Marian Masone, Li Zhenhua, and Maxa Zoller reminisce about some of their most memorable features

From Steve McQueen to Takashi Murakami: Find out which artworks stayed with Art Basel's Film curators over the years

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Art Basel's special sectors and programs, such as the one dedicated to film,&nbsp;have traditionally been overseen by independent curators.&nbsp;Maxa Zoller, now the artistic director of the Internationales Frauenfilmfestival Dortmund (International Women's Film Festival Dortmund), co-curated Art Basel in Basel's Film Program from 2015 to 2019 alongside writer and lecturer&nbsp;Marian Masone. Masone&nbsp;continues to oversee the program in Basel, now with&nbsp;Zoller's successor Filipa Ramos.&nbsp;In Hong Kong, the Film Program has been helmed by the&nbsp;founder and director of Beijing Art Lab,&nbsp;Li Zhenhua, since 2014.&nbsp;On the occasion of Art Basel's&nbsp;50th anniversary, they share their favorite memories and discuss&nbsp;which films best represent our times.

	Art Basel: What is your best memory or experience as Film Curator for Art Basel?


	Li Zhenhua: The Film Program for Art Basel Hong Kong is rooted in&nbsp;what we learn&nbsp;from artists&nbsp;through their filmographic practice and from galleries&nbsp;through their&nbsp;connection to the medium. Some of the best moments have been when we showed works that enabled us to understand Chinese contemporary art and society better through artists, collectors, and filmmakers. Memories are like constellations in the air in Hong Kong, and fly away with the wind every time.

	Marian Masone: I have to go with two events: one in Miami Beach and one in Basel. In 2017 – the last year the Film sector took place in Miami Beach – the filmmaker Sara Driver presented her film Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Earlier that week, the press had been agog reporting on Leonardo DiCaprio haggling over the price of a Basquiat painting at the fair. The film brought us back to the humanity of Basquiat and reminded us of the burgeoning art scene in New York’s Lower East Side, of which he was a part. The graffiti artist Lee Quinones joined Sara and me for a Q&amp;A after the screening, in a cinema that was crammed with young people who got advice from the artists onstage on how to continue with their creative dreams. It was a great night.

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MM:&nbsp;Also, just last year, the artist Prune Nourry brought her film Serendipity (2019) to Basel. Nourry’s work has always dealt with gender and reproduction; when she was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, it took on an even more specific meaning. The film documents her battle with the disease and puts her work in this new context. Nourry is the documentarian, the patient, the artist. Once again, the post-screening Q&amp;A, talking about art, bioethics, and more, was fascinating. I have always felt that artists’ ideas are in their work, and that it shouldn’t be required that they be articulate about their paintings, films, or sculptures. But when filmmakers and other artists are able to engage an audience with broader – and more specific – ideas, that’s a win-win for everyone. These post-screening conversations at Art Basel are always great deep dives into art and artists. Max Zoller: I have had many memorable moments.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11158/Takashi-Murakami" target="_blank">Takashi Murakami</a> appeared with his crazy manga characters for the premiere of Jellyfish Eyes (2013);&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/12054/Candice-Breitz" target="_blank">Candice Breitz</a> crashed the Q&amp;A to join her former teacher from Cape Town,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/20736/Penny-Siopis" target="_blank">Penny Siopis</a>, on stage. I also remember vividly that you could hear a pin drop when&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/16751/Lynn-Hershman-Leeson" target="_blank">Lynn Hershman Leeson</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/12201/Kimsooja" target="_blank">Kimsooja</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9178/Xu-Bing" target="_blank">Xu Bing</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/19830/Eric-Baudelaire" target="_blank">Eric Baudelaire</a>, and others took to the mic to talk about their films and vision. I will never forget the moving mini-retrospective of the late Breda Beban in 2017. But since you ask about the most unforgettable moment, I think it would have to be the screening of Where is Rocky II? in 2015. It is a film in a film (in a film) about the hidden fake stone sculpture Rocky II by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/12551/Ed-Ruscha" target="_blank">Ed Ruscha</a> – a hilarious, extremely intelligent, and wonderfully scripted film by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/10583/Pierre-Bismuth" target="_blank">Pierre Bismuth</a> with a fantastic score that manages to please the art as well as the cinema crowd.

AB: Can you share with us the two or three artists’ films/videos that you believe will be seen as important landmarks in this field in 50 years, and tell us why?


