Colonialism, war, artificial intelligence and apocalyptic scenarios, among the concerns of the filmmakers in the program.
Conceived as a platform for exploring new trends and forms of cinematic expression, but also to promote new voices, International Short Film Competitionthe longest-running competitive section of the festival BIEFFreturns with 36 movies provocative, chosen from the 1450 registered at the 14th edition of the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival. The selected short films come from 22 countries, and more than 20 of them are directed or co-directed by female filmmakers. The entire selection of films will be able to be seen, for the first time in Romania, during the period September 24 – 29in Bucharest.
Made by Oana Ghera, the artistic director of the festival, together with Flavia Dima, Dora Leu and Călin Boto, curators, this year’s selection is discursively organized into 7 curatorial programs that interrogate and deconstruct the gaze and the usual models of representation in cinema. At the same time, this year’s films invite the public to dialogue and critical reflection on some current topics of socio-political interest: from the analysis of the various ways of relating (between people, but also with technology and artificial intelligence), to the processing of abuses and traumas – individual, historical, war.
BIEFF.14 passes and tickets have gone on sale and are available on eventbook.ro.
Both sassy and poignant, the mold Objects of Desire addresses the topic of artificial intelligence self-awareness in The Oasis I Deservea Black Mirror directed by Inès Sieulle, and proposes two creative formulas to transpose aspects of affective memory on the screen, in Crushed, directed by Camille Vigny, and Loveboarddirected by Felipe Casanova. It comes from the Berlinale Towards the Sun, Far from the Center, directed by Pascal Viveros and Luciana Merino, which wants to free the viewer from the contemporary obsession with 4K and ultra-clarity, and Ludwig (Power Inferno) by Anton Bialas is an irreverent tribute to the glacial biopic about Ludwig II of Bavaria directed by Luchino Visconti in 1973.
program Frames of War it questions both the content and the production of images surrounding war, the violent processes of colonialism and imperialism. The mold is opened by WONDERthrough which the Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari problematizes the representation of the Palestinians, a people whose right to their own image is suppressed. Continue with Man number 4by Miranda Pennell, which invites an understanding of the context in which we consume images of the atrocity in Gaza. In I Would Rather Be a Stonedirected by Ana Hušman, nature is subjected to the same war traumas as those of the human spirit, and in Unwanted KinshipPavel Mozhar investigates the systemic nature of Russian and Belarusian war crimes in Ukraine, exploring their own responsibility in relation to the war. The mold ends with Like a Sick Yellow, in which Norika Sefa problematizes both the traditional female gender role and the social rituals it entails.
program Works and Days captures the problems of contemporaneity in films like To Exist Under Permanent Suspiciona thriller with the appearance of a fashion film about the corporate hell that is the La Défense area of Paris, The Seventh Shiftby Ukrainian Nataliya Ilchuk, a disturbing look at the desperate essence of proletarian life in late capitalism: work and loneliness and Workers’ Wings, signed by Ilir Hasanaj, who leans on former workers who suffered debilitating work accidents and lost everything because of them. In Very Gentle Work, Nate Lavey presents a facet of New York as the key city of the American anarchist movement, and Gala Hernández López’s film, for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the worldinvestigates the decline of an ideology that is beginning to belong to the past – the cryptocurrency utopia.
Calupul Atlas of Extinction investigates our relationship with nature, which today is at its most catastrophic point in history. The posthuman worlds, where animals are at the helm (Magnifica: Passive Intruder, Lick a Wound and Of the Rooster Who Ovated) or where nature has already taken over the buildings (I Accidentally Stepped on a Flower)shows us evidence and chances of resistance beyond the damage and violations already committed by the human race (The Moving Garden).
Following the logic of dreams, the six films that make up the program Lucid Nighmares erase the border between history and fiction, real and surreal, between the collective consciousness and the marginal subconscious, as happens in 315directed by Daniel Jacoby. detours while speaking of monsters is a topographical dialogue about the myths of heroes in search of antagonists, and in 512×512 a netizen goes into the bowels of artificial intelligence to understand how this synthetic consciousness of the visual memory of the world works. Dull Spots of Greenish Colours by Sasha Svirsky looks at how the online environment is overloading us in an attention war that risks becoming a real war due to political manipulation, and The Night of The Minotaur uses archival material to construct the story of Luz Emilia García, the pioneer of pornographic cinema in Colombia. In Coldnessby Andrea Sánchez, the howls and screams of a late-80s B-horror movie make their way through the streets of Andorra, creating a rift between the country’s cinematic past and present.
Program directors Colonial Follies they examine the ridiculousness of human ambition while also reclaiming spaces and narratives from the past and infusing them with their own subjectivity. The Third World After the Sun traces the connection between rubber exploitation and colonialism, while Wild Fruits by Brazilian Bernardo Zanotta, is a reimagining of everything we know and don’t know about Michel de Montaigne, his principles and loves. The mold is completed by When We Encounter the World, an unexpected adaptation after the myth of the cave, Parallel Botanyand statement about the nature of our infinite curiosity and The Mars Project, a fascinating film montage about the colonization of space and the spread of capitalism beyond Earth.
Last but not least, the schedule Picture Perfect offers a thorough and exhaustive analysis of the representation of gender roles and identity. Blueby director Violena Ampudia, is the result of a collaborative process with several women who have faced postnatal depression, and getty abortions analyze how the media portrays the topic of abortion. Loving in Between of Jyotri Mistri is a playful investigation of female corporeality, while Razeh-DelMaryam Tafakory’s latest film tells the story of a short-lived women’s magazine in 1990s Iran. And The Sunet Special 2by Nicolas Gebbe, is a sharp satire of the petty-bourgeois aspirations typical of the family nucleus in the days of techno-feudal capitalism.
Films included in the BIEFF International Short Film Competition compete for three prizes (the BIEFF Best International Short Film Award, the Best Director Award and the Best Visual Concept Award), each worth 1000 the euro.
The winners will be chosen by a jury of professionals in the field of cinema consisting of Morena Faverinco-artistic director of the Lago Film Festival, Azin FeizabadiIranian-born filmmaker and curator, member of the Berlinale Shorts selection committee, and Niels Putman, co-founder and editor of Talking Shorts magazine, artistic director of the Kortfilm.be platform and collaborator of Film Fest Gent and Fantoche Int’l Animation Film Festival.
Organizer: Manekino Cultural Association in partnership with Printer Com
Funders: Administration of the National Cultural Fund, Ministry of Culture, National Center of Cinematography
Main partners: Avanpost, LUNO, French Institute in Romania, Goethe Institute, Italian Institute of Culture, Polish Institute Bucharest, Austrian Cultural Forum, Porter Novelli Public Relations
Mobility partner: Black Cab
Hotel partner: Moxy Bucharest Old Town
Hub gastronomic: I have Bistro
Seen by: Radio Guerrilla
Media partners: Agerpres, News.ro, Zile și Nopți, Scena9, Films in Frame, Glass Roof, GLAMOR Romania, Mindcraft Stories, Literary Magazine MATCA, Liternet, FILM Magazine, Ziarul Metropolis, Happ.ro, Observator Cultural, Zeppelin Magazine, IQads, MovieNews.ro, Cinefan.ro, Cinefilia.ro
Source: www.iqads.ro
