Sunstone (2018, 34′)

Incorporating 16mm celluloid images, digital desktop captures and 3D CGI, Sunstone takes the history of the Fresnel lens- traditionally used in lighthouses for its ability to powerfully refract and concentrate light- as a starting point to map a technological trajectory of optics: from historical methods of optical navigation to new algorithms of locating, from singular projection to multi-perspectival satellitic visions. Registering these technical advances progressively through the film’s materials and means of production, Sunstone creates “a cinema of affect, a cinema of experience – an Op- Film”, where ‘Op’ is used to allude to Optics, Op-Art and also to filmmaker Harun Faroki’s formulation of an ‘operational image’; that is images that ‘do’ things, images that have a function. Sunstone is also a film about cinema, its material modes of production and relationship to light.

Filipa César (b. 1975) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker interested in the porous boundaries between the moving image and its reception, the fictional dimensions of the documentary and the economies, politics and poetics inherent to cinema praxis. A large part of César’s experimental films have been focussed on the spectres of resistance in Portugal’s geo-political past, questioning mechanisms of history production and proposing spaces for performing subjective knowledge. Her first feature-length essay-film Spell Reel (2017) premiered at the Forum section of the 67th Berlinale in 2017. Selected exhibitions and screenings have taken place at: 29th São Paulo Biennial, 2010; Manifesta 8, Cartagena, 2010; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2011–15; Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2012; Khiasma, Paris, 2011–2015; Kunstwerke, Berlin, 2013; SAAVY Contemporary, Berlin 2014–15; Tensta konsthall, Spånga, 2015; Mumok, Vienna, 2016; Contour 8 Biennial, Mechelen and Gasworks, London; MoMA, New York, 2017.

Louis Henderson (b. 1983) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Louis Henderson is a filmmaker who is trying to find new ways of working with people to address and question our current global condition defined by racial capitalism and ever-present histories of the European colonial project. Interested in exploring the sonic space of images, his work aims to develop an archaeological method in cinema, listening to the echoes and spirals of the stratigraphic. Since 2017, Henderson has been working within the artist group The Living and the Dead Ensemble. Based between Haiti and France, they focus on theatre, song, slam, poetry and cinema. Henderson has shown his work at various film festivals, exhibitions and biennials worldwide. His work is in the public collection of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, France, and is distributed by LUX and Video Data Bank.

Courtesy of the artists, Stenar Projects and Spectre Productions