in many art galleries, culminating in her solo exhibition at Appleton Square in Lisbon, Portugal.

Project

While at Faber I will be writing my doctoral research and articles for publication. All I need is a desk, wifi, and a good chair.

I am working on audience engagement events of South American films on the transnational festival and arthouse circuit, to better understands why Q&A's have become such a fundamental part of the festival experience.

I would also be happy to promote a screening of one of the films I am analyzing with local audiences to engage in a discussion about film aesthetics, themes and the director's career relative to other films.

Framed Landscapes.

Way before I arrived in Olot, I had always been fond of Turner’s paintings. His troubled skies, and stealthy shards of light appealed to me for reasons I could barely articulate. Probably because his landscapes seemed to announce change, unpredictability, and the fleeting presence of beauty in one frame.

While I worked from my desk at Olot’s Riu Fluviu Hotel, I was lucky enough to be repeatedly surprised by views that both eased and unsettled me. Storming rain one second, golden skies the next. Beyond providing a good respite, from the words and ideas I was deeply engaged with in my writing my work, these views brought me back to Turner’s evolving potentialities. Perhaps I needed them to do as much, during troubled times. The conflict in the middle east an unavoidable topic at dinner, the necessity to process the very difficult realities around us very palpable. But as we sat there, lucky to enjoy lavish and delicious Catalan dinners, we bonded as a group, while bridging many differences.

I returned to my room every night, both renewed by these encounters, nourished, with my taste buds still ecstatic, and finding fresh energy to resume work that I had set out to do, knowing in the rooms next to mine, I had a continuum of humanity with whom I could join forces in the ether, as we all looked for the silver lining in these pivotal times.

Our group was quite heterogeneous; I met women of first nations who were community leaders, members of the European Parliament, Museum workers, and we all somehow found points of confluence. I hope we will keep each other as reference and I hope Faberllull will continue to foster such a productive and convivial environment.

Notícies, articles i activitats

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