Wilfried Agricola de Cologne

Silent Cry DV, 3'05'', 2008 Germany

Tell me something about you and artistic background.
I have an interdisciplinary background and different artistic talents, whereby the visual aspect had always the main relevance to me. Visual art was always the basic field of acting, in the first years by using rather conventional artistic media like painting, drawing and printing, later followed by spacial installations using divers, also electronic media. But since 2000, I am working exclusively with new media. In the times  of analogue VHS video, the medium was not attacting me at all. When the digital video became popular in 1998, I acquired a digital camcorder, but actually only for documenting my artistic creations, only when I was working with Internet based art and used consequently video clips for publication on the net I became aware of my close affinity to the moving pictures and in this way, only quite late in 2003 I started working with digital video professionally. The challenge for creating a video is always that I execute the entire video as a director, producer,editor, composer etc and I have all influence and control over the production and my special way of video creating rather like a painter, which cannot be compared with conventional filmmaking. A video art work is for me a total art work.

Tell me about this film, initial idea and work process.
The past 10 years of my life were marked by incredible traumatic experiences, attacks which destroyed my work and my life and killed me several times nearly. I would never have thought, I might ever become a victim,  a victim of brutal physical violence but also a victim of continuous psychological violence. I survived always, too many times  only by chance. “Silent Cry”, my festival video,  describes actually the situation of a victim of violence, which is condemned to be silent, because  nobody wants to be confronted with a victim, which is identified with the "negative", a "looser" or also as somebody who reminds people, how helpless and cowardly they are. The victims feel always the desperate need to communicate,  to meet people who are listening, but there is nothing else than speechlessness, helpless confusion, rejection and unbearable loneliness.

Are you working on new projects at the moment?
I am always working on different works at the same time, and suddenly sometimes a new work is completed. I am working on an allegory about my father, and a another film based on a visit in Israel, and another one based on a visit in Morocco.

Do you have specific influences in your film/video making?
Surprisingly no external influences, but influences from the times when I was working with static and analogue media and was not able to realize my ideas in these media at that time. I am not a classical film maker, of course I like cinema, and I have favourite directors like Alfred Hitchcock, but the films do actually not inspire me, at all, to make a video, my inspiration comes from art and artistic ideas I developed since decades. Film/video is just the medium to transport these ideas.

Why is it important for you to show your film/video in a festival?
As a videomaker I do not work for myself, but for an audience. Consequently I am looking for ways to find my audience, this can be via festivals, or media art events, for instance. Personally, I like the festivals and the competition with other artists/directors. One gets a good idea how people estimate and value my work. But each festival has its own character, also how the festival organiser is dealing with the filmmaker and the audience. I like to meet other artists/directors and have some good exchange and a nice time during the two or three days.

What role do you think Oslo Screen Festival should have to promote your work?
This is a difficult question, because I know each festival has not only different structures, but also different types of engagement. It is also the question what kind of relevance a single work has to a responsible of a festival and what kind of possibilities a festival has to promote a work. Personally, I think festival people have always their favourite films/videos which they active promote in one or the other way. Lucky director,  whose work is the favourite of other people.