On material and immaterial objects
by Hannes Wesselkämper
Fascinated by the inner workings of our communal society, French philosopher Michel Serres coined the term “quasi-object” as a way to grasp what is holding us together. It is not an object in the strictest sense of the word, yet it is not a subject either. Between “I” and “it” always lies an immaterial force that designates what “I” and “it” mean. Film itself can be seen as a quasi-object, since it behaves like an object – we use it for entertainment, and cinemas organize the material grounds for this purpose – while at the same time it is relentlessly producing subjectivities. I will select here some films that reflect on the workings of quasi-objects by shaping creative takes on materiality and community.
Hans Richter’s early avant-garde works such as Filmstudie (1925) hold a prominent place in the canon of film history. His later commercial work, however, is far less known. In the special program “Useful Image(s) – Konstruktion nationaler Identität in Schweizer Gebrauchsfilmen”, the festival presented Richter’s take on the financial market, Die Börse (1939). While Richter stages the history of financial capital with essayistic verve, he still adheres to the propagandistic needs of his commissioner, the Zurich stock exchange. He uses stylistic devices of expressionist film to show how money is always a process that binds human and non-human entities together. At the same time, Die Börse develops an almost ethnographic perspective on the frantic floor traders – a precursor to the later glorification of the financial “grind” in Western cinema (and popular culture in general) from the 1980s onwards.
Hans Richter | CH 1939 | 22’
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In their multimedia work, French artistic duo Fleuryfontaine focus on technological formations of the relation between people and their environment. Through surveillance camera footage and digital reconstructions, Sixty-Seven Milliseconds reflects on the immediacy of individual acts as well as the structural dimension of police violence. Not unlike the activist work of Forensic Architecture, this film uses CGI-aided spatial analysis to investigate an illegally fired rubber bullet. It is the contingency of violence that haunts this short film – one bullet that gets lost between two frames of a 15-frames-per-second surveillance camera but ultimately destroys the life of a young Parisian.
Fleuryfontaine | FR 2025 | 15’
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A young woman vanishes; her first novel is to be buried in a garden because she writes about a forbidden love for another woman she simply calls “Blue”. There is faint hope that her words will someday breach the ground and grow into beautiful flowers.
In her films, Maryam Tafakory weaves tight-knit aesthetic tapestries out of Iran’s vast film history. She uses scenes from 36 different Iranian films made between 1986 and 2010 – among them works by Dariush Mehrjui and Mohsen Makhmalbaf – to depict the invisible: the suffering of a young woman in love, the powerlessness and despair in the face of structural oppression by the regime in Tehran. Although now living in London, Tafakory builds artistic bridges to her homeland through cinematic collage and lyrical voice-over work that she performed herself.
Maryam Tafakory | UK/IR/FR 2025 | 16’
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What happens when the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead becomes porous? Mati, a grief-stricken teenager, wanders the streets of Dakar to deal with her mother’s death as mysterious women continue to cross her path. These soul-eaters – the “dëmm” – are central figures in Senegalese mythology, and for Mati they are both frightening and empowering, nourished by pain and bringing order to the community. Aïda Captijn, a student at HEAD Genève, creates an impressive atmosphere in this mysterious coming-of-age piece. Using horror tropes as well as highly stylized imagery and a brooding soundscape, she renders Mati’s suffering and juvenile disorientation graspable. A hauntingly beautiful take on mythology and female empowerment that acknowledges the invisible ties of society – including those to individuals who have already passed away but remain present in the memory of the living.
Aïda Captijn | CH 2025 | 17’
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