Always Here

A three-hundred-kilometer unmaintained dirt road is the only way to reach the nearest hospital from a remote African village. Through naturalistic observational camerawork, the film captures the journey of an ambulance driver in southern Ethiopia struggling to overcome all possible obstacles in order to safely deliver a laboring woman to the doctors.

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.

A group of men share a small space in a prison metal workshop in Botosani, Romania. When they’re not working, they animatedly discuss religion and hypocrisy, lament during tea that they don’t have onions for sausage, or joke and sing. The method of filming, in which the camera is only an non-intrusive observer, only reinforces the monotony of the actors’ movements and experiences.   Watch Short Joy films for free on DAFilms now and decide who will win the Audience Award. Voting ends on 29 October.

An intimate statement about the filmmaker’s need for self-expression through her own nudity and simultaneously an effort to reject the taboo of patriarchal society. Using diary entries, anger-filled personal reflections, and discussions with a mother painting her nude daughter, the film opens the topic of overcoming shame for one’s own physicality and female sexuality.   „Manifest, is a very personal film, getting closer to understanding me, and my mother's czech background. I have always wished for it, to be shown in Moravia, Czechia, where my mother grew up.“ A. Rytter     Watch Short Joy films for free on DAFilms now and decide who will win the Audience Award. Voting ends on 29 October.

This politico-aesthetic essay is based on found footage from the filmmaker’s family archive. The horrifying parallel between horse breeding and the Nazi racial ideology takes on sharp contours thanks to the dry commentary and the montages of seemingly meaningless, coldly real images, which do not allow the film to drop down to the level of a mental or emotional exploitation of the topic.

This delicate film, shot in a region with a strong Shinto tradition, tries to capture the Shinto emphasis on man’s harmony with nature. Without explaining, the film depicts rituals associated with the felling and planting of trees, which are seen as living beings. The film gives equal time to human actions, restrained discourse, trees, the wind and the sunlight, which almost mystically always enters the ritual at exactly the right time.DETAIL:Slowly and gently, he places his right cheek and ear against the stately felled trunk. He closes his eyes and listens. To European eyes, someone with the face of a boy at a dance club has just begun a reverent ceremony that will comfort the body and soul of another being.

A film about one of the many forms of love, shot sensitively and without pathos. Daniela and Fouad met purely by chance. She is alone and he needs a residence permit. Over time, their pragmatically motivated relationship weaves the two protagonists into a fragile web of intimacy. But Fouad’s professions of love start to be a hindrance for Daniela.

The film is a skit on the parallels between a caretaker and a security guard embodied by the character of a young man who keeps watching over everything all the time. Repetitive and automated everyday tasks are accentuated by monotonous aesthetics of the camera and a slow-moving pace, introducing the audience into the world of Korean pragmatic mentality and sense of responsibility. 

The goal the protagonist of the film has set for himself seems impossible to him: to contact his former partner in order to see his own son. On a deeper level, this video essay on what is and isn't possible unifies the footage it uses - videos freely accessible on YouTube and a monochromatic yellow filter through which they are presented.

The camera enters an office. The receptionist answers the telephone, her co-workers drink coffee during their break and talk about their plans. Later, there is a meeting. The stiffness of the situation reveals a hidden story. What exactly took place from June 2015 to September 2016 in the government building in Amsterdam?

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?”

FilmBEACH works on both the material and symbolic level to show various ways of using the world. It is a visually moving combination of masses of people on the beach, ants programmed to serve the greater whole, and a man whose ancestors were Maasai warriors who believed that photographs can rob you of your. The film tries the opposite – to show souls where they are visible.