Neil Beloufa

*1985, Paris, France, lives and works in Paris, France.

Neil Beloufa attended several art schools in France (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Le Fresnoy, Lille) and the United States (CalArts and Cooper Union, New York City). He has exhibited widely. Personal shows include Future in Present Tense (Kai Middendorff Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany, 2010) and Six Feet Under: Kempinski (Whitebox, New York City, 2008). Among the collective shows in which he has participated are the Prague Triennial (2008), Manifesta 08 (2010) and Monsieur Miroir (Fondation d'Entreprise Ricard, Paris (2010). His video work has appeared in many festivals, among which the New York Film Festival, Vidéoformes (Clermont-Ferrand, France) and the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. He has received many awards. His work is found in the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and Goetz Collection, Munich.

BELOUFA Kempinski 1

Kempinski / Algeria-France / 2007 / 13'58 / 4:3

Welcome to Kempinski. The inhabitants of this mystical/ mythical place - is it a city, a country, a planet? - are preparing to fire rockets into outer space. They will also be deploying satellites and visiting distant galaxies. So they explain to the camera, mostly by night, to the sound of buzzing electrical cables overhead. Filmed in the historic city of Mopti in Mali, this “documentary” about movement across space and time is unscripted. A single rule sustains and threads throughout:  interviewees imagine the future and, in the act of speaking, bring it into the present.