A cold December day feels much cozier with tactile textures of films shot on celluloid soothing your eyes. For that reason, Kinoskop presents another selection of recently released, publicly available shorts, to give you a boost of inspiration for the upcoming year.
The 6th spin-off opens with Howard Davidson’s Reflections – a loving homage to American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) – which introduces a mesmerizing interplay of light and shadows, model Anna Berg (in her birthday suit) embodying the spirit of the tragically short-lived artist. This delicately and melancholically erotic meditation finds a complementary continuation in performative piece Being in the Touch by Margarita Raeva who aspires to re-establish and strengthen the primordial connection of human body and nature through CG manipulations of a 16mm footage. Also not shying away from nudity is Vira-Lata’s visually liberating music video Medo for Brazilian indie rockers Terno Rei; a vivid, borderline sci-fi exploration of inner thoughts of three young people trapped in a confined space, and yearning to run wild and free.
Another great example of coping with isolation through externalizing one’s own imagination is oneiric dance-monodrama Nightscape by choreographer and director Jenna Borisevich whose heroine portrayed by Billie Rose Owen turns her living room into an intimate fairy tale, as cinematographer Robert Mentov captures her elegant moves in warm earthy tones and energizing hues of violet. Digging deeper into solitude caused by pandemics is Theo Le Sourd’s Sometimes I Wonder – a sensual, wistfully diaristic dive into the memories of a young New Yorker, Jospehine, whose wanderings around the city and small, yet precious moments spent at home are accompanied by calming voice-over. Yearning for love and contact is strongly felt in the following entry, See You Again, as well – director Hector Prats and German singer and songwriter Roosevelt (born Marius Lauber) deliver a colorful, retro-futuristic / synth-pop take on a virtual world, a limbo where bonding through bytes may prove truer than life.
Choreographed dance returns in Cara Stricker’s ritualistic, techno-surrealist fantasy Every Step Is a Prayer that takes cues from biomimicry, Afro-futurism, somatic healing and symbology of Seminole & Miccosukee tribes indigenous to Miami area, pulling you into a utopian universe based on a harmonious coexistence between our body and the land, nature and technology, individual and collective. Romy Martini’s Les trois citrons keeps us still in the domain of fairy tales, deconstructing Goldilocks and the Three Bears into an abstract garden-adventure, with titular beasts replaced by lemons, and lost heroine’s identity remaining a puzzle. An extra dose of quirkiness paired with a punkish attitude comes with Daffodil by Daniel Rodriguez who depicts a deadly romance of a couple ‘with secret professions’ (code: contract killers). And last but certainly not least is a super-grainy mystery If You Had Known surrounding a suitcase with a creepy rabbit mask not unlike the one worn by the character of Frank in Donnie Darko. This uncanny, Lynchian short is the final entry in the Bunny trilogy by German filmmaker Lars Kemnitz.
(Click on the titles to watch the films.)
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