24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
Dvalemodus
director: Mattias De Craene, Bieke Depoorter
original title: Dvalemodus
year: 2017
running time: 9 min.
synopsis
A majestic mountain range rises over a Norwegian town engulfed in darkness. The stormy sea laps at its shores. A thick snow is falling. The town’s inhabitants, almost motionless in their existence, are like creatures in hibernation. The camera’s static shots resembling photographs are woven together into an experimental documentary on life in Skaland.
biography
Photographer and member of Magnum Photos Bieke Depoorter (1986) has published three books. Her first short film was made in cooperation with Belgian musician and audiovisual artist Mattias De Craene (1989).
more about film
| director: | Mattias De Craene, Bieke Depoorter |
| producer: | Fabian Driehorst |
| photography: | Bieke Depoorter |
| editing: | Grégoire Verbeke, Nina De Vroome |
| music: | Mattias De Craene |
| sound: | Nina De Vroome |
other films in the section
This short accompaniment to the intermedia project Serial Narratives reveals the real price of cheap goods from China. The testimony of an anonymous worker harmonized with hypnotic images draws attention to the frighteningly elaborate choreography as all phases of manufacturing process undergo rigorous mechanization.
Consumed
Richard Seymour
United Kingdom, China / 2016 / 19 min.
section: Short Joy
International Premiere
In a Moscow apartment, Andrei Tarkovsky’s sister and brother-in-law remember the famous filmmaker. A film-collage consisting of family photos, visual impressions, narrative scraps, and vague and confusing memories reveals neglected fragments from the life of the Russian artist against a background of ambient music.
It all came to pass, All fell into my hands like a five-petalled leaf, But there has to be more
Sergei Sviatchenko, Noriko Okaku
United Kingdom, Denmark / 2018 / 12 min.
section: Short Joy
European Premiere
Juan Medina’s photograph from 2006 shows a man crawling along a Mediterranean beach shortly after being washed ashore. The film further develops the scene, loosely inspired by the moment captured in the picture. Like frozen puppets, the people remain unaware of their callousness towards someone who is taking his first steps towards a better life.
Summer
Ronny Trocker
France, Belgium / 2016 / 7 min.
section: Short Joy
Czech Premiere
The film’s creator, in the role of an earthling walking the streets of Paris, asks the eternal question: Are we alone in the universe? While attempting to find the truth and therefore quiet the constant musings, the filmmaker holds interviews with astrophysicist Nicolas Prantzos, science historian Florence Raulin Cerceau, and sociologist Pierre Lagrange.
The Hypothesis
Bruno Saboia
France / 2018 / 20 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere
Director Zaina Erhaim has decided to explore her Syrian hometown of Idlib, which is controlled by anti-regime forces. Original footage captures familiar neighborhoods in ruins, where Erhaim leaves what is perhaps the last human footprint. This secretly-filmed documentary presents a visual experience of the loss of home and of meeting loved ones in a new reality.
I Was Here
Zaina Erhaim
Syria / 2017 / 11 min.
section: Short Joy
European Premiere
This minimalist six-minute film looks at the creation of animal life through time-lapse footage of an embryo’s development – a process universal to all animals, including people. The film follows, in microscopic detail, the development of an alpine newt in its translucent egg all the way from first cell division to moment of hatching.
Becoming
Jan van IJken
Netherlands / 2018 / 6 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere
A compulsory stay in a Seoul facility known as Hanawon serves to prepare North Korean defectors for life under capitalism. Eight people tell of their experiences from their new lives, highlighting the challenges and prejudices that they must face in the completely different system. Their authentic testimonies are heard against the background of scenes of the bustling megalopolis.
Hanawon
Romain Champalaune
Netherlands / 2019 / 15 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere
Two Swedish directors set off for Greece to find out how the local residents feel about the media images of the crisis. On the basis of ten selected myths, they create a film essay in which they take the dangers presented by the media through to their conclusions using audio-visual counterpoint, warning against the threat of fascism.DETAIL:„We are leaving Sweden to see what a crisis looks like. This is the first image we see. The public service has shut down and there’s only white noise.“
Crisis Document. A Survival Guide
Elisabeth Marjanović Cronvall, Marta Dauliute
Sweden / 2015 / 14 min.
section: Short Joy
Central European Premiere
An essay filmed against the backdrop of lyrical images of feather plucking or drawing with chalk presents the clerical orders of Islamic women and how they rein in their impure desires. As a subversive element of Islamic fundamentalism, the director recites a poem by Iranian feminist writer Forough Farrokhzad.
I Have Sinned a Rapturous Sin
Maryam Tafakory
Iran, United Kingdom / 2018 / 8 min.
section: Short Joy
Czech Premiere
Extinction of monarch butterflies in the US became a topic of a film based on manipulation of found footage. The director adjusts archival recordings of butterflies or planes spreading fertilizers through double exposure, scratching, colouring and so don, coming up with a purely visual micro-essay asking who is really the pest and who is the infested in this ecosystem.
Butterfly Disaster
Caryn Cline
United States / 2019 / 6 min.
section: Short Joy
European Premiere
An open conflict plays out in the Kosacks’ backyard between the pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian soldiers. This short documentary follows the life of the couple, who have refused to leave their home, and their new neighbors on the front line. Only Anatoly’s bees can fly freely from one side to the other.
Girls and Honey
Pieter Jan De Pue
Belgium, Ukraine / 2017 / 8 min.
section: Short Joy
East European Premiere
“(Where) do the places we remember exist?” asks Camila Ausente in the opening of her ten-minute documentary search for an answer to this question. The film combines repeating images from Mexico with oral memories of her father's childhood in Argentina.
Pampa del Istmo
Camila Ausente
Argentina, Mexico / 2018 / 11 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere
