Still from Centaur by Tamas St.Auby

Centaur by Tamas St.Auby was made in Hungary in 1973-75, filmed in various workplaces and everyday situations. The accompanying dialogues appear to be spoken by the people in the documentary images. The centaur of the title refers to the nature of the talking film as such, the image as reality and the voice as utopia. The language of the dialogue is reminiscent of a situationist critique of working life.

The film was banned by Hungarian censors before it could be shown. Tamas St.Auby was arrested and expelled from Hungary for neo-avantgarde activity and participating in the Samizdat movement, and settled down in Geneva in 1975.  The Centaur was found by friendly hands and stolen out from the vault of the secret police in 1983. St.Auby returned to Budapest only after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The damaged original 16 mm film was digitized and restored for inclusion in the 2009 Istanbul Biennale.

The Sunshine Socialist Cinema is proud to present Centaur at an outdoor screening beneath the public sculpture I skuggan av ett moln (In The Shadow Of A Cloud) by Charlotte Öberg Bakos. The sculpture consists of a cloud formed by neon tubes, floating above a pillar (or chimney, as we see it). The sculpture has influenced our programming, under the theme of ‘Workers Leaving The Factory’:

Hello My Name Is Rita by Rita Winde begins with a personality test which the artist took at the Swedish Employment Agency in order to find out which jobs she might be suited for. With the results of this test as her only merit, she set about applying for the jobs that the computer at the agency had recommended. The result is a series of slightly absurd meetings with various employers and workplaces, and a video where the unschooled film technique of Rita Winde brilliantly mirrors the lack of merits in her job application process. The film was recorded in 1996, but has contemporary topicality due to the various employment policies implemented in Sweden over the last years.

The Crowd Is Your Element by Paula von Seth is a filmed dance performance based on Workers Leaving The Factory (1895) by the brothers Lumière. The movement of the workers in the film is turned into a streaming catwalk choreography, developing into a vision characterised by negotiations between distances and revolutionary densities. An important component was the relation between individual and mass, marked by simultaneous fear and attraction. The performance was made specifically for the Malmoe festival in 2010, a festival which draws around 1,5 million visitors. The Crowd Is Your Element was produced in collaboration with among others the musician Sophie Rimheden, fashiondesigner Bea Szenfeld, and choreographer and dancer Cicilia af Dalmatinerhjarta.

A Ruda Road Movie by Marie Bondeson closes the filmprogram. In 2002, the Konsthall in Virserum produced two exhibitions about local industries shutting down. One was the papermill Silverdalen, the other was Moteco in the small town Ruda. Moteco benefitted from the Telecom boom, but eventually laid off all employees in Ruda and moved its’ production to Malaysia. For the second exhibition at Virserum, the artist Marie Bondeson was asked to visualise the term outsourcing. In the film A Ruda Road Movie, she follows unemployed Douglas Fransson around Ruda, while he laconically details the effects of outsourcing upon his hometown. We also get to hear about Hogsby city council making plans for the survival of the region.

A short interview with Kristina Müntzing from SSC regarding the screening is found at Konstensvecka.se

On Sunday September 29 we begin with an artist talk at 18.30 outside the Stinsen Travel Centre in Soderkoping.