Short Joy

An original video diary documenting the director's efforts to have artificial insemination. Cuthand describes his desire to have children of his own and the difficult journey he must take to have them, a journey that is also closely tied to his membership in Canada's First Nations and thus to the question of preserving his indigenous culture.“Grieving people who never were is harder than it seems.” (TJ Cuthand)---Source: https://asinabkafestival.org/portraits-short-docs

Marina is 26 years old and works as a prostitute to pay for her college education. She came to this work by accident and in the best possible way – in a feminist, safe environment and surrounded by people who care about her well-being. Together they face situations accompanied by exaggerated demands and prejudices.“Together they face the construction of a contemporary society full of demands and judgements against the slightest inconsistency.”---Source: https://archivodelcortometraje.es/en/cortometraje/30-70-60-120/

Picture a Polish village in the middle of nowhere. In it, there are groups of peculiar, old, bearded men who spare no judgment on the world and themselves. While the coronavirus pandemic rages on in the outside world, life on the periphery moves as slowly as ever. The only difference now is that a new topic has been added into the mix of their existential debates.“And people will drop like flies.”

A young author sets off to Argentina to seek the lost fragments of her life story. Using the archival photographs and a personal narrative, this autobiographical reconstruction of a family history documents how world history shaped the outcome of one summer fling, the emergence of new families and their tragic separation.“Paris fills me with joy. But I leave for Buenos Aires anyway.”

Amazonia, 19th century. Alexandrina was a woman whose features and skin color made her an object of observation. An exhibit that a white colonizer could examine, evaluate, and own. But the legacy that Alexandrina and hundreds of others with similar fates left behind survives to this day. In their faces, rituals, jewellery, and symbols. “In this war, we all fight against the death of memory.”

In 1772, Englishwoman Mary Delany wrote to her niece: “I have found a new way of imitating flowers.” The imitation in question was the art form called decoupage, based on cut-outs and reshuffling of pictures. The charm and botanical precision of these works attracts attention of even today’s artists, among others by an anonymous programmer who is trying to invent a way of capturing the flowers’ vivacity in pictures. With this aim in mind, she has created an algorithm, which would combine science and beauty, similarly to Delaney’s efforts, whose illustrations it is meant to animate.“As a director, I take the opposite side of my training: I have no fascination for what is called a ‘beautiful image’. I explore the limits of the video signal, between overexposure and absolute black, to push the limits of digital pictures.” (Miléna Trivier)---Source: https://screen.brussels/fr/professional/milena-trivier

“Are you proud of yourself?” This was a question asked in 2020 by a father of one of female voluntary workers who had just come back from a rescue mission searching for drowning refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. Instead of a reply, an open letter came to life, followed by a film illustration of the feelings of ugliness and hopelessness, composed of sea waves mingling with various film footage.“In July 2020, a young volunteer returning on the humanitarian aid ship Sea Watch 3 writes to her father. The text of this letter is put into perspective through different registers of travel images (animation, Super 8, archives…).”---Source: https://www.shortfilmwire.com/en/film/200110598/En-col_re

Beneath the sheets where a young couple lies from morning to evening, there were long swelling problems. Sometimes love itself is too little, even when one’s bedroom eyes say otherwise. An intimate film devoid of tabloid clichés that examines the bed of two lovers who can no longer run away from the inevitable truth.“We don't know if our love outweighs the negativity of our dynamics.”

Two prisons in the American Northwest conduct a mental health experiment. Prisoners are shown videos of nature, something many of them haven’t experienced in decades. The film is a meditation on isolation, humankind's relationship with nature, and the fact that songbirds singing and strolls in the forest aren't to be taken for granted.“Equal parts meditation and provocation, Blue Room identifies the damage done by withholding access to the outdoors and how we are all prisoners when the essential human need for communion with nature is denied.” (Angie Driscoll)---Source: https://hotdocs.ca/whats-on/hot-docs-festival/films/2022/blue-room

In the winter of 2021/2022, a crisis broke at the Polish-Belarussian border, with Syrian migrants trying to cross the frontier. In the no-man’s land in between the two countries, they were suffering from hunger and diseases. A group of Polish female volunteer workers were making all possible efforts to bring humanitarian relief to them, but often with no avail. This led to frustration, anxiety and fatigue, all captured in this film observing the work of volunteers on the spot.“The migration crisis won’t disappear in Poland, but when you think about the scale about the whole world? Maybe sometimes you think you’re useless, you can help just few people among all.” (a female volunteer worker)

