Cinematic Favorites 11/20

This November was marked by intense preparations for the second edition of Kinoskop, yet I managed to see twentysomething features (and be disappointed by most of the recent offerings), and approx. 100 shorts, a good number of which were screened at online editions of North Bellarine and Fonlad film festivals. The following lists are presented in chrono-alphabetical order.

FEATURES

1. Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964) - In Antonioni’s stark psychological drama, Monica Vitti gives a subtly affected, strangely magnetic portrayal of a woman spiraling down into madness, with a fascinating mise-en-scène acting as an extension of her vacillating mind, and pulling the viewer ever deeper into her crumbling world. The boldly used colors and gloomy industrial setting complement each other in an almost surreal fashion...

2. Witchhammer (Otakar Vávra, 1970) - Nothing short of an uncompromising, awe-inspiring masterpiece, Witchhammer boasts superb direction, brilliant screenplay and bravura performances (particularly by Vladimír Smeral as a slimy inquisitor), brims with great allegorical potential and fiercely strikes with its bleak, unfading relevance, and on top of that, it completely absorbs you with its oppressive atmosphere of growing paranoia achieved through a carefully measured pacing, stunningly beautiful visuals of minimal camera movement and brooding music score that evokes the sense of despair and impending doom. This period piece is by no means an enjoyable watch, given the subject matter and all the themes explored, but it is one that leaves a deep, lasting impression.

3. His Motorbike, Her Island (Nobuhiko Ōbayashi, 1986) - Although tinged with nostalgia and inhabited with ghosts of memories, His Motorbike, Her Island appears like an invigorating portrait of temperamental youth, as well as a jovial ode to bikers subculture oft-filtered through the prism of punkish chivalry. Subtly stylized, seasoned with some nudity (that comes across as natural rather than exploitative) and brimming with infectious energy, this tongue-in-cheek melodrama plays out in a dreamlike reality reflected in a playful collision between the monochrome and color imagery. The highly attractive leads – Riki Takeuchi in his big-screen debut, and Kiwako Harada in her sophomore role – both shine in their portrayals of two sympathetic characters, Koh and Miyoko, who seek to scatter their ennui in the wind, eventually becoming inseparable from it...

4. The Bigmoon Nights (Dmitri Frolov, 1989-1993) - a mind-altering cine-delirium that defies any attempt at categorizarion. It has to be seen to be believed (click on the title).

5. Farewell to Autumn (Mariusz Treliński, 1990) - Based on the novel of the same name by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – eccentric Polish philosopher and multidisciplinary artist, as well as ‘extravagant dandy, erotomaniac and Adolf Hitler impersonator’, as we’re informed in the film’s opening – Farewell to Autumn is a bizarre cinematic equivalent of a feverish dream, one that often makes you disoriented while pulling you in ever-deeper. Part (anti)romantic / historical drama and part philosophical meditation on the decline of bourgeois culture, communism, death and whatnot, it appears like an unruly, yet infinitely charming love child of Chytilová and Żuławski (or maybe Makavejev?). Its sudden mood swings, delirious rhythms, and decadent beauty that is best reflected during the orgiastic wedding party eventually crashed by the revolutionaries are integral to its brazen seductiveness.

6. Anchoress (Chris Newby, 1993) - Anchoress is, hands down, one of the most incredibly gorgeous period pieces that my eyes have had the honor to feast upon! It is an incessant, overwhelming stream of stunning tableaux vivants that reach the deepest layers of the subconscious mind, and it is also one of those films that rekindle my love for cinema right from the get go. If I had to draw comparisons, I’d mention the likes of Bergman, Vláčil and Tarkovsky. I’m awestruck by its magic...

7. Planet of the Cannibals (Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, 2001) - Made on a modest budget, but directed with gusto (and a tongue deeply planted in cheek), and beautifully captured in noirish, high contrast B&W, Planet of the Cannibals is a witty sci-fi satire (set in 2020!) that pokes fun at mass media, conspiracy theories, fascist governments and B-movies to which it simultaneously pays a loving homage. Involving a deadly TV quiz, a live talk-show with a Hannibal Lector-like superstar and aliens integrated into human society, the film runs at brisk pace, and brings a few twists and turns along the way, all for a delightfully weird viewing experience. A superb ensemble of actors lends gravitas to its quirky cast of comic-book-inspired characters, with a special appearance by filmmaker Fatih Akin in the role of a nicotine-dealer, Mr. Dark. 

