This week, the 22nd edition of the Impakt Festival kicks off in Utrecht! In 2011, the Impakt Festival explores the tension between the desire for access to information and the urge to keep information secret from third parties, for example for political, economic, or privacy reasons. What new skills do we need in this increasingly data-driven society?

During the festival, leading researchers, politicians, artists, developers, and journalists shed light on the dilemmas of the information age. In addition to substantive symposia, innovation labs, expert meetings, film screenings, and the necessary civil disobedience, there is a wide variety of concerts, exhibitions, and other festive entertainment.

Some films being screened during Impakt Festival:

Data Machinery
Our unwavering belief in facts does not stem from what we are told, but from what we can see: reality is visible. A cinematographer (take David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino, for example) can, with some virtuosity in the mise-en-scène, create a world in which he can make the viewer believe anything. But a filmmaker can also take up the challenge by challenging that unwavering belief in the visibility of reality. The filmmakers in Data Machinery undermine this unwavering belief each in their own way.

Daniel Cockburn
Daniel Cockburn operates at the intersection of avant-garde and narrative cinema. By combining innovative narrative techniques with structuralist experimentation, he unravels everyday reality and brings striking underlying codes to light. With an almost neurotic dose of self-reflection, Cockburn explores his fascination with the way moving images can illuminate the structures and rhythms of our lives; he is always searching for the hidden meaning in randomness and patterns in chaos.

Elodie Pong
In her latest work, *Contemporary*, Elodie Pong portrays the reality of a generation that has lost faith in fixed structures and identities. In *Contemporary*, we see the reality of people after their experiences with the post-punk, post-feminist, post-everything era. Whereas in her earlier work she seemed to celebrate individualism and freedom of choice regarding culture, politics, gender, and sexuality, her more recent video work revolves around the question: What anchors are there in the case of such a complex, personal view of the world, society, art, and the individual? Are there any anchors at all? And what are the consequences of this for the individual?
For more information about the festival and the festival program, go to www.impakt.nl.

Location
Ganzenmarkt 14, Utrecht



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