Private Project

VENUS: between captivity and flight

The film is made from materials for the dance performance of the same name, based on Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus depicting the moment of her emergence from sea foam. The birth of Venus occurs as a cut that distinguishes between heaven and earth, thus creating an in-between, wherein creation occurs continuously. Without a cut, there is no gaze and no creation. Only inertia.

The painting is the starting point for the text and the dance material which, each in their own way, offer the possibility of different readings and meanings. The film juxtaposes the two worlds simultaneously present. The world of dream images constantly interrupts the here and now of the body, inhabiting it, challenging it, and transforming it. The space between is one of boundless creativity, from which a multitude of forms and their variations emerge. They create a visual poem in time, one that poses questions about corporeality, sentience, relationality, the gaze and the fertility and transience of nature. The film’s imagery invites us to contemplate the constant birthing into space and time, creative imagination and the beauty of creation.

FILM has to versions:
1. with live music played at the location of screening by cello musician Kristijan Kranjčan
2. with recorded music/sound
Both are available for distribution.

  • MALA KLINE
    Director
  • HANA VODEB
    Director
  • MALA KLINE
    Writer
  • MALA KLINE
    Producer
  • ELIAS 2069
    Producer
  • MALA KLINE
    Key Cast
  • MALA KLINE
    Visual Dramaturgy
  • PETRA VEBER
    Visual Dramaturgy
  • HANA VODEB
    Visual Dramaturgy
  • PETRA VEBER
    Scenography
  • JAKA ŠIMENC
    Light
  • PETRA VEBER
    Light
  • HANA VODEB
    Camera
  • DARKO HERIČ
    Camera
  • DARKO HERIČ
    Video sinchronisation in original performance
  • HANA VODEB
    Edit
  • KRISTJAN KRANJČAN
    Live music
  • MALA KLINE
    Costume
  • PETRA VEBER
    Costume
  • OMAR IZMAIL
    Set assistance
  • ŠPELA ŠKULJ
    Set assistance
  • AJDA KLINE
    Executive production
  • Center kulture Španski borci/Zavod EN-KNAP,
    Co-production
  • City of Women
    Co-production
  • inistry of Culture of Slovenia
    Support
  • City of Ljubljana, Department for Culture
    Support
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    26 minutes 54 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 4, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    27,000 EUR
  • Country of Filming:
    Slovenia
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, 35mm
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • CITY OF WOMEN festival
    Ljubljana
    Slovenia
    October 4, 2021
    Slovene premiere
Distribution Information
  • ELIAS 2069
    Distributor
    Country: Slovenia
Director Biography - MALA KLINE, HANA VODEB

Mala Kline is a performer, choreographer and writer. Her artistic and theoretical work is embedded in the practice of dreaming. Her extensive oeuvre is based on the Saphire® dreaming techniques, which she uses to open up ingenious spaces of experience and create images that generate specific, semantically fluid and potent atmospheres. Mala Kline won a series of major Slovenian awards and nominations for her choreographic works, including the Golden Bird Award (2005), Triton Award (2005, 2013), the Ksenija Hribar Award for choreography (2013) and the Ksenija Hribar Award for theory (2021) among others. In 2018, she founded ELIAS 2069 institute – a school, an art residency space, a farm and an outdoor spa, located in a pristine natural resort deep in the wilderness of the southern Slovenia and dedicated to education and creation of blueprints for the coming world through dreaming. http://www.malakline.com

Hana Vodeb works in the fileds of video art and film as a cinematographer, director, editor, screenwriter, (co) author of concepts and project manager since 2004. She works also as a video documentarist at numerous staging and other festivals in Slovenia, collaborating with musicians, dancers, choreographers and other stage performers and directors. She makes short films and videos, participates as an artist of video installations and videos on stage. She also co-directed two theater plays within the project Starci/Seniors, together with Tin Grabnar and starred in Katarina Morano’s film Ljubljana-Munich 15:27 (awarded at Sarajevo Film Festival and screened at Karlovy Vary Film in 2016). Her main interest in artistic research is trying different approaches and perspectives, changing tools and risking to enrich her own relationship to creativity. She is deeply engaged social researcher whose range of interests encompasses themes such as solidarity, ecology and community.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

'VENUS: between captivity and flight is a cinematic reflection on the relationship between image, body and dreams. The film that refers to the painting of the same name by the Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli is really a contemplation on how can we, through the images, move beyond the images, into a more direct experience of life, of nature in its constant becoming. The whirlwind of moving images, poetry written from dreams and music unfold several intertwined topics such as the body in its experiencing, the relationship to the other, the gaze and its responsibilities, desire as the driving force of all creation, and how we partake in the ceaseless becoming that nature is.’ (Mala Kline)