The Lamp in the Ceiling

This compilation of various moments of silence held after tragic events in various parts of the world and at various points in recent history is also a documentary representation of collective human memory. The collage of short scenes without words captures fleeting but forceful moments of solidarity that bring together people regardless of race, religion, or cultural differences.DETAIL:The door opens, and to the sound of camera shutters President Barack Obama and his wife walk down the middle of several rows of people who have gathered to remember the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

A shop by the side of the road. One after another, people enter and exit the small building. The randomness and illogical nature of the action feels unreal. The sense of timelessness and of being in an unnamed place further heightens the dreamlike nature of the scene. The nearly motionless black-and-white camera records a fragment of life in a place torn from the context of the world.

The director and his camera dive into the world of small organisms. Insects, clams and mushrooms are shot in macro close-ups to create richly textured video images. The filmmaker’s presence in the footage reflects man’s interference in the natural order of nature. Hirofumi Nakamoto publishes his 2016 Spacecraft Diaries.

They are happy together, but she gets a job offer in another country and he doesn’t want to go. He tries to sway her decision in his favour by offering to marry her… In its format, the film perhaps most closely resembles a music video, but besides music it also uses poetry and dance to tell its story. Shot on an iPhone 7 Plus. 

The film assembles images from the daily work of livestock breeders in the unhospitable Hungarian steppe, where the universal laws of time have ceased to apply. The interplay between the panoramic shots of the landscape combined with details of daily farm life create a gloomy vision of a place that dooms all who live there, human and animal alike, to decay.

In the Western Sahara desert, large cars disintegrate into the sand, surrounded by a refugee camp. Against a yellow backdrop of sand, two small boys play in one of the wrecks. A static shot like a moving photograph of time, which flows slowly in the refugee camp.DETAIL:Hamdi and Ali are playing in a rusty car wreck. They take turns in singing songs that sound almost as if they were sang by grown men and not by two kids from a refugee camp.

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.

An observational look at the interaction between two elderly women: 100-year-old Ema and her six years younger sister Zosie. The camera sensitively documents how these two once famous hostesses try to bake a cake at their advanced age. In so doing, it offers a perceptive portrait of their personalities and their relationships.  

The lost magic of postcards is explored on film in this FAMU student exercise. A mosaic composed of seasonal motifs and short messages illustrates the relationship of several people to Věra. The passage of time is shown only by the change in the heads of state on the postage stamps. Will the mysterious recipient be found?DETAIL:“My dear Mrs. Bechyňová, I found a box with 254 postcards in an antique bookshop on Spálená Street. They were all addressed to you and were being sold for one crown each. P.S. Is anything wrong with you?”

This film gives one of the many refugees who were unjustly imprisoned in detention centers located close to European borders a chance to tell his story. His horrifying experience is reflected in the static, well-composed, deep focus shots, which reveal traces of lingering suffering in the abandoned buildings.

“(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.

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.