PARADISE HANDBOOK
Handbook on Subversive Strategies of a Film Made in Iran
Alec Barth & Reyhan Bokaie
Dancing forbidden! PARADISE HANDBOOK reveals a concise insight into the genesis of the film »Paradise«, which director Sina Ataeian Dena managed to realize in Iran over a period of many years without filming permission and on a very small budget. The resulting footage was eventually brought out of the country and processed and finished in Berlin-Babelsberg. »Paradise« celebrated its premiere in 2015 in competition at Locarno Film Festival and was subsequently awarded various prizes. The book reveals a fascinating view of how the film crew dealt creatively with the massive restrictions on filming in Iran. It breaks down, like a manual, the logistical, strategic, and technical efforts underlying the images and scenes in »Paradise« that the team applied to circumvent the plethora of restrictions. Created as a documentary feature film, »Paradise« presents the viewer with seemingly mundane scenes of life. However, to create the impression of a realistic representation of everyday life meant that very complicated precautions had to be taken. Iranian censorship, especially of feature films, scrupulously regulates everything that could somehow be understood as critique, such as the (absolutely necessary) concealment of female characters; and to show adolescent girls dancing to pop music in a school bus or during school breaks, is completely unimaginable.
8 x 10 3⁄4 in. / 176 pp. / 110 color
ISBN: 978-3-86442-248-5
Retail Price: $45.00
KATRIN PLAVCAK
On the Couch
Brigitte Hausmann (Ed.)
Katrin Plavčak’s paintings refer to history of art as well as popular culture, for instance when she uses set pieces of comics. These themes are transformed by her critical view, her ingenuity and her tremendous creative power into artistically completely independent and irritatingly current commentaries on our political- social and cultural present. Surrealism, science fiction and verism enter into a disturbing alliance and generate what the artist calls »amazement« and »personal entertainment «. And then there is this couch in Katrin Plavčak’s Vienna studio – at a distance of four kilometers from the former location of Sigmund Freud’s famous couch. It is at the center of the artist’s latest work, which uses this motif to develop various themes, from the subject of »painter and model« to the pertinent aspects of Freudian depth psychology. The works in the exhibition »On the Couch« brought together in this book are for the first time on show at Schwartzschen Villa in Berlin-Steglitz where, from March to April 2018, the artists actually used the studio to create a number of works. Katrin Plavčak is currently working on a monument to FALCO, which is to be unveiled on June 2, 2018 near St. Pölten, the home of FALCO’s father. Exhibition: Schwartzsche Villa Berlin-Steglitz, 13/4 – 17/6/2018
9 . x 11 . in. / 64pp. / 55 color
ISBN: 978-3-86442-245-4
Retail Price: $39.95