Films - BIEFF

MY BACTERIAL SELF HELPS ME SLEEP

With an interest in the ecology of nonhuman life, Adrian Ganea and Chlorys propose a work that explores and studies shapeless masses, slippery sludges and slime structures – the template for all organic beings and all eventual thought on Earth.

MAY JUNE JULY

Kevin Jerome Everson | Durata 8 min.

The months of May, June, and July are represented with peonies, fireflies, and the year 2020. A rollerblader traverses Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington D.C.

“THE RED FILTER IS WITHDRAWN.”

Minjung Kim | Durata 11 min.

Numerous colonial places, including coastal caves and military bunkers hidden inside volcanic craters, as well as memories of uprisings and massacres are found in every corner of Jeju Island. .

13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD

Ana Vaz | Durata 31 min.

Taking its title from the poem by Wallace Stevens “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the film is composed of a series of attempts at looking and being looked at.

AUTOTROFIA

Anton Vidokle | Durata 31 min.

Shot in the village of Oliveto Lucano in the south of Italy, Autotrofia is simultaneously a documentation of a very ancient pagan fertility ritual that is still practiced in this region, and scripted fiction, based on writings by the painter Vassily Chekrygin and the scientist Vladimir Vernadsky.

KAPITA

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo | Durata 22 min.

“Ka-pi-ta”is the official job title given to Congolese charged with enforcing their white master’s bidding—through domination—over their fellow Congolese on plantations, in factories, in commerce, and other sites of capitalist extraction and production. In this film, Kapita becomes a simbol for the work of making visibile and decoding colonial representations.

AHORITA FRAMES

Angelika Levi | Durata 22 min.

"Ahorita Frames" moves from New York in 2001 across the border to Tijuana in 2019 the stories of the workers charged with disposing of the residual asbestos after 9/11 , thus reconfiguring the political cartography of power relations in America in the last two decades. The film not only describes the devaluation of migrant women, but also a system of cultural symbolism and its colonial narrative.

RE-DIT-EN-UN-IN-LEARNING

Laure Prouvost | Durata 13 min.

Using her signature fluid camera movements, Laure Prouvost returns with a mediation on the act of (un-)learning, musing on the tension between concepts such as change, interiority and exteriority, physicality and psychology.

ANTOLOGIA REALITĂȚII INVIZIBILE

Daria Corlățan | Durata 2 min.

What is invisible reality - one's own body, what is outside it, the inside or the energy of the three coexisting? Here, the sensory experience marks the act of living.

2020: A COVID SPACE ODYSSEY

Vladimir Potop, Alina Manolache | Durata 15 min.

The seven-month space mission of astronaut Jessica Meir catches the euphoria of the early days into zero gravity of the first all-female spacewalk, which is interrupted by a completely unexpected chance: that seeing the pandemic unfold from the heights of the planet’s orbit.

CROSSING THE STYX: WHISPERS FROM THE UNDERWORLD

Irinel Anghel, Alexandru Claudiu Maxim | Durata 25 min.

The underworld has always been a space of mystery, that invites people to set off on journeys that are both fascinating and frightening. It’s a metaphor that asks for introspection, reflection and reconsideration of the landmarks of individual and collective realities.

ELEFANT DEPARTE / ELEPHANT FAR AWAY

Teona Galgoțiu | Durata 12 min.

An alien who stuck on Earth because of the pandemic sends a report to the headquarters on her home planet, where she shares thoughts regarding people, dreams and trees.

GRIJILE OBIȘNUITE ALE SCAUNELOR GOALE

Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Adrian Ganea | Durata 5 min.

A hybrid between video poem and 3D simulation animates ghostly thoughts, unfamiliar movements and unlimited auras of objects to create a kind of fun dedicated to the empty seats in the deserted theaters of the pandemic era.

HARVEY

Ilinca Hărnuț | Durata 2 min.

Starting from Teodora Coman’s eponymous poem, "harvey" is a visual exploration of the self and the response to trauma in the context of the anthropocene.

COLLAPSUS

Simina Oprescu | Durata 9 min.

A critical look at a world that is splitting into two parties: one that wishes to colonize Mars and others that want to save the planet from global warming, as we are left to imagine science-fiction scenarios and future dystopias.

YOU WHO NEVER ARRIVED

Marius Olteanu | Durata 15 min.

Most experiences are ineffable; they happen in a space where no word has ever been spoken. And yet, there are words that connect people over time and shape their lives to have an inextricable connection. The journey of three men, partly dancing into the unknown, partly searching for meaning.

ERAM SOMNAMBUL CÂND AM VĂZUT TOATE ACELE CULORI

Bogdan Balla | Durata 11 min.

