Works by Cao Fei, Fiona Tan, and Rashid Johnson are among the reasons why you should head to Basel’s Stadtkino during the show

From Fluxus to Mount Fuji, explore six highlights of Art Basel’s Film Program

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Art Basel's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/events/browse?access&amp;cityId=11&amp;cityIds=1&amp;eventTypes=-4&amp;offset=0" target="_blank">Film Program</a> is always filled with an enlightened&nbsp;selection of short and feature-length films playing with the possibilities of the medium&nbsp;– and this year's program is as challenging as ever. Curated by Dr. Maxa Zoller and Marian Masone, the 18 films presented at Basel's Stadtkino ambitiously tackle topics including&nbsp;race and immigration, art history, and the contemporary prison system.&nbsp;Here are six highlights not to miss.
	<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11477/Cao-Fei" target="_blank">Cao Fei </a>Prison Architect, 2018 Presented by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1458/Vitamin-Creative-Space" target="_blank">Vitamin Creative Space</a>, Guangzhou and Beijing <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11477/Cao-Fei" target="_blank">Cao Fei</a>’s practice often revolves around current issues in China, where she lives and works. But Prison Architect (2018), a compelling film starring Valerie Chow (Chungking Express) as a modern-day architect who struggles with the ethics of building carceral environments, goes further. The 59-minute feature presented by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1458/Vitamin-Creative-Space" target="_blank">Vitamin Creative Space</a> –&nbsp;which also stars artist Kwan Sheung Chi as an imprisoned poet from colonial-era Hong Kong with whom the architect has a poetic dialogue&nbsp;–&nbsp;isn’t just about the politics of prison. Filmed at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/news/tai-kwun-art-basel-hong-kong" target="_blank">Tai Kwun</a>, a former Hong Kong&nbsp;jail recently converted into an art space, Fei’s work acts as a metaphor for imprisonment as a universal concept.

<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7139/Rashid-Johnson" target="_blank">Rashid Johnson </a>Native Son, 2019 Presented by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1153/Hauser-Wirth" target="_blank">Hauser &amp; Wirth</a>, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Somerset, St. Moritz, and Zurich An update of Richard Wright’s eponymous 1940 novel,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7139/Rashid-Johnson" target="_blank">Rashid Johnson</a>’s directorial debut, Native Son, transports the book’s main character, Bigger Thomas, played by Ashton Sanders (Moonlight), to modern-day Chicago, where he is hired as a chauffeur by an affluent family. At the time, the book was groundbreaking in its portrayal of a complex black antihero. Johnson's film explores these concepts in the current cultural context – adding ideas of double consciousness and systemic police violence – before building to a thrilling conclusion. Presented here by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1153/Hauser-Wirth" target="_blank">Hauser &amp; Wirth</a>, Johnson’s film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was bought by HBO for distribution.

<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/10170/Fiona-Tan" target="_blank">Fiona Tan</a> Ascent, 2016 Presented by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1521/Frith-Street-Gallery" target="_blank">Frith Street Gallery</a>, London, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1120/Peter-Freeman-Inc" target="_blank">Peter Freeman, Inc.</a>, New York City Few mountains have become synonymous with&nbsp;their countries in the way Mount Fuji has for Japan.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/10170/Fiona-Tan" target="_blank">Fiona Tan</a>’s Ascent is a photo-film created from 4,500 archival images of Mount Fuji, the 3,776-meter volcanic cone that looms just 130km southwest of Tokyo. Using still photography (much of it sourced through a website inviting&nbsp;people to upload their photos) to craft the film à la Chris Marker’s La Jetée, Tan's&nbsp;work is a trancelike meditation, halfway&nbsp;between documentary and narrative fiction. The romance between&nbsp;an Englishwoman and her dead lover, Hiroshi, winds us through a layered story that takes place in the shadow of the great volcano. The film is presented by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1521/Frith-Street-Gallery" target="_blank">Frith Street Gallery</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1120/Peter-Freeman-Inc" target="_blank">Peter Freeman, Inc</a>.

Double Program: Marxism Reloaded<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/19423/Sven-Johne" target="_blank">Sven Johne</a> Lieber Wladimir Putin / Dear Vladimir Putin, 2017 Presented by Klemm’s, BerlinPhil Collins Ceremony, 2017 Presented by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1292/Tanya-Bonakdar-Gallery" target="_blank">Tanya Bonakdar</a>, New York City Two films from 2017,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/19423/Sven-Johne" target="_blank">Sven Johne</a>’s Lieber Wladimir Putin / Dear Vladimir Putin, presented by Klemm’s, and Phil Collins’s Ceremony, presented by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1292/Tanya-Bonakdar-Gallery" target="_blank">Tanya Bonakdar</a>, make up the double bill&nbsp;'Marxism Reloaded.'&nbsp;Lieber Wladimir Putin / Dear Vladimir Putin is Johne’s portrait of a disenfranchised 70-year-old German man (played by Gottfried Richter), who shaves, showers, and dresses before sitting down to stream a video speech to Putin in the hope that he will make the German state of&nbsp;Saxony a Russian province. Collins’s film documents the artist as he moves a Soviet-era statue of the German communist thinker Friedrich Engels from the Ukraine to Manchester, where Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, for permanent installation.

Jeffrey Perkins George – The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus, 2018 Presented by Art Basel The artist and filmmaker Jeffrey Perkins’s first documentary feature, The Painter Sam Francis (2008), was an intimate portrait of his late artist friend. His latest, George – The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus, is no less close to home for Perkins. The artist&nbsp;was an associate of the Fluxus movement himself, and thus had unrestricted access to the still-living members of the radical, avant-garde movement of the 1960s and 1970s (including Yoko Ono), who tell the story of the movement’s charismatic leader.

Discover Art Basel in Basel's entire Film Program&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/events/browse?access&amp;cityId=11&amp;cityIds=1&amp;eventTypes=-4&amp;offset=0" target="_blank">here</a>.Top image:&nbsp;Rashid Johnson, Native Son (detail), 2019. Courtesy the artist and HBO.

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