8. Minotaur (Zulfikar Filandra, 2020) - Co-produced by Experimental Film Society, Dublin, and Kolumbija, Sarajevo, Minotaur is a bold, playful (or rather, puckish) and deeply personal feature debut from young Bosnian filmmaker Zulfikar Filandra. Part fragmented self-portrait (selfilm) and part meditation on life’s evanescent beauty, this peculiar docudrama is an ever-mutating collage of author’s home movies shot on various formats. Edited into a singular entity – a memory-labyrinth of which Filandra is not only the builder, but the monster and the hero as well – these moving images serve as reminders that poetry in its raw form can be found (and captured) in the mundane, whether you’re alone or in the company of family, a friend or a lover.

SHORTS

1. Trauma Industries (Jethro Massey, 2017)

2. Dada Time (Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, 2018)

3. Field of Infinity (Guli Silberstein, 2018)

4. mirARTE 010… (Hernando Urrutia, 2018)

5. Anatomy of Waters (Roland Quelven, 2019)

6. Come (Daniela Lucato, 2019)

7. Finding Uranus (Ivan Li, 2019)

8. Juniper (Robert William & Anchuvas Pereña, 2019)

9. Nostalgia in Domicella (Carla Forte & Alexey Taran, 2019) (excerpt)

10. Aegra timoris (Sick of Fear) (Úrsula San Cristóbal, 2020)

11. Autumn Walk (Eija Temisevä, 2020)

12. Drift (Elisabeth Lowe, 2020)

13. Elements (Simon Hardwick, 2020)

14. Polka-Dot (Alexandra Niemczyk, 2020)

15. Puparia (Shingo Tamagawa, 2020)

16. Water Blues (Francesca Fini, 2020)

Kinoskop 2020

The second edition of Kinoskop keeps celebrating the art of celluloid cinema with its eclectic program which encompasses 63 films, ranging from a quirky silent rom-com to powerful and unconventional documentaries to bold formal experiments to a brilliant, genre-defying feature! We invite both experienced cinephiles and rookie film enthusiasts to explore 12 of our selections and find something down their alleys. Dive into the moving images with grainy pattina for three days, starting on December 4!

Check out the TRAILER on the Kinoskop Vimeo channel!

Full program is available on our official webpage, HERE!

Each of the selections will be accompanied by pre-recorded Q&A with more than 40 filmmakers who share some insights into their work, as well as their experiences working with a film tape! As co-organizers, Marko Milićević and I would like to thank our guest curators, Ejla Kovačević and Aleksandra Dalichow, for their immense help, the jury trio of Aleksandra Sekulić, Nebojša Petrović and Csaba Bollók, and of course, all participating artists!

Still shot from My Selves Dissolving  by Danielle Wakin

Kinoskop 2020 Non-Competition Selection

The response to Kinoskop 2020 open call was so overwhelming that the program had to be expanded. There are three selections - Meditation Unchained, Music Videos and In the Realm of Non-Human - in addition to the first virtual edition of Live Soundtrack, encompassing twenty five films of richly textured visuals in total!

LIVE SOUNDTRACK

VENTRAL / soundtrack by Dimitar Dodovski

Juan Lorenzo Loureiro | 2020 | 10:15 | Spain | Super 8

An island, a woman and a presence, a phantom who follows her. This phantom could be me, the camera, cinema itself. But both the woman and the island could also be ghosts....

ANCIENT ALIENS / soundtrack by Balt

Jared Michael Sobotka | 2020 | 08:50 | USA | various formats

A meditation on the something lost to a contemporary society that might make us more whole, if we were to discover it. A 16mm collage of found footage and film shot by the filmmakers.

SELF PORTRAIT / soundtrack by Andria

Antonio Bértolo Vilariño | 2020 | 04:42 | Spain | Super 8

Portrait of the artist.

