It is an evening in October 1989. A five-year-old boy (Thor Ochsner) is on his way to pick up his mom at the airport. His father is driving the car, it is raining and the windscreen wipers move back and forth. All of a sudden a car accident happens – and the five-year-old Thor is left alone, and has to figure out what to do. 1989 (WHEN I WAS 5 YEARS OLD) is a short animated documentary reconstructing the traumatic memories of a car accident that the director experienced when he was 5 years old. Winner of Silver Dragon Award in Krakow IFF 2011, screened in prestigious festivals like Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Edinburgh, Sundance, Los Angeles etc.
“Abstructures Preview” is an unfinished visual parataxis, a meditative piece that deranges a viewer's perception of time using long duration and loops.
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What do people queuing up to an altar, art gallery, sports betting shop and supermarket have in common? Excitement, the feeling of nervous impatience, anxiety and fear that someone will surely reach the aim before them. Although the queues may be long and tiring, Yorgos Zois’s film, in a perverse way, confirms the unwritten rule that at the end of each of them, regardless of the side, there is always something awaiting us. All kinds of people are waiting in seven different queues. The first person of each queue becomes the last of the next one, thus creating an enormous human line. But at the end of the line, it all begins backwards again..Premiered in Venice Orizzonti 2010, winner Best Short Film Award at the Hellenic Film Academy Awards 2011, screened in prestigious film festivals like Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Melbourne, Clermont Ferrand etc
What do people queuing up to an altar, art gallery, sports betting shop and supermarket have in common? Excitement, the feeling of nervous impatience, anxiety and fear that someone will surely reach the aim before them. Although the queues may be long and tiring, Yorgos Zois’s film, in a perverse way, confirms the unwritten rule that at the end of each of them, regardless of the side, there is always something awaiting us. All kinds of people are waiting in seven different queues. The first person of each queue becomes the last of the next one, thus creating an enormous human line. But at the end of the line, it all begins backwards again..Premiered in Venice Orizzonti 2010, winner Best Short Film Award at the Hellenic Film Academy Awards 2011, screened in prestigious film festivals like Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Melbourne, Clermont Ferrand etc
Therapy, individual, agitation, colour, sensation, sound, freedom, image, calm… The mixture of us all.
The winner of Palme D’Or for Short Film at Cannes 2011. By following a cross-country run, an open-air course on uneven ground, CROSS presents a metaphorical view on human condition. First a boy is forced to run. Then he runs on his own. And then he watches another one run.
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A man, presumably of Vietnamese origin, travels Europe. He is shown most emphatically on screen, moving with obvious unease in unfamiliar surroundings. He looks like an anachronism, strolling around the décors of Europe in the 1960s. Shortly after, American troops enter the ground war in Vietnam. DESTINATION FINALE is an original 8mm amateur film, shot in 1964, found in Saigon in 2005 and edited by Widmann with a sense of drama. (IFF Rotterdam 2009)
A man, presumably of Vietnamese origin, travels Europe. He is shown most emphatically on screen, moving with obvious unease in unfamiliar surroundings. He looks like an anachronism, strolling around the décors of Europe in the 1960s. Shortly after, American troops enter the ground war in Vietnam. DESTINATION FINALE is an original 8mm amateur film, shot in 1964, found in Saigon in 2005 and edited by Widmann with a sense of drama. (IFF Rotterdam 2009)
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At the border between fiction, documentary and visual art, the latest video of the Dutch artist Julika Rudelius, DRESSAGE, follows with merciless, anthropological precision, 10 beautiful girls, aged 11 or 12, from New York's high society. At once rapt and completely matter-of-fact, these almost artificial-seeming wunderkinder move about in Chanel outfits in a world filled with mobile phones, stylists, and VIP personalities. In a furious finale, the anonymous-looking setting in which they are filmed is dissected with brutish elegance. Screened in Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Centre Pompidou and many other prestigious venues.
At the border between fiction, documentary and visual art, the latest video of the Dutch artist Julika Rudelius, DRESSAGE, follows with merciless, anthropological precision, 10 beautiful girls, aged 11 or 12, from New York's high society. At once rapt and completely matter-of-fact, these almost artificial-seeming wunderkinder move about in Chanel outfits in a world filled with mobile phones, stylists, and VIP personalities. In a furious finale, the anonymous-looking setting in which they are filmed is dissected with brutish elegance. Screened in Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Centre Pompidou and many other prestigious venues.
