Amalia Ulman: Magic Farm

15/12/2025 at 7pm
Kino Kinoteka
Kordunska ulica 1, Zagreb

Curators: Barbara Gregov, Lovro Japundžić and Lea Vene
Design: Alma Šavar
Translation: Mima Simić
Technical support: Marin Kovačević and Jasna Givens
Photography: Ive Trojanović

Supported by: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia,
City Office for Culture and Civil Society Zagreb, Kultura Nova Foundation

After the successful 13th edition of the Organ Vida Festival, we present the programme for the festival’s off-year, in which we continue to explore the ways in which ugliness and the grotesque manifest in contemporary art and visual culture. Once again, the weirdos take centre stage in a slightly bizarre yet touching act of rejecting perfectionism — both in relation to the body and visual culture.The solo exhibition Snake Lifter by Finnish artist Emma Sarpaniemi opens on December 12 at KO:KE space, and on December 13 at Pogon Jedinstvo Latvian artist Laima Jaunzema will present the performance Extra Mouth [She loves empty fountains]. The programme concludes with a screening of Magic Farm, a film by Argentine visual artist and filmmaker Amalia Ulman, on December 15 at Kinoteka.

Magic Farm, the second feature film by Argentine visual artist and filmmaker Amalia Ulman, is a farcical story about a group of privileged New Yorkers who travel to rural Argentina to shoot a documentary about an enigmatic musician performing under the pseudonym Super Carlitos. Yes, the premise sounds like a cinematic parody of some of MTV’s most entertaining shows — and in the very year this cult channel is shutting down after a long 44-year run.

But for Ulman’s film crew, things go downhill from the very start. They may look cool, but they can’t handle their technical equipment or remember the simplest lines, and it’s debatable whether they’ve even made it to the right Latin American country. Led by their disoriented host Edna (Chloë Sevigny) and the grounded Elena (Amalia Ulman), the only one who speaks Spanish, the desperate crew wanders the streets of San Cristóbal in their Tabi shoes, searching for a sufficiently exciting “exotic” subculture that might salvage their failed story. Their rising frustration, anxiety, and fraying group dynamics are evoked through visual hyperstimulation — garish costumes and sets, TikTok clips, dance segments, and a parade of bizarre human (and animal) characters.

The crew shows virtually no understanding of the culture they claim to be documenting and repeatedly fails to grasp what the locals are trying to tell them — including warnings about an impending health crisis (which has the quality of actual news) — the townspeople meet the filmmakers with a blend of skepticism and curiosity (after all, they could make them stars in a heartbeat!).

Out of this blend of suspicion and curiosity arise numerous strange relationships and touching moments: for some, sparks of romance start to flicker; others find the courage to come out, while some (Chloë Sevigny as Edna) simply find serenity in petting a village stallion. The magic of Ulman’s film lies precisely here — in her ability to find a subtle balance between empathetic affirmation and a humorous, ironic, yet never cynical critique of contemporary internet culture and the generation shaping it.

Amalia Ulman is an artist and filmmaker based in New York. Her debut feature film, El Planeta, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021 and was selected as the opening film of New Directors/New Films the same year. The film received two nominations at the Gotham Awards in 2021 and won the Heterodox Award at the Cinema Eye Honors in 2022.

Within her visual art practice, Ulman frequently engages with performance and storytelling. Her seminal work Excellences & Perfections (2014), among the first projects to employ fiction within social media environments, was archived by Rhizome at the New Museum, and exhibited at institutions including Tate Modern and Whitechapel Gallery.

Ulman also presented the solo exhibition Privilege as part of the 10th Organ Vida Festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb. Her second feature film, Magic Farm, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2025.