LUMINOUS VARIATIONS IN THE CITY SKIES / soundtrack by Exoterran

Giuseppe Spina | 2019 | 06:19 | Italy

Thirty years of research were necessary for the astronomer Guido Horn D'Arturo to invent the specchio a tasselli – also called multimirror or segmented mirror – an archetype of today's most advanced telescopes.Full of point-like shapes, Horn D'Arturo's photographic plates are now also full of spots and traces of deteriorated emulsions.

A silent film composed of digital scans and blow-ups of Guido Horn D’Arturo’s photographic plates depicting Bologna’s skies.

HIGH TIDE LOW TIDE / soundtrack by Kajaq

Federica Foglia | 2020 | 05:00 | Canada

"Art makes the familiar strange so that it can be freshly perceived. To do this it presents its material in unexpected, even outlandish ways: the shock of the new." - Viktor Shklovsky

High Tide, Low Tide combines layers of 16mm and 35mm found footage films to create a lyrical journey to accompany the viewer into the depths of a dream of another life.

MUSIC VIDEOS

FALE - DON'T WANNA WASTE YOUR TIME

Kamila Bialkowska | 2020 | 5:18 | Poland | Super 8

Don't wanna waste your time" is an experimental film and animation made on super8 and 35 mm films to the music of the band Fale. Techniques used to produce effects are inspired by the experiments of Len Lye and Kazimierz Urbański.

UNICORN SALIVA - ОБРАЗ

Daniil Demidov | 2020 | 3:57 | Russia | Super 8

This is what happens deep in the woods while nobody’s watching.

WARSHOW - A TURN OF TIDES

Máté Konkol | 2019 | 4:25 | Hungary | Super 8

Super 8 music video for art-rock band Warshow of Budapest, Hungary.

KRISPY & THE POOCH - HOLDING ON

Parole Dure (Theresa Stritzinger & Zejna Halilbašić) | 2020 | 2:57 | Germany | Super 8

The lyrics of "Holding On" talk about holding on to a past relationship. The video searches to portray other meanings of the term "holding on".

ALETULLE - 03 / 03

Jeff Zorilla | 2020 | 3:14 | Oman | Super 8

The film uses imagery to touch upon themes of isolation, of seeing life passing by around you and not participating in it, of feeling left behind. The song thoroughly explores an instant, an infinite afternoon, where the singer felt the absence of her lover. This absence materialised itself in the empty room, on the millions of windows she could see through her bedroom, the empty streets of London covered in snow. The film visually explores these themes with the use of a kaleidoscope of images of cities, facades, people...

LEO CRANDALL - HOW

Vasilios Papaioannu | 2020 | 6:08 | USA | Super 8 & 16mm

Music video for Leo Crandall's "How" included in the album "Unknowable and Stunning Thing". Shot in 16mm and Super 8 film.

IN THE REALM OF NON-HUMAN

EKTADOME

Laura Trager | 2020 | 03:06 | Germany | 16mm

100 feet of 16mm Kodak Ektachrome shot at a fun fair at night. Dark forces present themselves in plain sight in this magical place of lights and colors.

EXPLOSE

Cendrine Robelin | 2020 | 04:30 | France | found footage

« Appuie sur le champignon » (« Push on the mushroom » which means in french, Hurry Up driver) speak out tipsy carnival goers. Nuclear explosions, chains reactions in a delight mood. Party Goes on !Images and sounds are always ambivalent ; landscapes can always turn from the stability to oblivion. Carnival goers and explosions are faces of switchover. After the uproar, things roll again.

AFTER PAXOS

John Barlow | 2019 | 01:00 | UK | 8mm

8mm colour footage shot on and around the island of Paxos, Greece is juxtaposed with excerpts of black and white found footage from an old 8mm film reel containing views of Tokyo, Japan. A sequence of short colour clips portray a journey from a house in the wooded interior of Paxos to the island's shoreline, and then out into the Ionian sea. They contrast with four, much slowed-down, black and white clips, and a multilayered soundtrack comprising city noise, air conditioning hum and air traffic control chatter.