	LZ: First there is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/21955/Chim-Pom" target="_blank">Chim↑Pom</a>’s Black of Death (2007/2013), which documents a series of actions in Japan that&nbsp;involved attracting murders of crows using a stuffed version of the bird&nbsp;and their recorded songs.&nbsp;In addition to footage shot in the nuclear exclusion zone in Fukushima, which may be entered freely but is still uninhabited, the video also includes footage of the Tower of the Sun in Suita, Osaka, the commercial center Shibuya in Tokyo, and other similar sites. Chim↑Pom’s work demonstrates a love for animism in the face of technology and the hidden, dark side of the functional world. The collective calls on the crows to cross the boundaries between spiritual and physical&nbsp;world, making us aware of these boundaries&nbsp;and how we set them in our society.
	
	There’s also&nbsp;
		<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9871/He-Xiangyu" target="_blank">He Xiangyu</a>’s The Swim (2017), which records his attempt to swim from the Chinese to the North Korean side of the Yalu River. 'I wanted to explore what was going on here in a very personal, physical way, in touch with the elements of the town and the water,' he says. Here, the artist&nbsp;crosses the borders between nostalgia and political taboos, water and the body, and memory and history. All these elements&nbsp;pull us backward and forward.
	
	I will always encourage artists to take positions that are not politically correct, because they might trigger us&nbsp;to re-engage or reopen a conversation about what made us what we are today, and what the future might be.

MZ: I draw a straight line from the first attempts by artists to introduce film to the art market in the 1970s to the actual implementation of a film program at Art Basel to where we are now. In 1970, the artist-run organization Progressive Art Production (P.A.P.) began presenting experimental film as a multiple at Art Basel. Run by Karlheinz Hein, P.A.P. represented <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/23464/Carolee-Schneemann">Carolee Schneemann</a>, Kurt Kren, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/17304/Paul-Sharits">Paul Sharits</a>, and many great filmmakers who rebelled against mainstream cinema. The project folded in 1972. Twenty years later, Art Basel gave film the attention it required. Matthias 'This' Brunner was in charge of the Film sector and presented art films and also documentaries about artists. At that time the real 'artist’s film,' meaning a film with a conceptual structure, was on the rise. 1995 was a landmark year because it was the centenary of cinema, and artists’ films exploded onto the scene. Film projections became part and parcel of museum exhibitions and were shown in black boxes in fair booths. In 2000, Unlimited began presenting large-scale film installations. It was the younger curators like Marc Glöde and me who pushed the program at the Art Basel Film sector and diversified it in the new millennium.Another important landmark is Hunger (2008), the first feature film by <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8107/Steve-McQueen">Steve McQueen</a>, who would go on to make the award-winning movie 12 Years a Slave in 2013. Artists today might be as radical as artists in the 1970s – it’s just that they rebel against mainstream cinema not by denying it, but by changing it.

MM: Rather than choose particular films, I would say that there are some artists whose very existence holds importance for the past, the present, and the future. Three such artists come to mind: <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/17130/Jonas-Mekas">Jonas Mekas</a>, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11371/Ai-Weiwei">Ai Weiwei</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/16751/Lynn-Hershman-Leeson" target="_blank">Lynn Hershman Leeson</a>. Each artist’s body of work speaks volumes about the intersection of the media and our lives. Jonas, a refugee, activist, and avant-garde icon, was all of these. The first time I came to Art Basel in Switzerland, Jonas was presenting a retrospective of his work. I saw his film Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) there, and was reminded of the strong connection our past has to our present – sometimes we tend to forget. Jonas’s work is vital and required viewing. The activist artist Ai Weiwei has been causing trouble for the Chinese authorities for years, and his film work has brought to light artistic processes and social issues. What appeals to me most are his recent documentaries Human Flow (2017) and The Rest (2019), which both lay bare the world’s refugee crisis. This tragedy is not going to go away any time soon and as long as these films exist – as in, forever – we will be forced to pay attention. As I write this, his latest film, Vivos (2020), about enforced 'disappearances' in Mexico, will premiere; human rights continue to be Ai’s artistic subject.Hershman Leeson’s films have always combined art and technology. They are feminist works and her use of certain media before its time to tell stories kept her work largely out of museum and gallery viewing. But still, she persisted, working with Tilda Swinton as her muse on a number of films, including Teknolust (2003), Strange Culture (2009), and Conceiving Ada (1997), which is a groundbreaking film, both futuristic and historical. All these artists’ films have stood the test of time, and will continue to do so.Top image:&nbsp;Lynn Hershman Leeson, Teknolust, film still, 2002. 24K HD, 35mm and 4K feature film starring Tilda Swinton. Written, directed, produced, and edited by Hershman Leeson and commissioned for ZDF TV. &copy; Lynn Hershman Leeson. Courtesy of the artist and Bridget Donahue, New York City.

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