Christina von Greve
was born 1968 in Bonn, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany. 1996-2001 she studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. 1999 she took part in an exchange semester with Prof. Tony Hill at the University of Derby, School of Art & Design. zuckerzeit was founded in 1999 by Christina von
Greve und C-Schulz.
2002/ 2003 artist in residence: MAP programme set up by the Pépinières européennes pour jeune artistes, Madrid, Spain. 2008 invitation by the Goethe Institut New Zealand: Presentation of filmworks from 2001-2008 (Films made by C.v. Greve & C-Schulz). 2009 Monographic programm (filmworks from 1999-2009) at the 11th Festival des Cinémas Différents de Paris, France.
C-Schulz
was born 1968 in Cologne, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Since 1990 he has worked as a musician & filmmaker. 1996-2001 he studied media arts at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne.
1999 he took part in an exchange semester with Prof. Tony Hill at the University of Derby, School of Art & Design. zuckerzeit was founded in 1999 by Christina von
Greve und C-Schulz. Since 2002 he works as an author, director and composer for the WDR in the field of feature, Ars Acustica and experimental music. Several releases on CD, LP and DVD: SONIG, EXTREME, ODD SIZE. Several solo concerts & live performances together with F.X.Randomiz (The Allophons).
screenings (selection)
International
Filmfestival Rotterdam | Oberhausen Kurzfilmfestival | Filmfestival Tampere | Les Rencontres Internationales | Museum of Contemporary
Art | Washington DC | Videoex | Mostra INVIDEO | Experimental Film& Video Festival Seoul | IMAGO, Fundão | EMAF Osnabrück funding
2001 film funding for The Dreams 35mm, 40 minutes (Film Foundation of North-Rhine-Westphalia)
2002 funding for Desde la Memoria, BETA SP, 7'30 minutes (artist in residence MAP)
2005 film funding for Flicker 35mm, 10 minutes (Film Foundation of North-Rhine-Westphalia)
2002 television broadcast of The Dreams (35mm, 40 minutes) by ARTE
2002 First prize for The Dreams Filmfestival Hardkijken, Arnheim, NL
discography C-Schulz 20045. Flicker Tunes,
C-Schulz, published by Sonig, Germany, CD
2003
Ilation, C-Schulz
(Comp.), published by Sonig, Germany, CD 2000
C-Schulz & Hajsch, C-Schulz
& Hajsch, published by Sonig, Germany, CD + LP
press Zuckerzeit - der Name des von Christina von Greve und C-Schulz 1999 in Köln gegründeten künstlerischen Projekts ist irreführend. Brutale Schönheit mit melancholisch-realistischer Note beherrscht ihre Filme. Greve und C-Schulz lösen Ausschnitte aus alten 8mm-Filmaufnahmen aus ihrem eigentlichen Zeitzusammenhang heraus und sperren deren Protagonisten und Handlungen in ihren Filmloops ein. Durch Wiederholungen, Ton und Bearbeitungen des Filmmaterials durchlöchern Tragik und Emotion schrittweise die gefilmten, scheinbar belanglosen Alltagsmomente. Farbkleckse, die direkt auf den Film aufgetragen werden, Säureattacken, Solarisationen, Positiv-Negativ-Effekte wirken wie sichtbare Schrammen der Zeit. Zusammen mit den kompromisslosen Kompositionen der Kölner Band „Von Spar“ oder des Radiozyklus’ „Four Inventions“ (1964) von Barry Bermange kreieren Zuckerzeit wahrlich bezaubernde Klang- und Bildcollagen.
Zuckerzeit - the name of the artistic project founded by Christina von Greve and C-Schulz in Cologne in 1999 is misleading. Their films are dominated by brutal beauty with a melancholy realistic note. Greve and C-Schulz release extracts from old 8mm films from their actual chronological context and confine their protagonists and activities in their film loops. Through repetitions, tone and editing the film material, tragedy and emotion gradually perforate the apparently inconsequential everyday moments that have been filmed. Splashes of colour which are applied directly to the film, acid attacks, solarisations, positive-negative effects act like visible scratches of time. Together with the uncompromising compositions of the group from Cologne „Von Spar“ or the radio series „Four inventions“ (1964) by Barry Bermange, Zuckerzeit creates truly enchanting collages of sounds and images.