HARMONIUM

Miles Sprietsma | 2020 | 04:15 | USA | 16mm

A document of the ethereal features surrounding oceanic bodies, the re-cycling of life and death through the constant flux of coastline.

EIDOLON

Mike Rollo | 2020 | 03:35 | Canada | 16mm

The seer passes beneath branches, crosses fields, observes the quiet corners of creation. Bright and dark take turns showing their faces, a two-sided phantasm, one energy shape-shifting through time. The seer makes note, gleans eidolons.

THE GARDEN

Patrick Müller | 2019 | 05:00 | Germany | Super 8

Strange blossoms, sunken pathways, Déjà Vus: A hike through H.P Lovecraft's most personal garden.

MEDITATION UNCHAINED

UNCERTAINTY

Roman Ďuriš | 2019 | 04:28 | Slovakia | 35mm

The night before the biggest decision of her life, she feels uncertain.

I WAS A FREE DOG

Yuula Benivolski | 2020 | 11:28 | Canada | Super 8

Filmed in the final days before a global pandemic and influenced by the social isolation of 2020, this film employs dream logic to reveal a lonely idyllic landscape. Unable to connect with each other, on this beach each soul is contained in its own solitary action.

Two sisters see each other on an ocean beach for the first time since childhood. Field recordings of sounds from the sisters’ home country accompany this landscape: an orchestra of sirens, ocean waves and tropical birds, all indicate that we are within multiple realities. These recordings create impossible spaces that exist simultaneously and imitate the psychic effects of a diasporic existence.

RAINBOW IN THE DARK

Ben Mosca | 2020 | 04:07 | USA | 16mm & 35mm

An apocalyptic cosmic anti-smoking PSA.

CULTURE LEAP (NON-LINEAR)

Roger Horn | 2020 | 02:35 | South Africa | 16mm

The primacy of culture.

Culture over race.

ONE SHOULD NEVER BE CURED

Vincent Guilbert | 2020 | 08:30 | Japan | Super 8

"How hopeless it is

It would be better for me to sink beneath the waves

Perhaps then I could see my beloved from the Moon Capital"

A super 8 rendition of a 19th century woodbock print by Japanese artist Yoshitoshi.

THE LOVERS

Justin Brown | 2020 | 05:30 | USA | 16mm

A chemical wedding.

CHORUS 2

Benji Edelberg | 2020 | 05:15 | Canada | Super 8

A tourist, lost in the crowds, gets caught up in the moment.

RISQUES

Thomas Gerard | 2020 | 04:36 | France | Super 16mm

Human experience spiral down when panic strikes.

In this short essay, we pictured the turmoil that goes with the experience of the downward spiral. Starting from a bad place, fleeing it and eventually being caught up again, you are unable to escape your own prison and it is wearing you down. There is some twisted sense of being your own enemy and no matter what you do to tackle it, fear condemns you before the crisis.

Kinoskop 2020 Competition Selection

The competition selection of the sophomore edition of Kinoskop - international festival of analog experimental cinema which I am co-curating - encompasses thirty eight films ranging from a rambunctiously psychedelic phantasmagoria to an ethereal mini-documentary on oculocutaneous albinism to mischievous experiments imbued with absurd humor. Herein after, you will find all of these offerings introduced through still shots and official synopses, and divided into eight sections. This year, Kinoskop goes online, and is set for December 4 - 6.

Selection 1 : Toward the Mystical and Fantastic Cinema

Eric Beauron – Herma, 2020 / 16mm (France)

At the edge of the world, four men live on one abandoned island. One morning, a dead man is discovered in a boat. It's the beginning of a series of catastrophes. The fish is dying, the sea is empty ... Seán Beag, the young disciple of Marcus, then seeks to restore the order of things.

Kaspar Peters – Nordic Grammar, 2019 / 16mm (Germany)

A woman goes on a journey to the north. When she comes to an abandoned house, she settles there and appropriates the lives of the former inhabitants. We do not know who this woman is, where she came from and why she left. She is an empty figure, completely permeable to the world through which she moves. The light comes and goes. A storm is coming. Everything is in the process of dissolution: identity, home, the border between inside and outside, even the images themselves.