Inspired by Derek Jarman's Section 28 installation, the film compares stories from a recent history of the Romanian queer community with current personal experiences, linking them to lyrical observations about a still hidden present, a distillation of the distance between the silent realities of queer love and the hysteria of its public representation.

THE FUTURE IS A SAFE SPACE HIDDEN IN MY BRAIDS

Mihaela Drăgan | Durata 18 min.

Conceived as a video installation, „The Future is a Safe Place in My Braids” imagines performative rituals to heal the trauma of racism and projects a utopian future in which the Roma witch is the leader of a world in which she stops the historical cycle of oppression.

INNER OUTER SPACE

r.LAIDA LERTXUNDI | Durata 15'

Like all of Lertxundi’s work, Inner Outer Space is a film about relationships – between characters, between characters and landscape, between image and sound – but also, and ultimately, a deconstruction of the production process that highlights materiality and artifice.

NOTES, IMPRINTS (ON LOVE): PART I

Alexandra Cuesta | Durata 19 min.

A foreign city, the filmmaker’s surroundings, daily life. An accumulation of experiential instances that describe inhabiting a post-industrial landscape, the end of a love story, and the politics of the private and the public.

HOTEL ROYAL

Salome Lamas | Durata 29 min.

Hotel Royal is a fragmented and incomplete mosaic of contemporary societies. It could be dubbed as a film about the horrors of the soul, about voyeurs or simply about misfits.

VENTANA

Edgar Jorge Baralt | Durata 11 min.

A retrieved picture of a window elicits memories and the impulse to recreate a lost site. By this same window, an eight year old child feels the cold air on his face and imagines the future.

BLUE AFFAIR

Kosuke Okahara | Durata 13 min.

Recurring recollections of his time in the town of Koza started infiltrating the dreams of photographer Kosuke Okahara, pushing him to return to the dream and leaving reality.

IF YOUR HEART WANTS IT (REMIX)

Pilvi Takala | Durata 15 min.

Slush is a 3-day congress whose stakes are tech start-ups development, a capitalist outbreak where large investors intersect. "If your heart wants it (remix)" is a reconstruction of this event.

THE CAPACITY FOR ADEQUATE ANGER

Vika Kirchenbauer | Durata 15 min.

A self-reflective visual essay, "The Capacity For Adequate Anger" seeks to explore subjectivity as a nonviolent manifestation, a subjectivity whose anger is suppressed by social oppressing forces.

FANTASMA NEON

Leonardo Martinelli | Durata 20 min.

"Fantasma Neon" is a metaphor for the invisibility of delivery people, and for the indifference with which they are treated in a capitalist and neo-liberal society. Dance and music come into play in the film with a double stake: form of protest / coping mechanism.

LES DÉMONS DE DOROTHY

Alexis Langlois | Durata 29 min.

A young director struggles to make queer and campy films without funding and with the pressure to change her aesthetic out of necessity into a mainstream one, anxiety that materialises in a visit of her inner demons in one of her dreams.

VO

Nicolas Gourault | Durata 19 min.

The deadly accident caused by a software-driven car brings to light the vulnerability of even an AI to fault. VO proposes an issue of ethics regarding the instrumentalization of AI: is the agency of a computer reliable, or must it be fully regulated?

ONCE UPON A SCREEN: EXPLOSIVE PARADOX

Kevin B. Lee | Durata 9 min.

Taking as it's starting a memory of watching “Platoon” for the first time, in a cinema that doesn’t exist anymore, this piece of docu-videographic essay discusses the chasm between remembering and reenacting; between sheer shock upon seeing violence on screen versus turning it into something prosaic.

THE SAME DREAM

Vlad Petri | Durata 29 min.

The traumatic fiber of war soldiers is often sealed with images. One of them is this one. We’re in Afghanistan. A Romanian soldier driving an armed vehicle sees a wounded child. His recurrent nightmare is gazing over her olive eyes asking for help yet doing nothing to save her.

IN FLOW OF WORDS

Eliane Esther Bots | Durata 22 min.

There are rare cases when the lack of intervention could save lives. The protagonists of this film have to detach from their human empathy day by day, when they are asked to mediate between victim and aggressor. The interpreters can’t step into any of the sides, can’t walk into their shoes, and this dissolving task often festers wounds.

THIS DAY WON’T LAST

Mouaad El Salem | Durata 25 min.

An ode brought to the joie de vivre, constantly threatened to be unraveled. In Tunis, a homosexual could be sentenced to three years of prison. In his four-wall den, Mouaad films his surroundings with eagerness, tenderness, spontaneity. He sings James Blunt songs, dances, chats with his cat; is there any hope for another day tomorrow?

