I am excited to announce that my film I Am Pagan Baby has been selected to have its German premier at the 64th edition of the Kurzfilmtage Short Film Festival Oberhausen.
The film will be shown in the International Competition
Sun, 6 May, 02.30 pm
Lichtburg Filmpalast/Lichtburg
I AM PAGAN BABY
2017 I 11’ I VIDEO I Stereo
Jana Debus
2016, 7 Minutes
Cargo carried on a return journey.
2009 I 20’ I 16 mm Color I Stereo
Director: Jana Debus
Camera: Jana Debus
Actor: Gregor Debus
Sound: Dirk Specht
“Gregor Alexis moves about on disused land, in derelict and overgrown
houses, as he does in the labyrinths of his inner worlds.
Jana Debus’ film about her schizophrenic brother is a sensitive
personal portrait combining objectivity and melancholy. This empathetic
exploration of his personality is reflected in the form of
the film, in the interplay between the documentary narrative of her
brother and the visual representation of the jagged landscapes of
his psyche – in settings, pictures and gestures that create a kind of
calm auto-poetry.”
JURY YOUNG TALENT AWARD FOR EXPERIMENTAL FILM:
BJØRN MELHUS; PROF. DR. GUNDOLF S. FREYERMUTH;
CHRISTOPH GIRARDET; FLORIAN GWINNER; SYLVIA SCHEDELBAUER
The filmmaker’s schizophrenic brother recounts personal experiences,
slipping between first and third person. The locations chosen for this
portrait – a desolate apartment and a wasteland littered with abandoned
machinery – are indicative of the condition of someone potentially as vulnerable
as the insects that collect on his windowsill. MARK WEBBER BFI
LONDON INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Jana Debus’s critically praised, gripping and intimate portrait of her schizophrenic brother goes far beyond documentary.
With Gregor Alexis, the filmmaker has made a balanced portrait of her schizophrenic brother. A gripping and intimate encounter in which the locations, a vacant lot and an empty house, subtly mirror his vulnerability. IFFR, 2010
PRICES AND AWARDS
1ST PRIZE YOUNG TALENTS AWARD FOR EXPERIMENTALFILM (VG-BILDKUNST FÖRDERPREIS) 2009
GRAND PRIX AWARDED BY MILENA GIERKE AT THE 25 FPS, ZAGREB, CROATIA, 2009
FESTIVALS AND SCREENINGS
Media City Film Festival, Windsor, Canada, 2010
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2010
KUNSTFILMBIENNALE KÖLN/BONN, OCTOBER 2009
WHITE HEAT »SELBSTVERSUCHE« EXHIBITION DIALEKT KUNSTVEREIN, STUTTGART JULY 2009
LEONIE SAINT
2007 I 14’ I 16 mm Color I Stereo
Director: Jana Debus
Camera: Jana Debus
Actress: Leonie Saint
Sound: Jana Debus
A curiously open portrait of Leonie Saint, a nineteen-year-old porn-starlet from the Ruhr Valley in Germany. Debus’s film is an exploration of ‘the performance of reality’, her camera tracing its protagonist’s ‘erotic self-portrayal’ and soft-spoken, matter of fact voice-over which curator Marcel Schwierin describes as ‘reflecting an existence between intimate-presence in the mass-media and private vulnerability’. IFFR, 2008
“The exploration of a real self-dramatization touching on aspects of identity formation” is how Jana Debus describes her video concept, in which the 19-year-old Leonie Saint gives the viewer a glimpse into her life as porno star. She reflects before the camera on her self-image as sex-film actress based on her experiences, sensations and memories. The question of whether it degrades her as a woman to “present” herself through her body is to be understood as a working surface on which a discourse takes place “that she herself best knows how to conduct”. In this fragmentary narrative, Leonie´s identity is like a puzzle whose pieces can never be put together to form a whole. We are able only to sneak a peek at diverse moments and impressions of her life, feeling as if we had been caught in our voyeuristic pursuit. Image and language do not match here, but are instead placed next to one another as equally relevant narrative forms, yielding a double perspective. In the clear, unadorned shots, Leonie´s body language dominates, mixed in with detailed views of her private environment. The fact that pornography has long since become a socially acceptable part of our culture was already clear before Jeff Koons and Ilona Staller, alias Cicciolina, created their famous artworks in the 1990s. KRISTINA LAUBE, VIDEONALE 11, 2008
SCREENINGS AND EXHIBITIONS
INTERNATIONAL FILMFESTIVAL ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
VIDEONALE 11, MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFIA MADRID, SPAIN
INTERNATIONAL SHORTFILM FESTIVAL OBERHAUSEN, GERMANY, Theme “Children, Childhood, Cinema”
EXHIBITION “STÄDTISCHE BÜHNE”, KUNSTVEREIN DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY
VIDEONALE 11, KUNSTMUSEUM BONN, GERMANY
MAX OPHÜLS PREIS FILMFESTIVAL, SAARBRÜCKEN,GERMANY
The Sweetness of Mother’s Hair
2011 I 18’ I 16 mm Color I Stereo
Director: Jana Debus
Director of photography: Jana Debus
Sound: Jochen Jezussek, Simon Fisher Turner
Supported by: Filmstiftung NRW
Production company: Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln
An alchemy of one man’s image and another man’s words. A portrait that maintains its right to stay a mystery. A song, a riddle, an owl, frozen shoreline, urban savannah: fragments of brief encounters with wild and urban creatures and tender gestures in unsettling environments. A tribute to men full of secrets.