Danielle Wakin – My Selves Dissolving, 2020 / 16mm  (USA)

My Selves Dissolving travels through the sensations during out-of-body experiences. Themes of dissociation are explored such as: sleep paralysis, autoscopy, and ecstatic moments. The abstracted images are visual adaptations of my own experiences, attempting to reflect the power that resides in the unexplainable.

Kyle Ryan – A Body Travels in Darkness, 2020 / 16mm (USA) 

Every night, the Gods descend upon The Town by The Tracks. This is the fate of their mortician.

Michael Alexander Uccello – The Man Who Became Everything, 2020 / Super 16mm (Canada)

The last human survivor of an unknown invasion is stalked by interdimensional entities that have plotted humanity's extinction. Driven to madness, the man escapes his self-quarantine to finally face the horror of becoming everything.

Yann Pichot – See My Ghost Passing Away, 2019 / 16mm (France)

Between dreams and nightmares, Lilith sees the ghost of her lost love.

Selection 2 : Fiction - Comedy & the Absurd

Jethro Massey – Never Apply Salt to A Potential Lover, 2020 / 16mm (UK)

Francesca likes music and complex mathematical equations. She also likes Bobby.

Bobby likes salt.

A short silent comedy shot on 16mm, filmed in Italy by an Anglo-French director who doesn't speak a word of Italian.

Dmitrii Frolov – Borodino, 2020 / Super 8 (Russia)

An experimental sitcom, shot in the style of silent films of the early twentieth century. A parody of military-patriotic films. The plot of the film is the battle of the Russian army with Napoleon in 1812.

Kristián Grupač – A Manifesto of Despise, 2020 / 16mm (Slovakia)

The classical story of a poet born anew comes into existence similarly to a birth of a poem - from the bubbling foamlike blood, from the punishment and finally from the utterance of that only word, permanently sleeping under one’s tongue.

Kim Ekberg – Lebensraum, 2019 / 16mm (France)

A mysterious briefcase changes owners in the streets of Paris.

A blood thirsty vamper is roaming around the Dutch countryside. An alcoholic Erasmus student is looking for a dance partner in Bruxelles. The world is on fire, but people are looking for some peace and quiet. Semi-abstract hand developed 16mm film, with a sparse dramaturgy.

Joeri De Jongh – Inventory, 2020 / Super 8 (Belgium)

A woman has to stay inside her kitchen because of a lockdown. She amuses herself but gets bored after some weeks.

Selection 3 : Found Footage

Michael Fleming – Tik-Tak, 2020 / various formats (UK)

What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? It means to know that one is food for worms.

We emerge from nothing, we have a name, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die.

Man is out of nature and hopelessly in it: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.

Chris O’Neill – Dreams Can’t Hurt You, 2020 / 35mm (Ireland)

Images and sounds of a vintage movie trailer are corrupted and warped into a bizarre experimental art piece of heightened intensity: the results are weird, sinister and humorous.

Brittany Gravely & Ken Linehan – First Hypnotic Suggestion, 2020 / 16mm (USA)

First Hypnotic Suggestion conjures telepathic transference, hypnosis and collective dream space. Through its spectral tele-cinematic waves, the analogue horror-film protagonists participate in paranormal and fringe scientific experiments, attempting to comprehend the immaterial and incomprehensible expanses of their perception—simultaneously aided and obstructed by the temporal interventions and technological mediations of their transitory parallel dimension.

Salvatore Insana – I Stared Fire Forever, 2020 / 16mm & 35mm (Italy)

A collective hypnosis, an invisible, subliminal enemy, an impalpable energy on the verge of exploding. The gaze of the filmed subject, that of the camera and that of the spectator trigger a participatory obsession, made of eyes in action. Eyes that stare, emptiness or neighbor. Crossings. Missed encounters. Sudden starts. Between fear and desire. Is the threat out of range? If there is a subjective, it is that of whom?

