At the opening event on June 3rd, Les Rencontres Internationales present a screening and two outstanding performances: "DOT, a video game with no winner" by Henrique Roscoe (10PM, German Premiere), an audiovisual performance played with a videogame console, constructed and reprogrammed, manipulated through joysticks. The audience becomes player-actor; their interactions with the artist produce a multimedia concert in real time. The performance "Novaya Zemlya" by Thomas Köner (10.30PM, Berlin Premiere), named after an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean where once stood a centre of experimentation for nuclear trials under the soviet era, creates an audio-visual cartography of space and time, a hallucinating exploration of image and sound.
Other highlights of this year's program include the German Premiere of "Coming to Terms", the latest film by Jon Jost, pioneer and significant protagonist of the American independent cinema (June 7, 7PM), the German premiere of "Doctor Fabre will cure you", the latest film by Pierre Coulibeuf, with Jan Fabre (June 6, 9PM), as well as, an exclusive screening by Les Rencontres Internationales in Berlin of "Beyond metabolism" by Stefanie Gaus and Volker Sattel: the film draws parallels between the architecture of the Kyoto Congress Hall, built in 1966, and the HKW (June 6, 7PM).
Furthermore, "Staging Silence (2)" by Hans Op de Beeck (German premiere, June 8, 6PM), the screening of "Coast Zone" directed by Merce Cunningham and Charles Atlas (June 4, 7PM). Additionally, "Requiem NN", a documentary by the artist Manuel Echavarria, premiered at the MoMA in New York last October, screened in Berlin as German Premiere (June 8, 1PM), and "Belle comme le jour", the latest film by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera (German premiere, June 7, 9PM). The film creates a dialogue with Buñuel's cinema, and writes the history of Séverine (played by Catherine Deneuve in 1967), before she had become ' Belle de jour '.
Among the 102 films and videos - mostly international premieres - are works by: Adel Abidin, Sandro Aguilar, Kasper Akhøj and Tamar Guimaraes, Michele Bressan, Broersen and Lukacs, Jasmina Cibic, Anouk de Clerq, Andreas Bolm, Stephen Connolly, Carles Congost, Peter Downsbrough, Zackary Drucker, Jeroen Eisinga, Pietro Fortuna, Niklas Goldbach, Pascal Grandmaison, Crispin Gurholt, Julieta Hanono, Daniel Kötter, Valérie Massadian, Bjørn Melhus, Ariane Michel, Yves Netzhammer, Jean-François Neplaz, Sasha Pirker, Noëlle Pujol, João Pedro Rodrigues, Paul Rowley, Larissa Sansour, Liina Siib, John Smith, Robert Todd, Su-Mei Tse, Sarah Vanagt, Barbara Visser, Myriam Yates among others