La cinéaste allemande Christina von Greve travaille depuis plus de dix ans avec le matériau argentique. Ses films, au demeurant très éclectiques, se focalisent sur une réflexion sérielle et sur la disparition du référent. Elle utilise pour ce faire la répétition du motif, la surimpression, l'agrandissement. Une partie de son travail concerne le found footage; elle joue alors sur l'alchimie de la pellicule et sur les va-et-vient entre la lisibilité du photogramme et son recouvrement total ou partiel par des motifs abstraits qui sont le résultat de l'altération du support. L'ensemble de son oevre est marqué par une collaboration étroite avec le musicien C-Schulz, co-réalisateur de certain films. La musique et l'image fonctionnent en symbiose pour créer des ambiances tantôt éthérées, tantôt dramatiques.
Angélica Cuevas Portilla & Gabrielle Reiner, www.cjcinema.org/pages/festival_edition.php?id_prog=23
zu Swelan, Regie: Christina von Greve, Musik: C-Schulz, D 2005, 5:10 Min.:
... Ein alter Super-8 Familienfilm, der aufgrund der neu arrangierten Bild-
und Tonmontage eine jenseits des Dargestellten liegende Bedeutung offenbart.
Der Familienfilm wird in dieser Atmosphäre, in der jeder Winkel ausgeleuchtet
wird und jede Bewegung sich bis ins Unendliche wiederholt, zum Endzeitpanorama
und offenbart das Grauen hinter der bürgerlichen Fassade, ohne es auch
nur ansatzweise real darzustellen.
... An old Super-8 family film, which reveals a meaning beyond what is presented due to the re-arranged montage of images and sounds. In this atmosphere, in which every angle is illuminated and every movement is repeated indefinitely, the family film becomes a panorama of the end of time and reveals the grief behind the civil façade, without really presenting it even to a small extent.
INTRO MAGAZINE 04/2005
... A film by Christina von Greve, soundtracked by Schulz’s "Swelan".
Greve’s imagery is simple: for the most part, she obsessively repeats
footage of a family eating around their kitchen table. The film stock is worn,
rough, and distorted, which - as with Schulz’s music - lends the short
film a ‘weathered’, pre-aged air. The incremental repetitions of
the structure of Greve’s film reminds me a little of the work of Austrian
filmmaker Martin Arnold, but shorn of both its upfront commentary and its
unintentional humour. Instead, Greve’s intentions are mysterious and
slightly veiled - the perfect fit for Schulz’s curiously effaced, gorgeously
opaque music.
DUSTED MAGAZINE REVIEW 05/2005
... Was SWELAN von Christina von Greve so unbehaglich macht,
lässt sich weniger leicht festmachen. Zur elektronischen Avantgardemusik
von C-Schulz sehen wir offenbar gefundene Aufnahmen einer Familie am Küchentisch.
Doch der Ausschnitt der leicht unscharfen Bilder ist seltsam gewählt:
Nicht Köpfe und Gesichter zeigt die Kamera, sie scheint eher unter
den Tisch blicken zu wollen. Dazwischengeschnitten sind Aufnahmen aus der
Küche, in der ein Fisch geschrubbt und ausgenommen wird, und von Frauen,
die ein riesiges rotes Tuch aufspannen. Erst ganz am Schluss sieht man in
das lächelnde Gesicht eines Jungen...
... What makes SWELAN by Christina von Greve so uncomfortable cannot be determined so easily. To electronic avant garde music by C-Schulz, we see apparent found footage of a family at the kitchen table. But the extract with slightly blurred pictures is strangely selected: the camera does not show heads and faces, but seems rather to want to look under the table. This is interspersed with recordings from the kitchen in which a fish is scrubbed and gutted, and of women who are spreading out a large red table cloth. Only right at the end do we look into the smiling face of a boy...