Selection 4 : Experimental Documentary

Stephanie M. Barber – Another Horizon, 2020 / 16mm (USA)

the horizon, where the sky and the earth meet, is always elsewhere, a promised place where these two elements come together. a metaphor, an orienting, a promise of transition, change, transcendence. a place where the corporeal and spiritual meet, or are cleaved apart.

also, here, the space between narrative and documentary, fact and fiction, is scratched between two voices. jayne love reads a text i wrote for her, short sentences on the concept of the horizon and the briefest suggestion of narrative collide with pieces of richard (oswan) williams' beautiful, rum-fueled living room sermons to me.

when i was twenty i lived in richard and his wife mary’s apartment, the site of their voodoo spiritual temple in new orleans. of course, as priests and priestesses richard and mary spoke often of death, transcendence, ethics and health. our days were slow and filled with philosophical rumination, richard a brilliant old man schooling a young wandering wonderer. i recorded most everything on cassette tapes back then and some have made it here to the present. to this horizon we’re at now.

Ivan Cordeiro – Espinado, 2019 / Super 8 (Mexico)

I met Martin Espino in 1985. Since day one I’ve had a very positive and vibrant connection with him.As a musician he inspires and makes me want to work with sound. Sound is a very crucial element for the image. Even silent films had a piano player doing the score. In 2014 I started to make a documentary about him and his art, shooting some of its scenes with a Super 8 camera.

Sarah seené – Lumen, 2019 / Super 8 (Canada)

Lumen (meaning ''light'' in Latin) is a sensory film shot on Super-8 that portrays a young girl with oculocutaneous albinism. Despite the hypersensitivity caused by this genetic disease, the depigmentation of her skin and eyes gives her an extraordinary aura.

Ella Morton – Kajanqtuq, 2020 / Super 8 (Canada)

Inuk elder Naulaq LeDrew speaks about her home in Nunavut, Canada and how Inuit lifestyles have changed since her youth. Altered Super 8mm film footage of the region illustrates her account of historical events and Inuit mythology.

Jean-Jacques Martinod – Before the Deluge, 2019 / Super 16mm (Canada)

Within the ancient Precambrian rock of Northern Canada sits one of the largest reserves of uranium on the planet. A power that has yielded the largest destructive energy known to man, also manifest in the region's harsh natural glory. A gothic travelogue that summons dialogue with ghosts of the region; abandoned mining towns swallowed within the pandemonium of extraction commerce and neglect, while also the liminal unknown forces that inhabit these lands and speak in shadow memories.

Selection 5 : Thingamijigs – Punks and Subversives

Jeremy Camp – Perfect Shot, 2020 / 16mm (USA)

A model's response from a photographer's harassment.

Isabel Padilla – Roadtrip, 2019 / Super 16mm (USA)

in the middle of where, what happens?

Christian Schneider – It Was Like That in the 90s, 2020 / Super 8 (Brazil)

In the 90s, the population accesses the internet through home telephone networks, sex chats become popular, but what can happen when sex becomes virtual?

Jack Wormell – Crumbs #3 (Cinema Trailer), 2020 / 16mm (UK)

A parodic cinema trailer voiceover is paired with footage of a beach in south-west Ireland, filmed in the summer of 2019. The image and sound really have no connection with each other, which is the point, and hopefully the badly delivered bombast of the voiceover is humbled by shining banality in amateur camerawork, seaweed, surf, and sand.

Emma Cosgrove – Hammers 5$, 2020 / Super 16mm (Canada)

A manufactured creek, a candid salesperson, an irresistible river and a sacred orb collide in this flash portrait of cosmic serendipity and the life cycle of love.

Dimitri Lurie – Between C&D, 2019 / 16mm (Norway)

Between C & D invites viewers to explore a metaphoric world of inner dilemmas. With this film the authors make a research into new visual forms to express а human' eternal seek for a fragile balance between sensual and spiritual experiences. The title refers to the essence of the protagonist's tragic choice between two life concepts. Here "C" stays for Christian (Apollonian) & "D" for Dionysian.

Selection 6 : Secret Diaries

Alexandria L. Vicari – Something for Yourself, 2020 / Super 8 (USA)

A poetic autoethnographic film full of nuance, contradictions, neurotic behavior, and feelings of being broke and broken in the desperate attempts to find hope and solace.

Julia Zanin de Paula – My Heart, My Traveler, 2020 / 8mm (USA)

Mere Dil Mere Musaafir (My Heart, My Traveler) is a visual expression of the unknown through the eyes of different cultures and languages.

