A botany of cookie packaging.
Social & External
For this film, Takashi Makino allowed himself to be inspired by the earth. In a never-ending stream of images, we recognize elements from the forest that he then reduces to an abstraction. The film came about as a classical composition in which the picture and the musical contribution of Jim O’Rourke link up seamlessly and lead the mood in turn. A sense of freedom is what predominates.
IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.
Travel films have an established format with their own conventions, history and baggage. It is a medium that has all too often sought to control, define and dictate perceptions of ”other” places. Comprised of footage shot while travelling on group excursions across Russia in 2019, An Uncountable Number of Threads is an attempt to draw out the ethical restrictions of a travelogue, while questioning how (and why) to make one. At times there is an awkward tourist-gaze, aware of its outsider position. But as a self-reflexive work that considers its own creation, it ultimately unravels, as the artist rationalises themselves out of a particular way of working, inviting the viewer into their uncertainty.
A short experimental film.
The last person on Earth revisits their memories as they wander a lonely world
"Fag End" is an astute representation of the metaphorical death of a mother. The movie revolves around a girl named 'Tania', a victim of smoking and alcohol abuse, going through the process of In vitro fertilization. When it comes to alcohol and smoking, an abuser is overlapped with the tendencies of both alcoholism and chain smoking wherein one is subjected to intense cravings, followed by untoward mental as well as physical detention. Things go downhill one morning, as she relapsed the night before and she suffers a miscarriage. Does it not leave us with the raucous screams of the unborn?
"If I can't abandon you, then how can I save you?"
Experimental movie, where a man comes home and experiences LSD. His kaleidoscopic visions follow, with readings inspired by the Tibethan Book of the Dead.
A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.
A comfortable rhythm composed of light and shadow. Director Ogino-style absolute movie which freely manipulates geometric figures.
An experience of a camera swinging in different gestures facing the optical distortion of the Sun. The last appearance of the smudge.
What could possibly be more important than feeding your daughter?
The opening of The Vasulka Effect couldn’t be more apt: Steina Vasulka addresses her husband Woody through various TV screens. He does the same and replies. A perfect image of the relationship between the free-spirited, groundbreaking pioneers of video art. After meeting in Prague in the early 1960s, they relocated from Czechoslovakia to New York, where they later founded The Kitchen, their legendary art and performance gallery.
In this short film, a young man, a girl and a dog attempt to fly with wings more symbolic than practical.
Set over three generations and beginning with a sexually frustrated orderly during WWII who relieves his tensions in the most outlandish, gross ways. The result of his liaison is a glutton who grows up to be a champion speed eater. He produces a child who becomes obsessed with taxidermy.
Sometimes you’re at home with a friend and you tell them that if you don’t leave you’ll be late and the response is a crazy, unexpected and utter frenzy.
A film by Eckhart Schmidt made in Venice that plays experimentally with image and sound.
Washed ashore and taken in to a gothic manor by an unseen masculine force, a lost girl dances in gratitude before him until one day she says no and begins to suspect she might not be the first person to be brought here.
On an isolated farm, a woman finds an injured and frightened woman in her old chicken coop. Moved by an inexplicable instinct, she decides to help her, without imagining that this silent encounter will awaken buried secrets. When tension finally gives way to trust, something dark approaches, bringing a truth that no one could have foreseen.