The life of a family in about four minutes.
A man and a woman of different nationalities spend an evening together in a hotel room. In this impersonal surrounding, where people pass by without leaving any trace, the two characters try to communicate in a language they do not master. We don’t know almost nothing about their lives or how they got to this place. They are foreigners in that country and strangers one to another.
“In a place of condensed time, the stagnant things become alive and Sleep (Fox) and Death (Bunny) are fighting over a sleeping woman´s life. A combination of experimental animation and live action about stalemate and cessation, surreal cycles in a poetic world and the secret of how to raise the moon.” This is how Anja Struck describes HOW TO RAISE THE MOON, winner of the Frist Prize NRW Competition in Oberhausen 2011. Inspired by various schools of cultural and art history, the director creates a disturbing, atmospheric and condensed assemblage of unusual images whose source is a well-stocked personal depository, revealing an oneiric universe reminiscent of surrealistic silent cinema, in which even the familiar things seem wonderfully strange.
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Premiered in Semaine de la Critique Cannes 2008 and awarded in BAFICI, Tampere, Sao Paolo, Biarritz and many others, I HEAR YOU SCREAM offers a poetic, contemplative experience, consisting of one 12 minutes fixed shot which reveals a mood rather than a plot. Two thirds of the frame are made of a sky at dusk, the backlight drawing together the very few elements and movements into the picture, while the characters become outlines, silhouettes shot from a fair distance. In these few minutes, Lamar builds a kind of moving painting that reflects on the state of mind when witnessing the passage from life to death.
Premiered in Semaine de la Critique Cannes 2008 and awarded in BAFICI, Tampere, Sao Paolo, Biarritz and many others, I HEAR YOU SCREAM offers a poetic, contemplative experience, consisting of one 12 minutes fixed shot which reveals a mood rather than a plot. Two thirds of the frame are made of a sky at dusk, the backlight drawing together the very few elements and movements into the picture, while the characters become outlines, silhouettes shot from a fair distance. In these few minutes, Lamar builds a kind of moving painting that reflects on the state of mind when witnessing the passage from life to death.
“I say never” is a strong statement, that slowly reveals intimate thoughts by exposing them in a quite severe way, as a rash. This brings out the diaristic quality I am trying to concentrate in my work, using the surface of the skin as a piece of paper on one hand, and the connotation of the written statement on the other. The sound of her presence can still be heard at the very ending, although there is no video to accompany it. It acts as a zoom in her inner thoughts: what would she never ever?
In Carrara, Italy, one man directs his small crew as they carve glacier-white hunks of marble out of the side of a mountain. Yuri Ancarani’s wordless film is a treat for the senses; he shoots the massive slabs of marble from different perspectives, some of which reveal the epic scale of the excavations while others make the rocks seem dwarfed by the machines at work. The gigantic stones glide down to earth in slow motion, with a muted soundtrack, in a surreal lunar landscape, almost impracticable. And presiding over it all is IL CAPO (The Boss), conducting a symphony for quarry machines with a flurry of movements and hand gestures. The more inaccessible the place, the more heroic the endless challenge to the mountain. ( Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2011)
On a summer afternoon, a person spills coffee on himself, another feeds pigeons, another kills a bee, another dies, another copies patterns, another listens to the radio, another makes a phone call, another… And there may be certain connections among them all…
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Screened and awarded in prestigious film festivals like Rotterdam, Edinburg, Tampere, Uruguay, Melbourne, Annency and many others, MASKA is the latest experimental animation of the filmmakers and animators Quay brothers, two of the most influential contemporary experimental authors. Based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel of the same title, with music composed by the renowned Polish classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki, MASKA is a beautiful dark, terrifying yet poetic fairytale set in a technologically developed but, at the same time, feudal world. Beautiful Duenna was created in order to carry out a certain mission. However, she will be forced to choose between accomplishing the task she was created for and love.