We shot Mere Dil Mere Musaafir in the middle of quarantine in NYC with a crew as big as 3 people: the director, the cinematographer, and the performer. The empty diaspora city, the quarantine, the multi-nationality quality, and the process of shooting on film gave us the core for this project: the unknown.

Trusting the images and the words over their literal meaning is what Mere Dil Mere Mysaafir is all about and bringing unknown and uncertainty into filmmaking is part of the whole crews’ coping and healing process.

Charlotte Clermont – where i don't meet you, 2019 / Super 8 (Canada)

Shot on Super 8, "where i don't meet you" is based on its own physicality by the means of a DIY hand processing technique, where the film's materiality is treated not only as a medium but also as a subject. Its narrative structure reflects a work on film deconstruction, which joins an unpredictable and experimental universe. Showing a series of figurative shots accompanied by a textual sequence, formal and psychological associations are developped between each of the images. Through a confusing poetry, a filmic atmosphere unfolds in a "non-place", which recalls a moment lost between two time-spaces.

Miglė Križinauskaitė-Bernotienė – The Bearers of Memories, 2020 / 16mm (Lithuania)

With every moment - one more memory. But memory sometimes goes blind and what is left becomes hazy.

Emmanuel Piton - The Blind Night, 2020 / 16mm (France)

A man seems to be following a quest that hasn't quite found its purpose. Fragments emerge from his memory as if to escape the call of the shadows.

Hogan Seidel - The Backside of God, 2020 / 16mm, Super 8 & 35mm (USA)

The Backside of God is an experimental documentary utilizing archival footage, digital glitch, chemical abstraction, and direct animation to explore the intricacies of the artist’s relationship with their late uncle, Pastor Doug Seidel. This film is an elegy for a family member who found their, and your, queerness an abomination.

Selection 7 : Experimental Animation

Asymmtry (Jonas Erler & Marian Röder) – Super (8) Skate, 2020 / Super 8 (Germany)

Skating is cool. Super 8 films too. Fuck-shit! That was dope!

Pere Ginard – Dad is Gone, 2020 / various formats (Spain) 

Dad is Gone. Dad is Ghost. Dad is Thing… spinning on its own skin.

Nicolás de Bórtoli – Devil’s Chapel, 2020 / various formats (Argentina)

After finishing building his Chapel, Lorenzo suffers a depression and is locked in it for three years. When he opens the doors he calls his children to show what he did: good and evil.

Anne-Marie Bouchard – The Long Wail of a Passing Train, 2020 / 16mm (Canada)

The long wail of a passing train slips into the heart of the ghosts and everything explodes into silence. An experimental animated film built around a single sound recording that evokes travel, the need to communicate, solitude, fragility, the desire for freedom, the arrival of fall, and our ephemeral existence.

Jonathan Hancock – Veloceped, 2020 / 16mm (USA)

Three glass characters race mental and physically. Apparitions of origin and magik parents obstruct the contestants. A dove threatens their vision.

Selection 8 : Experimental Feature

Axel Loh - Paul Keller - Silence in the Scream, 2020 / 16mm (Germany)

Paul Keller lives in a bombed-out city in the post-war year of 1952. He did not know his father and his mother is no longer there. Paul finds one day the missing person report of a young girl. He goes to Inspector Holler and claims that he knows the girl. But in the course of the conversation, Paul always seems less credible. He is sent out by the inspector. Does Paul actually have anything to do with the missing girl or does he seek recognition in a lost world? When he meets young Ingrid and falls in love with her is produced by Frame Store Film & Entertainment Gmb, the story turns in an uncontrollable and surprising direction.

The film Paul Keller - Stille im Schrei is produced on 16mm film. Director Axel Loh focuses on the "old school" look in the style of the 50s films. For this reason, he uses Beaulieau R16 cameras from the '60s, which exactly reflect the look of this time. In addition, old footage is used, which shows street scenes and ruins of the post-war period. The scenes have emerged after extensive time research and show the world of a traumatized German post-war society at the beginning of the economic miracle time.