EstrAtti (Passages)

Makina Sa Tao

Machines can only function with a human who operates. It is an inseparable relationship where the two often overlap—machines malfunction, humans malfunction. Machines are machines; humans can be machines.

Ya viene el cortejo…

Women from the different Spanish regions dress in their traditional costumes to attend the triumphal parade celebrating the victory of Francisco Franco and the rebel side over the Second Republic in 1939; the deeds of past heroes are remembered; and a patriotic poem by Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío is recited.

Kenneth Anger: Film as Magical Ritual

Anger discusses his Aleister Crowley-inspired theories of art: How he views his camera like a wand and how he casts his films, preferring to consider his actors, not human beings but as elemental spirits. In fact, he reveals that he goes so far as to use astrology when making these choices. This is as direct an explanation of Anger’s cinemagical modus operandi as I have ever heard him articulate anywhere. It’s a must see for anyone interested in his work and showcases the Magus of cinema at the very height of his artistic powers. Fascinating. (Dangerous Minds)

Madeleine

A stop motion/collaged based independent short film plays with the recontextualisation of memories and how time distorts them.

They Are Here

Dangling from a high window, a young non-binary person is on the cusp of life and death. Flashes of film, literature, art (paintings) and cultural history pass them by, as if to tell a message. A postmodern treatise on connection to culture and the past.

Passion

At first glance, Jean-Claude Rousseau’s films seem like quickly outlined sketches. They are snapshots of various situations and locations, as in this program of nine miniatures, shot in hotel rooms and parks, at the shore of a lake, and – in the longest contribution – on a restaurant terrace. Rousseau’s observations of everyday life, however, are about precision rather than contemplation. With each minute that passes, they sharpen the view of the observant and expectant outsider for a moment of surprise – be it a jump into the water or a huge crucifix.

Usmanbaş: Modernist

Türkiye’s modernization adventure is an intermittent one that carries the pains of transition from empire to republic and of geographical liminality in every aspect of culture. At the center of this arduous modernist attitude in art is İlhan Usmanbaş, who was born in 1921 in the Ottoman Empire, whose atonal music of the 1950s influenced not only the field of music but also literature. As an essay film, Modernist: Usmanbaş both traces the composer's insistence on playing 20th century music in his compositions and visual notation and follows him in the private nursing home where he lived from the age of 100 to 103. While the film records Usmanbaş's curiosity in natural history and the intellectual structure he built between music, science and mathematics with the testimonies of the last years of his life, it also makes references to modernist art in formal terms as a meta attitude.

Cartas de Arapuca

Streams of White

A sitting man listens to his thoughts, but can't catch any of them.

310 Tung Chau Street

310 Tung Chau Street is a tenement building in Sham Shui Po. Three Vietnamese from the same province share a subdivided flat. Unemployment, drug addiction, and arguments brew and breed incessantly in this heated environment. During filming, the two young directors were encumbered by a series of obstacles, which turned the process into a chance to reflect on documentary truth.

Golden Chains

A new exploration of familiar places located in the region of Rhône and Isère throught an reinvention of digital nuances, a study of perceptions and fluidity around the nature of motion in landscapes and human interactions.

Inside Voices

A short experimental film about the human race taking over nature.

Fluid Fragments

A roll and a half made to delight in color and the presence of friends. Steps toward learning to read in the dark.

Persistencies of Sadness & Still Days (Take 1)

“Persistencies of Sadness & Still Days”, is a four hour feature film by Maximilian Le Cain and Rouzbeh Rashidi. Structured in two sections or ‘takes’ of two hours each, this dream-like, experimental project offers two complementary explorations of cinematic form that skirt around possible narratives, ducking through a series of fluctuating audio-visual categories and intensities.

Running Fields II

Fifteen images of a camera running in a park and in obscurity searching the space of light through distorsion and the sensory of rapid motion.

Proximities

Proximities focuses on the trope of the Malay Boy found in the works of Singaporean artist Cheong Soo Pieng (b. 1917-1983). It attempts to locate the Malay male in art history while unpacking underlying systems of power that have shaped and naturalised the understanding of difference.