the non-profit org jigsaw circus, an audiovisual association with activities throughout the year and a main annual event – the international music video festival –, meets the criteria of a professional organisation for audiovisual art forms that are stipulated in the new flemish decree for the arts.

the non-profit org jigsaw circus, an audiovisual association with activities throughout the year and a main annual event – the international music video festival –, meets the criteria of a professional organisation for audiovisual art forms that are stipulated in the new flemish decree for the arts: an organisation with initiatives in the sphere of presentation, non-commercial distribution and the educational approach of audiovisual art forms. in this capacity it also creates or supports several times a year autonomous screening-events that are presented as a whole.
jigsaw circus organizes several singular, periodical and permanent projects that highlight and favour audiovisual products that are cinematographically strong, qualitatively convincing and testifying to high standards of art, in so far as these products try to integrate the musicla and the visual.
as such, the title of the main event – ‘international music video festival’ – should not be conceived of too narrowly as if its focus would only be on the music video. Instead, the focus lies on all creations that connect music with video and vice versa, across all lengths, genres and formats. therefore, jigsaw circus prefers the term music video form, to denote everything that covers visualizing music or musicalizing the image.
of course, the non-profit organisation specifically aims at the re-evaluation of the music video and related short forms, such as commercials, ads or publicity spots, and tries to bring to the foreground the individuals and collectives behind the commercial or promotional façade of these music video forms, by treating and presenting them as real auteurs.
thus, jigsaw circus claims the notion of auteurship in a certain core of western capitalism, the corporate music and advertising industry, and evidently in everything that revolves in counterculture around that core, that is, the independent labels, collectives, individual artists, production companies, etc....
jigsaw circus, in collaboration with kozzmozz dance events, with film-plateau and arts centre vooruit(ghent), with muhka cinema/filmmuseum (antwerp), with musée du cinéma/filmmuseum (brussels) and with plaza futura (eindhoven), presents the second international music video festival, (unique in its kind on the european continent).
the festival is named jigsaw 2/005 : : dead circus, a happy metaphor for a ‘westworld’ that is spastically entertaining itself to death, that has politically knocked itself out and is in desperate need of electro shock therapy. thus, the focus of the festival is on the electronic music video form, with specials about labels such as mute records, ninja tunes, news and pias, or production companies as katapult-film. yes, we take a look at germany and the netherlands, have the european premiere of the new music trilogy of turkish visual designer ali m. demirel for plastikman, aka richie hawtin (invited), and present new material of the pleix collecive from france (who will produce an installation beside its films). the festival will also present in premiere a retrospective of maria mochnacz, pj harvey’s fetish director of music videos. ms mochnacz too will mount an installation which she presented before in tate modern, on the occasion of pj harvey’s concert there.
exclusive programs rule this minimalist edition, and its proceedings will be covered by mtv holland, mcm and vpro/3voor12. to make the production a success, jigsaw circus started a partnership with kozzmozz dance events, an event-organizing player and the source for all things and sounds electronic in ghent. kozzmozz will help see to it that the festival runs smoothly in terms of production, communication and even content. meet us on friday february 25, for the opening night and party, or even better, on saturday feb 26, when the white circus : snowboard movie day will conclude with kozzmozz special electro party at vooruit balzaal. sunday feb 26 it is time for some neue deutsche welle: for decades, germany has been frontrunner in everything electronic, musical and visual as a single, harmonious entity, and so it is no wonder that much of the contemporary electronic music video form output is signed by german directors. we welcome some of the less-known prominents of the new electronic wave: kaliber 16 (markus wambsganss thomas gerhold), graw boeckler, kokoma. Let’s not forget, however, that outside the electronic field german music video directors also rule the earth: top figures are jörn heitmann, philip stölz, zoran bihac, uwe flade,... germany is without doubt the most exciting music video production country of the moment. jigsaw circus has already covered sweden, france, great britain and the u.s.: this edition will dedicate itself to the german legacy.
and what about the dutch electronic boom? shouldn’t anyone, with some sense of film history and an appetite for the new forms, attempt an overview of the best dutch electronic music video form output? with the help of our friends at mtv.ne, electronation and all those north of us who keep kicking thanks to electronic music, we are putting together the first retrospective of dutch music video directors working in the electronic and digital, bringing together in a unified, coherent program names ranging from eboman to lokman. In the fall o 2005 jigsaw circus will start a second, new, autonomous dutch festival, that will have its first edition during the amsterdam dance event, probably at the cool club 11, or somewhere around the leidse plein.

More info: www.jigsawcircus.com

(source: www.jigsawcircus.com)