Screening of film/video oeuvre 1989–2024
Screening and talk
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, 7 pm
Slovenian Cinematheque, Miklošičeva cesta 28, Ljubljana
The Double and Time?, short experimental films from the 1990s, ask the question of the meaning of being. At the same time, The Trial of Socrates, an omnibus of twenty-three different authors, tries to answer the question of being as the realization of a particular ethical position.
The author’s graduation film, Time?, was conceived as a parody of the advertisements of the time, taking on the typical image of the evening news at the turn of the millennium: a clock hand counting down the last minutes until 7 pm. The film is characterized by the image of virtual space, which continues the theme of The Double and its questioning of the relationship to the time at man’s disposal: the double is not just materialized labour but the name of the mass reproduction of lives and labour that drive the social machine.
For the medium-length film The Trial of Socrates, Nataša Prosenc Stearns gathered 23 authors from all over the world by invitation and open call, to whom she sent individual parts of the script: the script was divided into smaller units. These short films form a single story of The Trial of Socrates. The principle of the directing ensemble facilitated the realization of a completely independent film produced by Kanalya Pictures, on the one hand, and articulated the journey of the spirit through its omnibus form on the other.
Socrates and those involved in his process thus become transhistorical, transgeographical, transgender, transspecies… Socrates is no longer just a person in a particular place at a specific time but becomes a spirit/ethical principle that can be in several places at once, and that interrogates the idea of distance since it is always already-here. The idea of space-time as a tremendous unified organism also corresponds with some of the ecophilosophies of the new materialism. The Trial of Socrates is – in the context of Nataša Prosenc Stearns’ oeuvre – a film that most explicitly tackles the question of the meaning of life, which being of consciousness resurrected from matter confronts.
Robert Kuret
We thank the RTV Slovenia archive for loaning film copies.
Robert Kuret will talk with Nataša Prosenc Stearns.
TV Slovenia, Slovenia, 1995, digital format (shot on Beta SP), 3′
The double silhouette of a person delineates two time segments: the passing of daily life, and nocturnal fireworks. Both worlds pass from one shape to another, until they finally freeze into what they actually represent: a human statue.
TV Slovenia, Slovenia (Yugoslavia), 1990, digital format (shot on Beta SP), 3:4, color, 1′
The repeated use of a media image gives it the status of stereotype – in this case a clock announcing the beginning of the television news. The artist wishes to undermine the ‘freezing’ of the stereotypical media image; she transforms it and thus reinstates time in its natural and constant flow.
USA/Slovenia/Bulgaria/Italy/Canada/Japan/Spain/France/Chile, 1995, digital format (shot on HD video),1.78, color, 59′
An omnibus of 23 women filmmakers and videographers from different cultural backgrounds. Jasna Hribernik and Zmago Lenárdič are also participating from Slovenia. The film is an experiment in one project’s co-existence of different genres. All the films of different lengths, shot in ten countries and seven languages, are linked by the theme of Socrates’ judgment and death. Socrates, as a character, changes from a woman to a man, from an old man to a young woman and from a man to an animal in the first sentence of the verdict.
Between Body and Space II: Process
1 – 8 April
» View at Slovenian Film Database (BSF)
ZDA, HD video, barvni, 2021, 26′ 26” (in English)
A hundred people from different walks of life, different ages, races and sexual orientations, tell stories about what ‘Enough’ means to them, addressing our culture of consumption with huge economic and social disparities.
Kanalya Pictures, ZDA, HD video, 2006, 75′ 10” (in English)
A thriller about illegal trade of African art and consequences of colonialism in the west.
Nataša Prosenc Stearns: Between Body and Space
Programme at Slovenian Cinematheque and Slovenian Film Database (March-June 2025)
21 March / 1 April / 17 May / 3 June
Production: SCCA-Ljubljana and Slovenian Cinematheque
Curators: Vesna Bukovec, Robert Kuret
Nataša Prosenc Stearns is a video artist and a filmmaker who works with a wide range of moving image production and presentation, from scriptwriting, filming and editing to spatial installations, video objects and prints. The presentation of Nataša Prosenc Stearns’ film and video oeuvre, entitled Between Body and Space, is a selection of her work, which includes four programmes: Vortex, Process, Vertical Horizon and Black Waters. The first two programmes are still flirting with the fictional form. At the same time, the other two are already entirely experimental, with works of radically different aesthetics, genres and production contexts within a single strand, created in different periods from the late 1980s to the present day.
Co-production: SCCA-Ljubljana/DIVA Station and Slovenian Cinematheque
Partner: Slovenian Film Database (BSF)
Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture
Thanks: Maja Manojlović, Rok Omahen, RTV Slovenia, Slovenian Film Archive, Slovenian Film Centre, Slovenian Film Database