Screened and awarded in prestigious film festivals like Rotterdam, Edinburg, Tampere, Uruguay, Melbourne, Annency and many others, MASKA is the latest experimental animation of the filmmakers and animators Quay brothers, two of the most influential contemporary experimental authors. Based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel of the same title, with music composed by the renowned Polish classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki, MASKA is a beautiful dark, terrifying yet poetic fairytale set in a technologically developed but, at the same time, feudal world. Beautiful Duenna was created in order to carry out a certain mission. However, she will be forced to choose between accomplishing the task she was created for and love.
A 13-minute animated documentary about how much the residents of Cluj-Napoca know about the famous King Matthias, who was born in their city. The voice is documentary (interviews), the images are animated. “And the only other thing I can say about him is that the statue of King Matthias is sitting on a horse. That's it. What else is there to say?”
“Metamorphosis” is a perspective born from the observation that we have never changed our underlying patterns of tension. We have been creating illness, conflict and war from the beginning of time. We cure one illness and we create another. We end one conflict and we create another one. We as human beings change a lot.
“Mirror” is an experimental fiction film that tells the story of a girl who gets scolded by her boyfriend for being pregnant. Unable to provide any answers she decides to throw herself off a bridge.
In a world where everybody has duct-tape over their mouths, one guy does not. Trying to have a conversation with a girl he fancies, he discovers why everybody keeps duct-tape in the first place.
The story of a couple whose attraction is running dry. As he heads to work in the morning, she lets herself devoured by fantasies and nightmares.
“To all those characters who missed the chance to be captured on film.” Several film characters are in a race against time to be captured on film, but the destination they reach might see them deleted forever."
Deep in the woods, cutting through the fog, a man walks in carrying a fishing bag. He arrives at the edge of a river. The man leisurely goes about setting up his fishing rods and starts fishing. Hours later, night has fallen on the quiet riverside. The man hasn’t caught much fish and just sits, waiting. Just then, something big is caught on the fishing rod. It’s not something he can put on his dinner plate, but a mysterious young woman in white funeral dress crying in a little girl’s voice, calling him “daddy”… A visually stunning and deeply emotional meditation on life, death and love, shot entirely on IPhone4, winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale 2011.
Winner of Venice Orizonti Award for Best Medium Length Film in 2010 and of ARTE Award in Oberhausen 2011, OUT is a hybrid between a documentary, a horror fiction, an erotic show and a political reflection. OUT's central part presents a domination/ submission thrashing scene, set in a mundane living room. The scene is not acted but rather performed by two women whose real-life preferences entail BDSM. But in this session, the painful blows meted by the Dom cause the Sub to spew out sentences, all of which are quotes from Israel's minister of foreign affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, known as one of the most extreme right wing politicians in the country.
A group of workers from a can factory recite in mind the poem “Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters” by Bertolt Brecht.
One night, a car accelerates. The city gradually darkens. The abstract lights illuminate vaguely car. In an agonizing, strange ambiance, she suddenly enters into a fantasy world where an old man waits. A surreal accident: Blood flows in streams from one life into another. Reminding of David Lynch aesthetics. Screened in Interfilm Berlin, FIDEC International Film Schools Festival Belgium, Amiens and many others.
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From the mist there emerges the runway of Warsaw airport. The guard of honor of the Polish Army is waiting to solemnly welcome those who have just arrived in Poland. But there is no one to welcome this time. On their shoulders the soldiers carry invisible coffins in front of invisible spectators and carefully place them on special racks - all to the rhythm of Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’. We observe all the intricate choreography, which turns out to be a rehearsal for the ceremony. This short black-and-white film is a record of events that took place after 10 April 2010, one of the most important dates in modern Polish history.
From the mist there emerges the runway of Warsaw airport. The guard of honor of the Polish Army is waiting to solemnly welcome those who have just arrived in Poland. But there is no one to welcome this time. On their shoulders the soldiers carry invisible coffins in front of invisible spectators and carefully place them on special racks - all to the rhythm of Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’. We observe all the intricate choreography, which turns out to be a rehearsal for the ceremony. This short black-and-white film is a record of events that took place after 10 April 2010, one of the most important dates in modern Polish history.
