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What happens when middle-class people get caught up in the dizzying spell and allure of Information Technology, finance and real estate? They STUMBLE. This is what popular Kannada theatre person and director Prakash Belawadi tries to say in his English languge film.

 Stumble offers a snapshot of ordinary lives trapped in the extraordinary “gold rush” of  Bangalore (India).  It speaks of how  people in India, who opt for early retirement, struggle after investing their money in stock markets.  Alongside, the movie deals with how young Bangaloreans who join hi-tech companies cope with the turbulence and joblessness when the technology “bubble” burst in an emerging economy such as India. Directed by: Prakash Belawadi, with with Anant Nag, Suhasini, fiction, 120 min.

 A Q&A and discussion will follow the film. Additionally, Prakash Belawadi leads a local theatre company and is a leading advocate for democratic urban planning and strives to preserve the vanishing cosmopolitan past that made Bangalore the chosen city for many in India and abroad.

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The Parasitic Fantasy BandThe Parasitic Fantasy Band are an expanded cinemaesque live 16mm/8mm film/sound performance duo from New Zealand, deep in the south Pacific ocean.Between Eve Gordon, Sam Hamilton, multiple film projectors, flexible mirrors, objects, organic materials, gongs and electronics emerges an ecstatic engagement of the senses, the space around you and the inhabitants sharing that space with you with the possibility of stepping into a new ephemeral territory of existence and explorative perception, exotically alien and fun yet fundamentally familiar.

The Parasitic Fantasy Band have performed their modified multi-screen 16mm works, structuralist light refractions, phasing optical illusions, ecstatic colour tapestries, pseudo-anthropologic mystic fictional direct film story telling, kinetic alchemical rhythms, hypnotic flicker dreams, trapeze interventions with narratives blueprinted from the life cycles of migrating sea birds…. At venues as diverse as cinema houses to scummy city service alleyways, art galleries and museums to outside in the Outback desert of Australia. They have recently produced a short experimental 35mm film (Blue Tide, Black Water) that has successfully toured multiple film festivals in the states having received a couple of awards.  But its without a doubt their live performances and dynamic live screens that are were its at for the Parasitic Fantast Band where they try to open up the possibilities of cinema as an active, energetic and truly experiential platform for engaging with people, minds and imaginations with live instrumentation, activations and interventions, droning resonating strings on projectors, textural electronics, computational story telling and forest field recordings hand collected from the Amazon jungles of South America. www.parasiticfantasyband.org.nz/

Metal Rouge
Métal Rouge was formed in 2006 by Helga Fassonaki and Andrew Scott in Auckland, New Zealand with no aim but to open themselves to the spontaneous psych tonalism running through the underbelly of popular music like a vein of pure lightning.  Birthed from the rich history of New Zealand underground music they began to mould a sound comprised equally of the forward motion of ecstatic jazz and the drugged stasis of NYC loft minimalism circa ’66.  Using electric guitar, voice and amplified santur as their primary instruments, they forged a new vocabulary of spiritual drone dub. Relocating to Los Angeles late 2006, they toured the states, adding lap steel and pedal steel to their arsenal.  Related projects include Yek Koo (Helga solo), Nest (Andrew & Nigel Wright), Golden krone (Andrew & Rohan Evans) and Huzun (Andrew & Tim Coster).  Métal Rouge have releases on Root Strata, Not Not Fun, Stunned and their own Seymour Records imprint.  Their new LP ‘Republican Trees’ is forthcoming on Digitalis.  http://www.helgafassonaki.net/metalrouge.htm  

Paul Clipson is a San Francisco-based filmmaker who often collaborates with sound artists. His 2009 film SHINX ON THE SEINE premiered at last year’s ATA Film & Video Festival and recently screened in Rotterdam.

This program explores the diverse realm of video and the various ways artists employ it as a process of communication, point of reflection, backdrop for action, and vehicle of abstraction.  In “J.M.E. in MySpace: Tropical Feelings”, a Comic video essay about grime music and MySpace, Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn show that “beneath the passive surface of the internet, creative energy flows”.  David Horvitz and Lukas Geronimas try to extend one of Paul McCarthy’s installations to include the outside world.  In A.K. Burns “Electric in the Cosmic Age”, she wrestles fellow Bay Area ex-pat, K8 Hardy in orange spandex with sound by Matt Volla. “In the absence of daylight, we are haunted by ghosts and moths, which pass through walls and create holes in beloved fabrics.”  Deville Cohen’s “The Wall” “explores the possibilities of Paper as a sculptural material, as well as its function as a carrier of a printed image.” Joshua Kit Clayton brings awkwardness and insight together through group exercise. And More!!! Artists in the program include:

A.K. Burns
Catherine Czacki
Joshua Kit Clayton
Deville Cohen
Maggie Foster
David Horvitz and Lukas Geronimas
Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn
Daniel Minnick
Kamau Patton
Marcia Scott
Margaret Tedesco