A LACK OF CLARITY

Stefan Kruse Jørgensen | Durata 22 min.

Using thermal camera footage found online, Stefan Kruse Jørgensen puts together uncanny images of day-to-day Paris while pondering on the history, proliferation and nature of surveillance technologies.

TRAIN AGAIN

Peter Tscherkassky | Durata 20 min.

Constructed as a homage to avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren and his masterpiece, “37/78 Tree Again”, “Train Again” sees Peter Tscherkassky delve once more into the depths of cinema history, revealing its inherent brutality.

MISTY PICTURE

Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller | Durata 16 min.

Before the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11, their image had turned into a visual leitmotif (or cliché) of films set in New York City throughout the 80s and 90s. In their latest found footage short, Giradet and Müller create a vast collage of such shots across a myriad of genres.

INFLORESCENCE

Nicolaas Schmidt | Durata 8 min.

Autumn again on planet Earth. A couple of rosy rose petals in eternal solidarity enduring great trouble of a heavy thunderstorm. A Romantic Conceptualism Bedtime Fable of resistance & redundance, or the awkward ambivalence of truth, dream, life and love.

CHUTE

Nora Longatti | Durata 20'

A young woman strolls around the city and suddenly collapses to the ground; has she lost her consciousness or is it a performative act? This staggering composition, evoking Michelangelo’s Pietà, is about allowing the body to become a prism for various human interactions.

BABY ANGER

Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel | Durata 13 min.

In this ineffable short gem, an abandoned baby ruminates on the edge of the decadent contemporary world, hopping around buildings and clouds, in a scenery that has never mirrored it. Is there anything left to uncover or love in this world except for discovering food recipes?

IN GOOD HANDS

Kezia Zurbrügg, Philipp Ritler | Durata 13 min.

The lines are busy at the telephone helpline. A life coach records an encouraging video while concerned parents consult a child psychologist. A spectrum of cinematic tableaus shows people trying to counteract the increasing loneliness and create closeness.

NEW GODS

Loïc Hobi | Durata 19 min.

Loïc Hobi’s docu-fictional hybrid revisits the 2014 massacre of Isla Vista, California, when six women were murdered by a male assailant. An artificial intelligence algorithm, cloaked under the haunting mantle of justice, investigates the motivations and frustrations of the killer, by looking at his virtual incel persona, LonerWolf58.

ONE THOUSAND AND ONE ATTEMPTS TO BE AN OCEAN

WANG YUYAN | Durata 11 min.

Made up of micro-events from “satisfying videos” that swarm on the internet, "One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean" reflects on the experience of not being able to see the world with depth perception in today’s inexorable entropy of our information societies.

NAYA – DER WALD HAT TAUSEND AUGEN

Sebastian Mulder | Durata 24 min.

In Naya – The Forest Has a Thousand Eyes, a she-wolf walks from Germany to Belgium, monitored through GPS. The first wolf in Belgium in a century, she makes headlines; then suddenly vanishes from the human gaze.

KALSUBAI

r.YUDHAJIT BASU | Durata 20'

In a small and faraway Indian village, the mythological tale of the goddess Kalsubai is still alive in the community of the Koli tribe. She shows herself under a human shape to a cow herder, offering to join him as his daughter – but not without setting two crucial conditions

OB SCENE

r.PALOMA ORLANDINI CASTRO | Durata 26'

A chronological autobiography of the filmmaker’s becoming and of sexual awakening, “OB SCENE” melds personal and political, experience and science, and observation with dry humor in a poignant essay about the act of accommodating one's own body and sexuality.

VEDO ROSSO

r.ADRIAN PACI | Durata 11'

Over a static, red foreground, a woman tells the story of an abusive relationship that culminates in domestic violence.

LACERATE

r.Janis Rafa | Durata 16'

A splendorous and apparently deserted villa is overrun by a pack of dogs. In the vacuum that is borne in the moments immediately following an act of violence, the still live tableaus are revived through the sheer force of animalism.

SYCORAX

r.Lois Patiño, Matías Piñeiro | Durata 20'

A production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” searches for an unprofessional actress for the role of Sycorax, one of the play’s unseen characters. In this process, the mythological being that entrapped Ariel finally gains her voice in the Azorean landscape.

WHEN NIGHT MEETS DAWN

Andreea Cristina Borțun | Durata 20min

In the mollifying, yet stingy light of the summer nights in Bucharest, a teenager is finally at peace with himself. Akin to his clandestine, hidden self, there also exists a shrouded world of plants and beings that the light of the day cannot, and would not reveal.