Filmfestival Oberhausen/ Festival Magazine 05/2005, MuVi-Award, Seite 10
/ page 10
zu Desde la memoria, Regie: Christina von Greve, Musik: C-Schulz, D
/ E 2003, 7:30 Min.:
... John Gillies might not have had an agenda for his International
Screen selection, but it proved to be a coherent, deeply satisfying and
challenging program, one which, as he said at the screening, turned by chance
on the utopia/distopia axis. Christina von Greve (Germany, 7’30) in
Desde la Memoria transforms documentary material of the Spanish Civil War
and its legacy into a canvas-grained montage with curiously rich colouring,
deeply etched faces and the intoning voices of elderly subjects, and sublime
merging of old footage and new. Editing is almost everything here, as is
the grim musicality of the recurrence of the words "blood" and
"misery." The despair of a generation is summed up in the bleak
coda, "Don't excel at anything: you will lose the war anyway."
This is a demanding but darkly rewarding 7'30'' minutes.
Keith Gallasch 2004, www.realtimearts.net/article/issue62/8567
As I viewed works from a large pile of videotapes from around
the world, I feel as if I was trawling through a collective present, some
kind of zeitgeist, expressed in moving images and sound. Images, words and
sounds jump out from the pile of tapes stacked up on my studio floor, I
try to be open to them: ‘the things I told you, I will never get them out
of my mind’. 2 Here could be a kind of ‘underbelly’ of the cinema - images
and sound created by ubiquitous digital means that comment upon, reflect,
and are of our present but also give voice to the past in the present
something I’m very interested in. And I’ll talk a bit more about these later.
zu The Dreams, von Christina von Greve & C-Schulz, D 2001, 40 Min.:
... Vor der musikalischen Kulisse des Radiozyklus "Four Inventions"
des Komponisten Barry Bermange von 1964 werden verschiedene Spielarten der
menschlichen Traumerfahrung dargestellt. Dieser fantastische Film lief im
Dezember 2006 bei uns vor so wenig Publikum, dass wir ihm und Euch nun eine
zweite Chance geben. Wenn es einen Film gibt, der die experimentellen Techniken
der 60er Jahre überzeugend vereint und auf ein zeitgemäßes
Niveau hebt, so ist es dieser. Psychedelische Sequenzen, optischer Printer,
Solarisation, Positiv-Negativ-Effekte, Found Footage und nicht zuletzt der
superbe Sound schaffen einen 40minütigen Trancezustand von überwältigender
Schönheit.
... To the musical background of the radio series Four Inventions of 1964 by the composer Barry Bermange, a variety of human dream experiences are presented. This fantastical film was shown in December 2006 with such a small audience that we are now giving it and you a second chance. If there is a film that convincingly combines the experimental techniques of the 1960s and lifts them up to a contemporary level, it is this one. Psychedelic sequences, optical printers, solarisation, positive-negative-effects, found footage and not least the superb sound create a 40 minute trance of overwhelming beauty.
Kino im Sprengel, Hannover, Volker Siebel April,
2007
... Denn natürlich haben Filmemacher und Videokünstler die Lust
am Experimentieren, die das Kino von Beginn an begleitet, nicht verloren.
So Christina von Greve und Carsten Schulz in der Tradition des experimentellen
Kinos von Stan Brakhage, George Landow oder Jürgen Reble mit ihrem
Film The Dreams, der auf einer akustischen Arbeit von Barry Bermange
aus dem Jahre 1964 basiert, einer Ton- und Bildcollage, die in die Welt
des Traums und des Unbewußten führt. Durch direkte Behandlung des Filmmaterials
mit chemische Substanzen, durch Überblendung, durch die Verwendung
gefundener Filmaufnahmen, haben sie eine expressive individuelle Filmsprache
entwickelt, die sich unseren Wahrnehmungskonditionen entzieht und uns dennoch
hypnotisiert.
... For filmmakers and video artists have not, of course, lost the desire to experiment that accompanies the cinema from the beginning onwards. This is true of Christina von Greve and Carsten Schulz in the tradition of experimental cinema of Stan Brakhage, George Landow or Jürgen Reble, with their film The Dreams, which is based on an acoustic work by Barry Bermange from 1964, a collage of sound and images that leads into the world of the dream and the unconscious. Through the direct treatment of the film material with chemical substances, through crossfading, through the use of found footage, they have developed an expressive individual film language that escapes our perception conditions and still hypnotises us.
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