U prvom dijelu programa prikazani su eksperimentalni filmovi, filmovi koje veže idiosinkratičnost, neobičnost i žanrovska neodređenost. Program je započeo njemačkim filmom The Sweetness of Mother’s Hair (2011) redateljice Jane Debus. Taj je film alkemija slike i riječi utjelovljena u portretu čovjeka sa margine društva, kanadskom Indijancu. Radi se o filmu koji brani svoje pravo na tajanstvenost te nam na prvi pogled ne otkriva gotovo ništa. Glavni protagonist luta divljinom koja je sporadično narušena nadirućom civilizacijom i svojim monologom kao da komunicira sa duhovima svojih predaka, prirodom i životinjama koje se na trenutke pojavljuju u filmu. The Sweetnes of Mother’s Hair vizualna je pjesma, misterija puna začuđujućih trenutaka, film sastavljen od rasutih fragmenata jednog života i njegovog odnosa sa svijetom koji nepovratno nestaje. Režijski nenametljiv, tajanstven i uznemirujuć to je film koji pdaje počast čovjeku čiji način života kao da hlapi pred nadirućom urbanizacijom svijeta koji je nekoć poznavao. – Nikola Strašek, kritike i eseji, Zagreb, Croatia
Zueignung.
2010 I 27’ I 35 mm Color I Dolby SR
Director: Jana Debus
Script: Jana Debus / Julia Gille
Director of Photography: Jana Debus
Sound: Judith Nordbrock / Andreas Cremer
Actress: Julia Gille
Zueignung. (Dedication) depicts the complex identity of a theater actress, embossed with entanglement between the role and the own personality. It is dealing with the borders between the other and the I, the inner core and the surface, the role and the own identity. It weaves a close web of words and images. The images track fragments of the roles in the protagonists nature, without her performing them in the film. Only her voice interweaves the literary texts with the protagonists autobiographical poems and words touching themes such as identity, gender, love, desire, disappointment and insanity. “Words, which one has said, words upon which one has gotten drunk, only half aware upon their significance, upon which one has hurt oneself, with which one has identified oneself. Slowly one has grown into them, to late one was appalled upon them, unexpectedly one has stumbled upon them, unexpectedly they have revealed themselves, only to darkly smoldering wander a mysterious path, which will not leave one again.” Julia Gille, February 2010
FESTIVALS AND SCREENINGS
ZUEIGNUNG. WAS SELECTED FOR THE GERMAN AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION AT THE INTERNATIONAL SHORTFILM FESTIVAL
OBERHAUSEN, AND PREMIERED THERE ON MAY 1ST 2010.
Collaboration:
Konzept: Jana Debus und Julia Gille
Regie und Kamera: Jana Debus
Montage: Jana Debus und Daniela Kinateder
Darsteller: Julia Gille und Mika Landes
Kostüm: Bianca Tetzel
Ausstattung: Hannah Landes
Ton: Timo Selengia
Musik: Andreas Cremer
Sounddesign und Mischung: Judith Nordbrock
watch Zueignung on Kulturserver
Shortlist Preis für junge Filmkunst Deutsche Filmakademie 2011
Preis für Junge Filmkunst 2011 pdf
Kunsthochschule für Medien Koeln
58. Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen Festival Katalog pdf
awarded by Christopher Coppola, head of the film program San Francisco Art Institute