As part of a series mapping the industrial buildings that shaped the history of Slovakia, a half-live action, half-mythical portrait of people who dedicated their lives to Okras in Čadca, Slovakia was created. The cooperative enterprise was one of the few to survive the regime change and the post-Soviet rise of competition and still supplies Christmas decorations to Slovak and foreign shops.“Mapping industrial heritage is an important part of our cultural memory. We owe a debt to her. While industrial architecture abroad is the subject of research centres, and abandoned water reservoirs, breweries, and glassworks are transformed into lively cultural centres or original residential housing after conversion, in Slovakia there is no systematic inventory of industrial buildings.“ — Peter Kerekes---Source: https://mojakultura.sk/dokumentarny-cyklus-budujeme-slovensko-sa-vracia-na-obrazovky-rtvs/

Norms and artificial constructs regarding the body image have a negative impact mostly on women. In this liberating gesture of a documentary essay we can see not only a rich tapestry of human physicality, but also differences in our individuality and self-awareness. We are different not only in our looks, but also in the way we see, perceive and experience ourselves.“A visual exploration of the female body and self-awareness, gently told by a variety of women using their own bodies as canvas.”---Source:https://cphdox.dk/film/red-lines-white-lines-fine-lines-eva-a-visual-essay-on-the-female-body-kiss-me-never-letters-from-st-petersburg-toxic-magnus/

The steel industry once put Luxembourg's economy on its feet. After the industry died out, what remained of it was deserted, colossal buildings and lives scarred by unsafe working conditions. However, for many, these hazardous jobs still represented a daily beacon of hope and financial security. This monumental film stands in the memory of the labor that went on behind four factory walls, documenting in “memento mori” fashion the vanishing world of industrial workers.“Forgotten spaces filled with memories from past lives: GLIMMER is a sound immerse journey through the once so flourishing steel industry in the heart of Europe. Told through a very personal lens, the film reminisces what the industry meant for humanity.”---Source: https://simonehart.com/discontinued

The Guadiana River, which forms the link between Portugal and Spain and serves as a powerful source of water supplying vital energy to the entire southeastern Iberian Peninsula, may soon dry up completely. Like many other rivers, its very existence has come under threat by climate change, which is also, in turn, leading to the demise of the rhythmic cadences that have resounded along this water flow for centuries.“We, human beings, are a plague. A plague that is overloading its own planet. And, what's worse, a plague that is aware of being so.”

A documentary essay raising the question what could be seen as pornography, in what ways a viewer should watch it and who is supposed to be its subject. Based on the ideas of theoreticians in porn studies, the film reveals some ideological and esthetic influences of this visual form, a representation of physical pleasure aiming to raise a similar kind of physical pleasure in its viewers.“A variety of hazy, lo-fi clips rub up against an isolated digerati immersed in temporary pornutopias. Why not name it a small collection, a modest archive of sexual imageries and pleasures?”---Source:https://mikehoolboom.com/?p=20435

At the end of the 1970s, the Taiwanese coastline was dotted by several futuristic, elliptical buildings that became known as “UFO Houses”. However, this beachfront resort, cheekily catering to the fantasy of American lifestyle, soon failed and the legacy of visionary real estate agents now stands as a ghost town. The author in his film essay ponders over capitalism, architecture and the meanings of utopia, combining digital and celluloid materials to build up audiovisual experience with a similar kind of energy to that of these “UFO Houses”. “After decades, real estate speculators and opportunists were long gone, what remains is the northeast monsoon wind howling across the semi-abandoned houses. After all, history is repeating itself, akin to annual crab migration.” (Chun-Tien Chen)---Source: https://filmfreeway.com/ChronicleofNowhere927

The film is a glimpse into the everyday life of one of many Georgian women working as live-in maids in Greece. A short testimony on separation, a life lacking in background and privacy, a difficult and low-paid job and importance of human decency, providing these women with a force preventing them from surrendering into the feelings of inferiority.“Working as a live-in maid is not a job, it is a sacrifice.”

Eldar, a film student and transgender man, prepares to visit his conservative Russian grandmother, who has no idea that she no longer has a granddaughter, but a grandson. In this autobiographical film, he chronicles his transformation into his former female identity for the purpose of this visit, while preparing his film. In it, a fictional encounter takes place in which he comes out to his grandmother – just not the real one. The documentary is a personal account of identity and intergenerational conflict in the post-Soviet world.“There is nothing to say about my grandmother. She had the life of an ordinary Soviet woman: Pioneers, the Communist Party, a cheating husband, an incessant household. She devoted her whole life to raising children: my mother, and then later me. I hope that it paid off considering how it turned out.” (Eldar Basmanov)

Hortence has been pregnant four times in her life and she is a mother of seven children. She takes good care of all of them, but four of them are wooden statuettes. According to voodoo, which counts as an official religion in Benin, twins dispose of a strange mystical power, which bestows on them almost a divine status. “Twins are reincarnation of the gods on Earth. They come into the world with an inexplicable mystical force.”

