American Film Festival

After touring the globe for the past two years, DJ Spooky arrives in Eastern Europe. His visual/music extravaganza REBIRTH OF A NATION serves as the Opening Night attraction for the inaugural American Film Festival, a new film event that launches on Wednesday evening in Wroclaw, Poland. The man himself will be there to both orchestrate the film presentation and to mix sounds at the film's after-party at the chic Club Eter, where dancing will certainly continue into the wee hours of the morning.

REBIRTH OF A NATION is a film project based on a remix of D.W. Griffith's infamous 1915 film BIRTH OF A NATION, which is notorious for its depiction of blacks at the end of the US Civil War in the 19th century. To open up these images that are almost 100 years to reinterpretation, DJ Spooky has applied his dj technique to add layers to the meanings of images, while deconstructing and reimagining them. Using an audio palette that mixes hip-hop drum beats, industrial sounds, dissonant interludes and blues fragments, he creates a totally immersive experience that tantalizingly looks at the multiple dimensions that still surrounding racial awareness and tension in America (even with a black man sitting in the White House).

 DJ Spooky has presented his unique program in more than fifty shows around the world......from Lincoln Center in New York, to Theatre Chatelet in Paris, to the Herod Atticus Amphitheater at the base of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. He has also presented the program at film festivals all over the map....from Australia and New Zealand to Louisville, Kentucky to New York's Tribeca Film Festival.

The presentation is a heady mix of film, music and contemporary art, using film as a "found  object" much in the way that artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons have done. This unique live experience further expounds the the creative investigations inito the ideas of found objects, the power of cinematic imagery and the use of appropriation as an art technique.

The American Film Festival, which runs from October 20 to 24 in Wroclaw, Poland, is the first film event in Eastern Europe to be solely devoted to classic and contemporary American cinema from both the American Independent and Hollywood schools. Nearly two dozen contemporary filmmakers, scenarists, actors and others will be in attendance, creating a stimulating bridge between cultures.

For more information on REBIRTH OF A NATION, visit: www.rebirthofanation.com. For a complete listing of the films and events of the American Film Festival, visit: www.americanfilmfestival.pl

Sandy Mandelberger, Festival Dailies Editor