Bunte Kuh is a gripping, complex film, in large part because of the fundamental relations we can immediately draw from the editing and organization of the piece. This film toggles rapidly between two discrete image-sets, working not only to forge an implicit dialectical connection, but also to perhaps go even further and blend the pictures in our minds, generating a kind of third image. Now, lots of avant-garde film artists work this way, but not all of them do so in the interest of concrete material relationships. Its three makers are introducing a bracing variation on Godard’s old “here and elsewhere” concept.The complication here is that everyone is “elsewhere,” off on a different form of travel plan. Bunte Kuh takes as its source material the audiovisual stuff of vacations: home movies, postcards, and photo albums. What we see is a conceptual showdown between exoticism (initially typified by close-ups of circling koi) and the banalities of European tourism (standing in squares, looking up and taking pictures; riding on trains). In the first part of the film, Ferko and the Anoushahpours match the quick edits to a recording of fireworks, implicitly linking the two distinct locales by fake firepower, entertainment’s tame version of ordnance. Later, as a voice reads a postcard about the mundane pleasures of travel, we recall that having nothing significant happen is a rare privilege.

–Michael Sicinski, MUBI

• What the Complete Image Could Be: Works by Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko, Microlights, Milwaukee, USA, Sept 29, 2019, info: http://microlightscinema.com/

• Respondent Series Screening curated by Jean-Paul Kelly, Plugin ICA, Winnipeg, Canada, Mar 6, 2019, info: https://plugin.org/exhibitions/screening-bonjour-aux-amis-de-calamite-curated-by-jean-paul-kelly-as-part-of-our-respondent-series/

• What the Complete Image Could Be: Works by Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko, Toronto International Film Festival, Wavelengths year-round programming, Dec 4, 2018, info:https://www.tiff.net/events/what-the-complete-image-could-be-works-by-faraz-anoushahpour-parastoo-anoushahpour-and-ryan-ferko/
  

• UNEXPOSED Microcinema, Durham, N.C., USA, September 30, 2016: https://www.facebook.com/events/1100316100004635/

• WNDX Festival, Winnipeg, Canada, September 28, 2016: https://www.wndx.org/event/shorts-program-family-scrapbook/?instance_id=1459 

• Visions, La Lumière, Montreal, Canada, September 1, 2016:  http://www.visionsmtl.com/northern-light.html

• Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Oberhausen, Germany, May 9, 2016: https://www.kurzfilmtage.de/?id=1736#c31595 

• Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, Chicago, USA, March 5, 2016: http://www.onioncity.org/ 

• Northwest Film Centre, Portland, USA, February 23, 2016: https://cinemaproject.org/archive/screenings/2016/spring/short-cuts-vii-space-time-being 

• Codec Festival touring program, various cities Mexico, February 2016, info: http://codecfestival.mx/wordpress/ 

• Centro Cultural ALIAC, Mexico City, Mexico, February 19, 2016: http://codecfestival.mx/wordpress/ 

• International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands, January 31, 2016: https://iffr.com/en/2016/combinedprogrammes/borderless 

• Codec Festival de Video y Creaciones Sonoras, Mexico City, Mexico, December 4, 2015: http://codecfestival.mx/page/

• Experimenta Festival of Moving Image Art, Bangalore, India, November 28, 2015: https://experimenta.in/?page_id=2295 

• Antimatter Media Arts, Victoria, Canada, October 21, 2015: https://www.antimatter.ws/1021.html

• Projections, New York Film Festival, October 4, 2015: https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2015/films/projections-2015-program-10/

• Haverhill Experimental Film Festival, September 18, 2015: https://www.haverhillexperimental.org/

• Wavelengths, Toronto International Film Festival, September 12, 2015: https://tiff.net/festivals/festival15/wavelengths/bunte-kuh/

• Media City Film Festival, Windsor/Detroit, July 28 - Aug 1, 2015: http://mediacityfilmfestival.com/mcff21/

• Crossroads Festival, San Francisco, April 2015: http://www.sfcinematheque.org/screenings/crossroads-2015-april-10-12/

• “Youth on the March” by Michael Sicinski in MUBI’s Notebook: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/tiff-2015-wavelengths-part-one-the-short-films

• “Highest Wavelengths at #TIFF15” by Kevin B. Lee in Fandor’s Keyframe: https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/top-films-at-tiff-wavelengths