Hrvoji, Look at You from the Tower

In the middle of the Teviot River in Scotland, the filmmaker saw a color in the sky like in the paintings of Gustav Klimt. He translates his amazement at this moment into fluid patterns of a digitally decomposed scene, all the way to its radical ending when the variously colored grids flowing on the screen like a calm horizon again dissolve into Klimt’s golden color. "Making films is opening my heart and letting the magical powers of life shine in my imagination to merge them in images. I try to thrill those who watch colour and time flow in my films." J. Perconte  

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 

Memories of sounds, everyday artefacts, fragments of situations, visual traces of gestures along with fleeting expressions of inner movements bring about in a gentle way the blanks and losses in this diary essay on the paramount importance of space and behaviour, duration of (un)happiness and focus on the present moment as a means of defence against exhaustion. “A film about absence/bereavement; trying to remember "her" gestures and presence through scattered fragments of memories, reminiscences of sounds and a decaying silence.” V. Guilbert     

Fragments of a body chiseled from darkness carve out a study of a nude female figure, sensual at specific moments, and in places disappearing into digital darkness. A lyrical treatise on intimacy and secrecy and an implicit polemic with a voyeuristic gaze create a longing for constrained completeness. "I dissect the perception and the mental state that arise while being watched, penetrated and examined and the experience of the viewer, involuntary being forced to follow the gaze of the camera." T. Kjellmark  

Delving for a brief moment into an everyday scene, we see various movements at various speeds and experience microstories representing the familiarity of the street. The classical technique of analytical slowing down different parts of the image at different speeds is used to capture an otherwise invisible phenomenon. “Sometimes in a flash you become aware of the fact that time does not matter.” M. Manchevski

Traces of unrelenting wind and the edges of harsh light create tangible and illusory shapes within space. Patient observations reveal compositions of light and sand in the Tafilalt region of the Sahara Desert, which used to be the bottom of a prehistoric ocean, as hinted at by the subtle sound composition. Terra Jean Long (1983) lives in Toronto and teaches at the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT). Her films tell personal stories in a setting that mixes dream, fiction, and reality. She has shown her works at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, among other festivals.“The Tafilalt region in the Sahara Desert was once the Rheic Ocean. 350 MYA conjures the o cean’s presence in the landscape, deep time in the folds of space.”

Consistent manipulation of found footage showing people and faces in an urban landscape dissolved their movements into visual echoes. The melancholy remnants of the original film are subjected to the digital poetry of blurriness and the loss of meaning, gestures, and physical movements. “Producing a film includes the process of creating copies. Duplication is built into the medium itself. The change in to new form creates a different experience, though nothing has changed in the content.” S. A. Fruhauf

Images recorded on a Lomography Supersampler, which photographs four immediately sequential moments on one frame of 35mm film, multiply the illusion of rhythmic movement and create a visual melody that hurtles forward, while the imprint of the moment remains fixed in place. The drum performance emphasizes the minimalist sharpness of the patterns. "Where do we go, in a time where borders are going to be closed again? The feeling of freedom has gone. I try to break down visual borders to rebuild a base for the spirit of freedom again." S. A. Fruhauf  

Observing a volcanic crater opens up a narrative filled with allusions and intimations that create an imaginary city along the lines of the metropolis of Brasilia inside the Cape Verdean volcano Pico de Fogo. A projection of an urban plan creates a world of possible stories, while shots of the urban model take us on a walk along the geometry of the city where even the cloud cover has been calculated. Portuguese filmmaker Joana Pimenta (1986) lives and works in the USA and Brazil. Her films and video installations work with techniques from visual anthropology. Previously at Jihlava, she showed her film debut The Figures Carved into the Knife by the Sap of the Banana Trees (2014), in which she used invented memories to construct a dream correspondence between the Madeira islands and the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique.“There I found myself, time traveler, space archaeolo gist, trying to rebuild exoticism out of wrecks and remainders.”

As the film comes undone from the projector, the perforated edges become visible and reveal the illuminated image as an imprint of light. Splotches of colour with vague meanings enter into the picture frame. “In the early 19th century, watches had a rack and pinion lever escapement. No longer used, I still find it endearing and try to create a similar beauty in my own way.” H. Kawaguchi

The melancholic atmosphere of wandering a landscape scarred by kitschy disco rainbows and colorful illustrations opens up the possibility of an extra-planetary consciousness sending a message in which references to the laws of thermodynamics and Mayan symbolism encounter critical interpretations of an expected confrontation between humanity and the cosmos.   "‘IT‘ knows." Yin-Ju Chen

Genre conventions cleverly broken down with animations, breaking through the scenery of rural Mexico, where in the area surrounding the director’s family farm, symbols of stories of physical desire conceal a layer of idyllic childhood memories and come into conflict with the traditional concept of masculinity and identity expression.   "By centering queer desire within the story of my Mexican-American family, I validate my own lived experience as well as challenge popular representation of masculinity, power and vulnerability." A. G. Gomez