Moments in the life of a young Japanese filmmaker in Bosnia, charged with acoustic and visual poetry. Buoyant and essayistic entries in a process of self- and world-reassurance.
Kaori Oda
as Herself
Following the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City, one item of clothing has gained a scandalous global reputation: the headscarf. All over the world, a major debate is going on about whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear the headscarf in public.
Between 1993 and 1995, artist and photographer Louis Jammes took pictures of people on the streets of Sarajevo under siege and gave them angelic face and wings. Then he put his huge portraits on destroyed city walls. Suddenly, it seems as life is getting back with their arrival, because they brought a sense of peace, beauty, nostalgia...
I went to Bosnia after war ended, in 1996, when the Danton Peace Accord was being implemented. Bosnia had been divided in two entities, which separated the two main opposing forces of the conflict; the Serb Bosnians and the Muslim Bosnians. Two years later, in 1998, I returned to Bosnia... This movie is a diary of the two voyages, in which I deal with the memories of the war, the death and destruction and with the victim’s struggle who don’t know how to return home.
X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.
Filmmaker Sabina Vajraca documents her Bosnian Muslim family's return to their home of Banja Luka, Bosnia, to recover their stolen belongings many years after being forced to flee to the United States. In Bosnia, they witness the devastation of the city, visit war crimes sites, and confront the family that has been living in their former apartment -- with all their furnishings -- for a decade.
Love and admiration in 16mm. The fusion a beauty that exists throughout three generations; my three Venus.
A collection of material shot before and during WW2 in the director’s hometown of Banja Luka, where its quiet life was disrupted by the enemy.
A surreal exploration of the war in Bosnia told through the unbreakable spirit of seven of her people whose strength to leave was as powerful as the fight to stay. Through the lens of diaspora, the film captures not just the weight of displacement, but the defiant act of survival and the unwavering pursuit of home, no matter where the journey leads.
An excerpt about the troubled, passionate and intriguing relationship of an actor with his own life.
An isolated filmmaker struggles to connect with others in the absence of cameras. When he becomes creatively stuck, the world around him begins to dissolve.
A young woman, who has inherited her grandparents' huge house, a fascinating place full of amazing objects, feels overwhelmed by the weight of memories and her new responsibilities. Fortunately, the former inhabitants of the house soon come to her aid. (An account of the life and work of Fernando Fernán Gómez [1921-2007] and his wife Emma Cohen [1946-2016], two singular artists and fundamental figures of contemporary Spanish culture.)
Outtakes, commentary from Zefier's third film: Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike.
Francesca Svampa’s dreamlike portrait of Barcelona, shot in double exposure on reversible 8mm film, is interwoven with Svampa’s intimate, reminiscent telling of her personal micro-memories, as a woman, filmmaker, and immigrant.