Hrvoji, Look at You from the Tower

Ghostly hills and inhospitable landscapes created by physically deformed newspapers are a critical allegory of the inner workings of the contemporary media world in which, beside journalists who still hold in esteem reliable and verified information, the voice of those crooking facts and creating parallel and alternative “realities” intensify by the day. “A fact is supposed to be specific and verifiable. The fact you are willing to accept makes your reality of this world. Watch out! There are many different versions of each fact.” Y. Nishimura

Wave follows wave. Real movements of the ocean, redrawn by computer-generated animation, flow into the picture frame in relation to real-time wind speeds, their visibility defined by natural light levels. The monotonous sound further emphasises the endless irregularity of the observed. “3D Computer Graphics have powers for making new images. They are mostly used for entertainment. However, they can surely be applied more to creating new methods and ideas for exploring experimental expressions.” Y. Nishimura

A found footage reminiscence of the beginnings of Ukrainian TV broadcast in 1957 and the first 20 years of its operations, when the first factory for manufacturing televisions began operating in Lviv, presents not only programs broadcast at that time, but also the way television transformed the household and family structures. "Despite it’s archival form, our film is not about the soviet past but today’s virtuality - a dramatic story of the the gaze and the sedation of a newly emerged TV-spectator, which continues until now." A. Onufrienko, S. Menzelevskyi, E. Parvulesco  

This traditional film by a legend of experimental filmmaking offers a quiet testimony to autumn in San Francisco, as the rhythm and texture of the images create a melody. The ephemeral camera and meticulous editing give rise to introspective images with a focus on light and the fragile movement of visual fragments of intimately familiar surroundings. The images’ impact is further heightened by the use of Kodachrome, a colour film that Kodak produced from 1935 to 2009. Dorsky’s recent films are some of last ever to be made on this film stock.

A compilation of behind-the-scenes footage shot while filming various Filipino films, including those of Lav Diaz and Erik Matti, creates a sense of quiet tension. In the style of slow narrations and in-depth observation, the film builds a dystopian sci-fi narrative of human avatars controlled by applications but is also a commentary on the various forms of contemporary Filipino cinema.    “They say once a filmmaker becomes a parent, that person stops making films. The Remote Daddy Framework is a way for me to go out of the house to document in spurts of three hours to repurpose and make" J. Torres

The combination of static photographs taken with various exposure times creates a moving portrait of a place where the stone building has stood for centuries, but the people are just indistinct traces on the sidewalk in front of it. We see only those who stop long enough to leave their imprint on the short-term memory of the place. The flow of time-lapse images also records changes in the solid structure as the light gives shape to the architecture.

Strictly working with the film material inside the camera, Tuohy updates slowly forgotten approaches to create a collage of architectural geometries. The monolithic nature of the image blurs the outlines of the buildings as the film frame disintegrates into grids cutting through the layers of the image in multiple exposures. The buildings depicted represent the cultures of the three main ethnic groups of Malaysia. "This film is dedicated to Paul Clipson and Robert Todd, both of whose works were specifically on my mind while filming this film in Malaysia in 2016." R. Tuohy  

This portrait of architect Carlo Mollino looks at the vision of organizing space, buildings or sculptures. Contours and surfaces, as well as the absence present in crossed-out notes, crumpled sketches and the shapes and textures of material and scratched patters of houses, construct a rhythmic collage of expressions to the landscape. “By way of story, C. Mollino pledged himself to his craft and foreshadowed a brilliant lifetime of architecture. In telling this story, Domus configures its author’s own intentions, transposed from architecture and housed within cinema.” R. Vermette

This remake of Man Ray’s celebrated Emak Bakia (1926), which uses a cameraless method of creating hand-processed film images in high-contrast black-and-white, refers to the original film even in its subject matter as well: continuing with the motifs of death, it works with artifacts and documents from US drone attacks on Pakistani territory in 2015. Kathryn Ramey (1967) is an American filmmaker, anthropologist, and teacher at Emerson College in Boston. Through celluloid manipulation and hand developing film stock, she creates new audiovisual forms that search for points of intersection between anthropological studies and experimental film. Her works have received numerous awards at international festivals.“Combining experimental process - es with theoretical premises and anthropolo gy, my films and installations seek to deconsecrate the ‘real’ of conventional documentary and agitate the viewer to seek out subjugated narratives in dominant media culture.”  

A frozen frame of a ten-lane boulevard lined by skyscrapers comes to life with past (or future?) movements, cars, advertisements, and people whose distinct as well as subtly visible traces struggle with the image’s punctum for an urgent actuality and the non-linearity of time, which moves forwards and back. Korean director Yi Myun (1973) studied musical composition. He lives in Seoul, where he works as a composer and video artist. The Jihlava IDFF previously showed his short film Field (2014), which explored themes of urban ecology. His films often combine traditional music-based soundtracks with melancholy views of urban landscapes that seem to live their own lives independent of human beings.“적 is the Korean title of this film and the sound of the word has diverse meaning in Chinese characters. It means: target, enemy, be right, build, trace, silence, advance, achievement, tread, watch, expose, angry, meet and fear.”

The paths of a flock of gulls diving for thrown pieces of bread are inverted into traces of light transforming the idyllic image into captivating abstract composition that evokes frenetic expressions of apparent anger or chaos. The effect is further underscored by his work with the sound, in which the cries of the gulls are converted into nervous echoes. “I’m working on the image and the sound /// in order to give new realities to ordinary life /// and share my audiovisual vision of the world /// in experimental video artworks /// since 2010.” J.-M. Rolland     

A performative film that compiles close-up shots of concentrated faces with abstract images converging towards a distinct point of light and geometric shots of dancing figures to create an associative image of fireflies, which in Cuban mythology represent ghosts, echoes of fires, or souls passing in the night. “Through collaborative processes and experimentation, I make films that allow a sensory experience, expanding the spectator’s perception of the social/political/cultural/personal phenomenon portrayed.” C. Claremi