Gerilla

The Yiwu wholesale market in China is more than eight kilometres long. Short episodes follow buyers and the uncompromising negotiations between vendors. The observational documentary shows stalls so covered in goods they completely hide the vendors – and thus also the market’s other world, where their offspring spend their childhoods.

A conceptual film, balancing between a documentary and science fiction, explores environmental devastation in Iowa, USA that remains largely overlooked. Through microscopic images of plants, footage from university greenhouses, karst sinkholes with primary flora and fauna, or a dilapidated granary, the director conjures up a dystopic vision, radically restructuring relationships between man, nature and technology.      “The film imagines a future in which the changing climate and environmental conditions are recast as an active resistance to nature’s own devastation. … Plants, earth’s first communicators, are now its last. Humanity is but a blip.” E. Drummer      Watch Short Joy films for free on DAFilms now and decide who will win the Audience Award. Voting ends on 29 October.

After a dam flooded a village in northern Iran, one island remained. There’s a grave on it. On a hill above the new lake, an old woman looks out at it. An intimate look at the daily routine of an Iranian woman who has survived modestly for twelve years alone in a house at the base of the mountain.  She waits for permission to visit the island.

The guestlist - a symbol of the inviolability of the cream of society. The director alternates surreptitious recordings of the lives of the wealthiest, including meetings on yachts with whirlpools and sipping champagne at luxury parties, with a recording of his own artistic performance, in which a handful of individuals rule the world.   “White. Male. Rich. Have a yacht, luxury custom shoes, and gold cufflinks. Even richer. Have a heliport in the garden of your platinum palace. Don’t fit into these categories? Don't have a gold yacht or cufflinks? Don't have your own pig to look for truffles? You’re part of the 99 percent.” V. Turner   Watch Short Joy films for free on DAFilms now and decide who will win the Audience Award. Voting ends on 29 October.

Do you know what it is like to live with a lead helmet on your head? The unusual story of a Slovak jeweller, shot on 8mm film in the woods, where the lightning strikes more than once. What impact does a lightning strike have on a human being’s nervous system? And why does the Slovak wolf life alone, far from civilization?  

FilmRELATIONSHIP depicts an unusual living arrangement between two women. On 5 May 2005, Beverly vowed obedience to the older Catherine, thus relinquishing her freedom for the rest of her life. A film about material, mental, and physical dependence. Although Beverly was never attracted to women and is a mother herself, Catherine represents her ideal of unattainable love.

Intercut footage of the camera panning along two sides of Havana Bay. Every few seconds, our act of viewing is disturbed for several seconds as the camera shifts from one side to the other. The rhythm of this panoramic view is determined by the editing. The 12-minute film invites the viewer on an experimentally filmed journey by boat from Old Havana to Casa Blanca.DETAIL:The sound of waves. The camera’s gaze shifts from the dark-blue surface of the water to the shoreline. An abandoned industrial building and lazily floating boats along the shore represent tools for transforming the abandoned bay.

A festive parade of Cossacks, solid in their pride, flows down the street in slow motion just as the coal flows down the conveyer belt. In all its massive and monstrous beauty, the giant steel mining equipment represents strength and security just as the Cossack army under God’s protection. A group of Cossacks, priests and boys halts before a church. Sabres touch the children’s shoulders and the boy is kissed. He wipes his lips with a handkerchief. A small festive moment, like when the coal is transported to the harbour.

Two professors settle personal accounts at the Department of Philosophy of Brno's Masaryk University. In 2008 professor Jaroslav Hroch received a total of 17 anonymous abusive emails. His colleague Břetislav Horyna was eventually indicted (and convicted) of sending these emails. Interviews with both participants in this bizarre case. "As for Hölderlin, shut the fuck up!"Ich und ich im wirklichen leben.Ich und ich in der Wirklichkeit. Ich und ich in der echten Welt.Ich und ich. Ich fühle mich so seltsam. DieWirklichkeit kommt. die Wirklichkeit kommt.

What happens to women who mysteriously disappear? Are they ever seen again? Do state authorities investigate as they should, or are the only ones truly searching for the women the ones they left behind? A compilation film that reveals several periods in history during which scores of women disappeared without a trace under various circumstances.

Unsuspecting tourists enjoy a peaceful holiday in Myanmar's hotel complexes, lazily walking between swimming pools and sun umbrellas, while ten kilometers away, members of the Rohingya ethnic group are being tortured and killed as a result of the largest genocide in Asia since the Vietnam War.     Watch Short Joy films for free on DAFilms now and decide who will win the Audience Award. Voting ends on 29 October.

These “first three fractions” of a planned seven-part series can be seen as a self-portrait, documentary and essay in one. Each piece of this black-and-white short film is introduced by a declarative exclamation: the first is about absurd death, the second about our time on earth, and the third about the strange arrogance contained in the freedom of a child’s crying.DETAIL:Thunder sounds amidst the rushing of the rain. Thin insect legs flutter along wet glass. Tirelessly. Seemingly tirelessly… In another landscape in some village somewhere, a dog barks. A foggy mist rises over the river, and a train sets into motion... The final fragment is of man.