“Ripping Riddance” is a film in which the viewer witnesses the bonding between two elements: the transformation of the natural into the artificial, mechanical and the constant feeling of eradicating ones past or current state of mind. The transformation earlier mentioned is being expressed within the film starting from the placement of body (the back) in a confetti shaped as a nest, the light hitting the back creating perfect horizontal lines and the natural breathing from the beginning which, once speeded up, becomes unnatural, almost mechanical and rhythmic. The attempt of getting rid on the image by ripping it apart seems to fail several times, as if this duality between the natural and artificial is here to stay.
“Roe” is a short experimental film that portrays a dream. An alternate reality in which fish roe float in the air..
Surrounded by an artificial monotony, in which even sin has lost its fire, two spouses cheat on each other. Whether they are blind against this situation, whether they tacitly agree upon it, these two continue to declare Love to one another. This word is written in the stone which they have to carry every morning.
The competition is tough and our hero needs to “eat”. How far does he allow himself to go in order to work? What is work? This is a film about what remains outside while you enter, about the power of the example and the downfall of this specific structure in the social architecture. What is lost when you stay bound to be “less” human?
Nicolas Provost (award winner in BIEFF 2010 with his previous short PLOT POINT) took his hidden camera to Las Vegas and used the glorious, ambiguous seduction of the gambling capital to turn everyday activities into a thriller. The inhabitants of Las Vegas and its visitors unwittingly act as the leading characters and extras in STARDUST. Provost filmed everyday life in Sin City with a hidden camera, making use of Hollywood's cinematic and narrative codes to edit the footage into a fiction film. Without even realizing it, a couple of real Hollywood stars, including Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, even have cameo roles. (IFFR 2011) World premiered in Venice Orizzonti 2010 and winner of the Tiger Award for Short Film in Rotterdam 2011.
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“Sundays or how Mankind faces the passage of time. That free time we are trying to fill at all costs. That same time we look at passing by, with laughter or boredom. My intention in this film is to show how we, as human beings, face the emptiness in our lives. A series of paintings in which human beings look like still lives.(...)Between hyper realism and burlesque, it is a mixture of sense and nonsense. Our lives are filled with moments where things make sense one day and not another. A spirit and aesthetics similar to the films of Ulrich Seidl and photos of Diane Arbus, In Sook Kim and Jeff Wall.” ( Valery Rosier) Winner of the Kodak Discovery Award in Semaine de la Critique Cannes 2011 and European Film Awards Nominee of Curtas Vila do Conde ISFF 2011.
“Sundays or how Mankind faces the passage of time. That free time we are trying to fill at all costs. That same time we look at passing by, with laughter or boredom. My intention in this film is to show how we, as human beings, face the emptiness in our lives. A series of paintings in which human beings look like still lives.(...)Between hyper realism and burlesque, it is a mixture of sense and nonsense. Our lives are filled with moments where things make sense one day and not another. A spirit and aesthetics similar to the films of Ulrich Seidl and photos of Diane Arbus, In Sook Kim and Jeff Wall.” ( Valery Rosier) Winner of the Kodak Discovery Award in Semaine de la Critique Cannes 2011 and European Film Awards Nominee of Curtas Vila do Conde ISFF 2011.
ESCU works as a box assembler in a factory. From one side of the room flat cardboards are entering on a mechanized belt and with a tape-dispenser he puts them up into boxes, which then are getting out of the room through an opening in the wall on the other side of the room. The conveyor belt is jamming, so ESCU waits patiently for his work schedule to be over. But boredom sets in, so ESCU starts to look at the box left inside... Eventually the conveyor belt starts over and ESCU’s schedule comes to an end...He needs to put the box down and go home.
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The latest work of the controversial visual artist Erwin Olaf, THE EVOCATION OF SADNESS is a stylised tribute to Luchino Visconti about a 19th century young noblewoman who is surrounded by people from the moment she awakes. Resigned, she undergoes the morning ritual, in which three servants clothe her and do her hair. During the day, she grows increasingly paranoid. The people she sees remain unnoticed by the others. Or is she really watched? Erwin Olaf here raises the making of films to become the subject. He is investigating the cinematic medium itself, bursting the bubble of illusion. Unlike the Hollywood film The Truman Show, where the protagonist is the only one who does not know he is living in a television show, Sophie is the one-eyed queen in the land of the blind.
