About
Producer / Director Mario Pfeifer's (*1981, Dresden / Germany) films explore representational structures and conventions in the medium of film and video, in locations ranging from Mumbai to New York, from Brazil to the Atacama dessert, from Tierra del Fuego to East-Germany to the Western Sahara. He conceives each project out of a specific cultural situation, researches social-political backgrounds and weaves cross-cultural art historical, filmic, technological and political references into a richly layered practice.
Mario works closely with communities, establishing intimate relationships from which he conceives his projects in collaboration with his protagonists. Critically investigating social, political, cultural and anthropological image production, Pfeifer has expanded essayistic narratives to create films and multiple screen video installations, integrating scientific imagery, animations or music videos to engage with urgent societal conditions to audiences beyond genre definitions. #blacktivist, in collaboration with the rap trio Flatbush ZOMBIES, reached an online audience of more than 3.3 million viewers since its release.
Mario Pfeifer graduated from the art academy Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, was a Fulbright scholar in 2008 at the California Institute of the Arts' film department, and a recipient of DAAD fellowships in 2010 and 2012. Mario participated in the Berlinale Talent Campus in 2009.
Furthermore he was an artist-in-residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program [ISCP] in New York, Gasworks in London, and Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 2017 he has been named the RWE innogy – foundation for energy and society scholar.
Numerous press reviews appeared in Artforum, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, FAZ, taz, The Guardian, Kaleidoscope, Senses of Cinema, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtReview, Camera Austria, Monopol among many others. Mario Pfeifer has lectured in Brazil, Chile, Germany, India, Mexico, Poland, the U.K. and in the US.
Mario's films and videos, filmed in various locations around the world, show the activism of a rap collective in Brooklyn, document the life and the gradual cultural destruction of the Yaghan people in southern Chile, engage with refugees in the Western Sahara deserts, or examine the beliefs of Afro-Brazilian priests and spiritual healers in Brazil. The films and installations feature powerful sound and visual effects, evoking the aesthetics of a hyperreal cinema vérité. A unifying element throughout Pfeifer’s works is the question of social cohesion and identity formation in various democratic states. In a recent work, produced in Germany, the artist investigates in a nine-hour-long film the causes for today’s explosive social situation emerging from the ultra-right wing political spectrum in East-Germany.
Read a profile about Mario by Alexander Forbes / Artsy here.
blackboardfilms GmbH & Co.KG is a independent production company for documentary, arthouse, virtual reality, 360° film, and immersive digital applications. blackboardfilms produces on highest international standards with a focus on cultural, social, and political content. We work on the intersection of art, film and technology with a discursive approach to reach global audiences beyond genre definitions. Producing for the international festival circuit, TV, cinema and VOD we are are interested to test new forms of distribution models.
The production house collaborates with innovative motion designers, musicians, content producers, market experts, entrepreneurs and tech innovators.
We look back to numerous collaborations with funders from the cultural field: film and new media funds, galleries, foundations, museums, and exhibition makers.
Titled We don’t need another hero, the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art is a conversation with artists and contributors who think and act beyond art as they confront the incessant anxieties perpetuated by a willful disregard for complex subjectivities.
Starting from the position of Europe, Germany, and Berlin as a city in dialogue with the world, the 10th Berlin Biennale confronts the current widespread states of collective psychosis. By referencing Tina Turner’s song from 1985, We Don’t Need Another Hero, we draw from a moment directly preceding major geopolitical shifts that brought about regime changes and new historical figures. The 10th Berlin Biennale does not provide a coherent reading of histories or the present of any kind. Like the song, it rejects the desire for a savior. Instead, it explores the political potential of the act of self-preservation, refusing to be seduced by unyielding knowledge systems and historical narratives that contribute to the creation of toxic subjectivities. We are interested in different configurations of knowledge and power that enable contradictions and complications.
We don’t need another hero is curated by Gabi Ngcobo with a curatorial team composed of Nomaduma Rosa Masilela, Serubiri Moses, Thiago de Paula Souza, and Yvette Mutumba. It takes place from June 9 to September 9, 2018 at various venues in Berlin.