An idiot for some, a genius for others. Zoran is an urban legend of a Serbian block of flats who allegedly travelled the whole world without a single ID on him. After that, he went nuts due to politics, war and MDMA. “I saw it with my own naked eye,” nodded a half-blind old man. Though a clear answer to the question who Zoran really was is not to be expected at the end of this semi-serious manhunt, it is more than sure that even if he did not exist, the locals must have had to think him up.“I’ve known the guy since I was seven years old, I’ve got endless stories.”

A meditative film revealing urban and natural recesses crossed by endless nooks of industrial piping intertwining its surroundings like a Uroboros serpent. The pipes guide the camera eye across large fields and blocks of flats, connecting canoeists, kids at play and a bubbling stream, serving as silent witnesses to their living existence.„Jsme tu společně a naše činy ovlivňují další lidi a prostor, ve kterém se nacházíme.“---Source: https://afo.cz/host/sarah-lomenova/

This film applies historic data to link the recent epidemic with migration, colonization and xenophobia in order to create a context for the events in the world struck with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using voice-over and collages of archival videos, photos and newspapers, a story of recurring models of human behaviour at times of crises is told, revealing an unfavourable basis of so-called civilization.“So we should be thinking about outbreaks as somehow metaphorically reminding us of the social disorder that we need to address.” (Patricia J. Williams)

A compilation of scenes from classic Hollywood films, in which a man is touching a woman’s elbow, attributes a deeper meaning to the simple gesture. It does not matter if the man is helping the woman to get on a train or if he is assaulting her; the gesture gradually becomes more and more sinister, emphasizing sexist subtext, ubiquitous in classic Hollywood cinema.“One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‚fantasy woman‘ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about.“ (Jane Campion)---Source: https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/7660-jane-campion

The unsuccessful attempt of polar explorer Roald Amundsen to reach the North Pole by air in 1925 is the subject of a unique archival documentary. The footage, shot in the icy wasteland on a 16mm camera, is supplemented by artificial post-synchros imitating the crunching of snow, the rumbling of wind, and other sounds from the end of the world.“How to represent the conquest of a place that is an absolutely empty geographical abstraction?”---Source: https://marvinwayne.com/en/la-banquisa

A meditative symphony on the city and death. The filmmaker returns to places where he, 18 years earlier, had made a film about suicide. Now, in the crowded streets of Tehran and in the city’s rundown corners with flanked walls, he searches for the reasons that had led three sisters to end their lives together.“Their lives summarized in a few sentences; sentences are all in the past tense, there is no future nor present.”

For thirty years now, a dilapidated house has been providing essential asylum to war refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh. Three generations, including the children and grandchildren of people made to leave their homes, struggle to scratch an existence on the outskirts of Baku. They are faced with common problems: loss of home, outrooting, sadness and illnesses. “Since the end of the second war, I have often dreamed of our own home.”

Naoto Matsumara is the only person permanently residing around the Fukushima nuclear power plant where, in 2011, a major nuclear incident occurred. Matsumara decided to stay in this exclusion zone and now devotes his time to taking care of the abandoned animals. This observational documentary is a reflection on the disasters caused by man-made technology and on the environmental crisis and its consequences. The film is part of the We Have to Survive documentary project, which aims to draw attention to the current and future effects of the climate crisis.“That's mankind. They all agree so long as it's comfortable for them. If there are hard times, nobody cooperates. And that's how we'll end up.” (Naoto Matsumara)

Using the method of pure observation, Viktor Németh focuses on depicting the life in ZONA (one of the last ghettos in Amadora, Lisbon), raising a lot of questions: is it an art group, community, or simply a lifestyle? Fragments of visually inventive pictures, shattering sounds of electronic music mercilessly flowing from loudspeakers and blurred frames of interactions, inaccessible to us, only intensify the mythicized character of ZONA.“It is quite well known that there are still some 'ghettos' really close to the center of Lisbon. … These neighborhoods are mythicized as places so dangerous and ungovernable that even the police wouldn't dare set foot in them. In reality, the inhabitants of these areas are forming a very strong and tight community.”---Source: additional text by the director