The latest work of the controversial visual artist Erwin Olaf, THE EVOCATION OF SADNESS is a stylised tribute to Luchino Visconti about a 19th century young noblewoman who is surrounded by people from the moment she awakes. Resigned, she undergoes the morning ritual, in which three servants clothe her and do her hair. During the day, she grows increasingly paranoid. The people she sees remain unnoticed by the others. Or is she really watched? Erwin Olaf here raises the making of films to become the subject. He is investigating the cinematic medium itself, bursting the bubble of illusion. Unlike the Hollywood film The Truman Show, where the protagonist is the only one who does not know he is living in a television show, Sophie is the one-eyed queen in the land of the blind.
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In 1900, Atget took photographs of Paris as if it was the scene of a crime. In 1929 Mies van der Rohe inaugurates in Barcelona the German Pavilion at the Universal Exposition and it became one of the most relevant buildings of the 20th century. In 1980, a Spanish architect imagines some fictions through the pages of the architecture books. Three real characters and three stories cross over the History in an amazing and exciting game of deductions, intrigue and announcements about the crimes hidden in the old photographs. Winner of the Best Iberoamerican Short Documentary Award in Huesca ISFF, screened in Tampere, Bilbao, Documenta Madrid, Las Palmas etc.
In 1900, Atget took photographs of Paris as if it was the scene of a crime. In 1929 Mies van der Rohe inaugurates in Barcelona the German Pavilion at the Universal Exposition and it became one of the most relevant buildings of the 20th century. In 1980, a Spanish architect imagines some fictions through the pages of the architecture books. Three real characters and three stories cross over the History in an amazing and exciting game of deductions, intrigue and announcements about the crimes hidden in the old photographs. Winner of the Best Iberoamerican Short Documentary Award in Huesca ISFF, screened in Tampere, Bilbao, Documenta Madrid, Las Palmas etc.
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Intelligent, funny, surreal, this film works on many levels. It’s a great metaphor of the history of the 20th century, executed with great talent and impressive skill. The Lasarte racetrack announces a race with a never-before-seen prize for the winning horse. Eight of the best horses and mares in the world have registered. Fans and gamblers from all continents gather to participate in the great event: the Half Million Grand Prize. The greatest horse race ever in the world is about to start when a horrible crime is committed...the fact that the riders are executed does not stop the huge absurdist machinery of greed. The sense of reality given by the so perfectly done fake archive makes the story even more frightening. Winner of 37 awards and screened in over 80 national and international film festivals like Clermont Ferrand, Tampere, Bilbao, Amiens, Edinburgh etc
Intelligent, funny, surreal, this film works on many levels. It’s a great metaphor of the history of the 20th century, executed with great talent and impressive skill. The Lasarte racetrack announces a race with a never-before-seen prize for the winning horse. Eight of the best horses and mares in the world have registered. Fans and gamblers from all continents gather to participate in the great event: the Half Million Grand Prize. The greatest horse race ever in the world is about to start when a horrible crime is committed...the fact that the riders are executed does not stop the huge absurdist machinery of greed. The sense of reality given by the so perfectly done fake archive makes the story even more frightening. Winner of 37 awards and screened in over 80 national and international film festivals like Clermont Ferrand, Tampere, Bilbao, Amiens, Edinburgh etc
Youth. Old age. Good days and bad. The mirror sees it all. The film shows a man’s life from early childhood to old age passing by in one 7 minutes shot. 4 Actors, of which 3 generations from the same family, embody him in front his bathroom mirror. The few elements in the frame are enough to suggest the whole content of a lifetime: the shape of the woman under the shower, the photo of the now divorced couple etc. THE MIRROR is a mirror in which each of us can see ourselves. The directors managed to wonderfully capture the intimate and often amusing moments of a human being faced with his own reflection and with himself. Premiered in Locarno, winner of Best Creative Idea Award at Shanghai IFF 2011 and of Audience Award at Geneve ISFF 2011.
