Posten moderne presents...
Photo: Emilie Wulff Skårild
In 2024, Posten Moderne has collaborated with Kosmorama Trondheim International Film Festival on a specially curated film program. Taking inspiration from the festival's program series New Directors, Posten Moderne presents... is a selection of debut feature films by internationally renowned visual artists.
The selected artists represent different generations, and each shows how visual artists can help to push the boundaries of the feature film medium. Experience these masterful and distinctive films on the big screen in central Norway for the very first time!
Posten Moderne is Trondheim's new museum for modern and contemporary art. The museum is currently being established in the city's former main post office at Dronningens gate 10, an iconic Art Nouveau building from 1911 by the native architect Karl Norum. The museum plans to open in the first quarter of 2025 and will present a changing exhibition program of renowned historical and contemporary artists in addition to the museum's permanent collection. Until the museum building is complete, Posten Moderne will present various artistic projects in public arenas in Trondheim. The collaboration with Kosmorama is the first of this year's projects.
Read more about the films being shown in collaboration with Posten Moderne at this years festival in this article!
The African Desperate
© Martine Syms. Courtesy the Artist; Sadie Coles HQ, London; and Bridget Donahue, New York
The African Desperate follows Palace Bryant on one very long day in 2017 that starts with her MFA graduation in upstate New York and ends at a Chicago Blue Line Station.
Palace is not going to the graduation party! She hates the woods. If this were a reality show, she would be the person who was not here to make friends. Palace needs to get home, no place like it.
Set against the lush backdrop of late summer, Palace navigates the pitfalls of self-actualization and the fallacies of the art world. Shot through with American artist Martine Syms’s celebrated conceptual grit, humor, social commentary, and vivid visual language, The African Desperate leads us on an intimate and riotously funny journey through picturesque landscapes and artists’ studios, from academic critiques to backseat hookups, and from the night of a wild graduation party to the morning of a lonely trip back home.
Women Without Men
© Shirin Neshat. Courtesy the Artist; Goodman Gallery; and Gladstone Gallery
In the summer of 1953, the disparate lives of four Iranian women become intertwined against the backdrop of the British-American coup to overthrow Iran’s first democratically elected government. Fleeing to a secluded orchard, the women form a small community of solace and care. But the undisturbed life does not hold, and the women are soon again confronted with the political escalations of their country.
With the cinematic adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur’s magic realist novel, acclaimed Iranian artist Shirin Neshat made her powerful directorial debut. Women Without Men captures the critical moment when the hopes of a nation were crushed by foreign powers, which directly led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the Iran we know today.
The film masterfully unfolds Neshat’s highly poetic and politically charged images and deservedly earned her the 2009 Venice Film Festival Silver Lion for best directing.
Office Killer
© Cindy Sherman. Courtesy the Artist and Hauser & Wirth
An announced downsizing disrupts the balance at the monotonous office of Constant Consumer Magazine, and the repercussions turn out to be more than just layoffs. A sudden incident at the office sparks murderous impulses in one of the employees, which results in a vengeance for their colleagues' depraved behaviors and a lack of recognition.
Office Killer is the debut and only feature film by prominent American artist Cindy Sherman and a true hidden gem of the 1990s. Despite boasting a strong cast of Hollywood household names such as Carol Kane, Molly Ringwald, and Michael Imperioli, the film received little attention in its own time.
Today the film can be appreciated as sharp explorations of 90s Hollywood film tropes, and a strong reflection of Sherman’s artistic practice with photographic staging and the themes of identity and artifice in western consumer culture.