Gerti Gerbert was photographed by her husband Eugen over a period spanning more than forty years. Besides the obligatory family photographs, from their wedding day until his death Eugen took countless pictures of Gerti: in her underwear, in homemade summer frocks, or completely naked; on the beach, in the woods, in the car, or on the floor at home. Using the Gerberts’ picture archive, interviews with Gerti, and Eugen’s notes, the film looks at what remains of life and love at the end. Premiered in Vision du Reel International Documentary Film Festival 2011 and winner of the Best Documentary Award at the First Step Awards, Germany Film Industry Debut Awards.
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Frank: scriptwriter. He is planning to get some writing today. However, his good intentions must be proceeded by some tidying up and some necessary purchases. Next, he must trace a remembered song, postpone today's first glass of wine, think about new socks, ponder going to the market or the hairdressers. This leads to another song and, eventually, to a state of horniness.. “THE PROCRASTINATORS 1: FRANK HOUTAPPELS is the first episode of a series of eleven short minimalist 'animated' documentaries of people who talk associatively about their creative process and the role that postponing, fleeing and wriggling out of things plays in it.
Frank: scriptwriter. He is planning to get some writing today. However, his good intentions must be proceeded by some tidying up and some necessary purchases. Next, he must trace a remembered song, postpone today's first glass of wine, think about new socks, ponder going to the market or the hairdressers. This leads to another song and, eventually, to a state of horniness.. “THE PROCRASTINATORS 1: FRANK HOUTAPPELS is the first episode of a series of eleven short minimalist 'animated' documentaries of people who talk associatively about their creative process and the role that postponing, fleeing and wriggling out of things plays in it.
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According to the Chinese media, there are several hundreds thousands concubines in the country. Even if it is forbidden by law, more and more young women are now becoming mistresses of powerful men in order to escape poverty and rise up the social ladder. In the film, an actress plays three roles; mistress, wife and unfaithful man. The trio provokes a sort of ambiguity between these three characters. The woman becomes the man’s object; she is subdued and depends totally on him. A situation both desired and endured, provoking pleasure and frustration.
According to the Chinese media, there are several hundreds thousands concubines in the country. Even if it is forbidden by law, more and more young women are now becoming mistresses of powerful men in order to escape poverty and rise up the social ladder. In the film, an actress plays three roles; mistress, wife and unfaithful man. The trio provokes a sort of ambiguity between these three characters. The woman becomes the man’s object; she is subdued and depends totally on him. A situation both desired and endured, provoking pleasure and frustration.
A man feels asleep at the foot of a tree. He dreams of the woman he loved. His tongue, his eyes linger over the body of the young woman.. Reminding of Jan Swankmajer and Quay Brothers aesthetics, THE WOMAN is a combination of live action and animation talking about feelings which stay alive between partners even though love had already waned. In an attempt to regain his beloved Woman’s heart, the Man sends four parts of his body to visit her. Yet, the Man knows she also likes attention and small souvenirs. And so, with only two attributes, an empty box of chocolate and a stale bouquet, the four living creatures walk in playful and rightful manner into the Woman's bedroom.
“Un(a)-Tit-Led” is all about bad cops gone good and they die young today… Overclocking your search and find your own hunters and remove them from statistics. There is always an overriding sequence or wormhole on any level. When you use it, expect only the worst to happen. A video-walk through your own chain of personality. Shiftshaping into native original characters. In the end, the hunter become a part of the poaching system. It's self-sufficient. No words atached, just unfinished Un(a) Tit Led works. Anti experimental scape, non avantgarde, catholic & beyond.
A woman is walking towards her husband's camera for four decades. Winner of the Cinema Jury Prize in Oberhausen 2010 and of Best Experimental Film Award in Curtas Vila do Conde, screened in Hamburg, Sao Paulo, Warsaw, Oslo, Cork and many others, YOU&ME is a touching experimental documentary made of found footage, revealing, through editing, sound and music, the poetry of everyday life seen through the emotional filter of memory.
Put on your dancing shoes and pilot your spaceship into morning. A fortune teller reads a DJ’s future in a coffee cup: Some crazy dog like hell is how it feels to live without love. You should be dancing, after tonight it’s all over. A story about the encounter between a coffee reader and a man-dog who, when the morning comes, is turning into a deer.
By A Web Design