There Was Water Once
Ian Kelly
Digital | Color | 2023 | 3min 48s | Stereo | USA

There Was Water Once imagines the recovered memory of an intelligent climate probe’s corrupted transmission. What is left of the transmission shows the elemental threat of water in presence and absence. Using abstraction to render the aesthetics of anthropic climate change, the film replicates the technological mediation between humans and the effects of severe ecological crisis.

Ian Kelly
As a director of animated and experimental nonfiction, I use the unique qualities of the animated form to enliven stories of personal and historical memory. My practice aligns the formal qualities of animation with characteristics of memory including fragmentation, transformation, and an emphasis on sensory details. My practice is one of considered transformation of actual images. This process of manipulation and variation of the source suggests how reproduction distorts reality. By emphasizing animation’s inherent subjectivity, I invite the audience to consider how fantasy and performance also shape memory.

Rule No. 5: Shadow Your Man Closely
Miro Manojlovic
HD | B/W | 2023 | 9min 59s | Stereo | Croatia

Rule No. 5: Shadow Your Man Closely assembles a film loop collage out of Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. train scene. One shot becomes the base for specific editing procedures through which the film narrative is reconstructed and a new plot is created.

Miro Manojlovic (Zagreb, 1985) works in music, film and theatre. Since 2014 he has been working as an Art Associate at Academy of Dramatic Art and cooperates with numerous artists at home and abroad. He has created music for numerous films, theatre and dance performances, and actively works as a film author, editor and music composer. In his free time he is devoted to exploring merry mysteries of sound and vision.

Questioning the Existence of Alec
Roger Horn
HD | Color | 2023 | 4min 34s | Stereo | USA

"Questioning the Existence of Alec" is comprised of found footage utilizing stop motion and additional in camera effects recorded on the beaches of South Africa during the 1940s. In this dreamlike journey, two or three friends, one of whom may be Alec are presented from adolescence through adulthood. The surreal journey blurs the boundary between the past and present, reality and fantasy, and invites viewers to question for themselves the nature of reality, dreams, and the existence of the protagonists on both sides of the camera.

Roger Horn is a filmmaker, anthropologist, and film professor. He has over 25 years of moving image experience in Berlin, Cape Town, Los Angeles, and Nashville. He obtained his PhD at the University of Cape Town in Cultural Anthropology and holds an MA in Visual & Media Anthropology.
His films have been showcased at almost 300 film festivals and conferences worldwide. These include IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam, Aesthetica Short FIlm Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, where he was nominated for the International Competition category, the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, and the 21st, 22nd, & 24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Ripple Effect
Niyaz Saghari
Film to Digital | Color | 2023 | 9mins | Stereo | UK

The diver plunges into the sea (death), but also into life (eternity), where he will rediscover the primordial waters of life. This quote from Pierre Lévêque about the illustrations in Tomb of the Diver resonated when I watched the viral video of a young man who was executed in Iran in 2020.Few days after his death, the grainy mobile video of him was released .He ran in slow motion and dived in a pool. I watched the wave of his hands, the kick of his foot and crossing the border between air and water just as he leaped beyond fear when he spoke the truth, transitioned from life and became eternal in people’s memory. Like an act of preservation, I filmed the video with a super 8 camera. The camera became a tool of magnifying and grieving. 3 years later, men and women still chant his name in protests. Like the waves after a dive, injustice has a ripple effect.

Niyaz Saghari is a Bristol based filmmaker. Graduating from Film Directing from Art University of Tehran ( Iran), she continued her studies on the MA Animation at Newport. Besides following professional work in animation, she has been directing short documentaries and making experimental films.

Madwomen: to be a sparrow not a canary
Johannes Lõhmus & Sten Haljak
Film to Digital | B/W & Color | 2024 | 22min 50s | Stereo | Estonia

A housewife confronts situations to which no sane response exists... “Madwomen: to be a sparrow not a canary” is an experimental found footage melodrama composed entirely out of film footage shot in Soviet Estonia from 1960 until 1969. An experimental collage creating an alternative narrative to the storylines in the animations, documentaries and feature films of that time period.

Johannes Lõhmus (1990) is a film historian, film journalist, teacher and time-to-time film-programmer. “Varblane, mitte kanaarilind” (Madwomen: to be a sparrow not a canary) is his first experiment as a filmmaker.
Sten Haljak (1991, Estonia) has been mostly inactive in the Estonian film industry since he didn’t go to film school. He currently lives in Tallinn. Filmography: Kopli liinid. Võõrustab viimane kupleelaulja (2019), Delusion of Insignificance (2014).

A Slippage in Five Movements
Valentina Rosset
Digital | Color | 2024 | 14min 42s | Stereo | Brazil

Inspired by a performance of Toru Takemitsu's composition "Corona: For Pianist(s)", A Slippage In Five Movements is a visual immersion into the graphic score and its musical performance, revealing the unfamiliar landscapes and silences that emerge from the pianist's gestures and the architecture of the piano itself.

Valentina ROSSET is a Brazilian filmmaker who is currently based in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of the Film and Video programme of the California Institute of the Arts. Her works move between experimental and narrative while seeking to explore the intimacies of daily life. Rosset’s films have been displayed at Spectacle Theater, New York; Whammy Analog Media, Los Angeles and Oca do Ibirapuera, São Paulo.

One Hundred White Trucks
Brice Goldberg
Film to Digital | B/W | 2024 | 4min 13s | Stereo | USA

In Richmond, Virginia, a filmmaker's walkabout reveals a monochromatic landscape of behemoth motor vehicles. This film is an exploration in structural methodology and analog filmmaking techniques. It was photographed with a Bolex H16 Reflex camera over the course of two days with two 100 foot black and white 16mm rolls. The film was then hand processed and scanned to digital. What began as an obsession with a singular subject revealed timely symbolism of the late stage capitalist American landscape.

Brice Goldberg is a filmmaker, photographer and musician born in Philadelphia. His documentary films explore the lives of unique individuals and have been shown in festivals and galleries around the world. He is currently pursuing his MFA at VCUArts in Richmond, VA.

Бабушка Галя и Дедушка Аркадий // Grandma Galya and Grandpa Arkadiy
Anna Kipervaser
Film to Digital | Color | 2024 | 4min 24s | Stereo | USA

A jovial and dreamy rumination on love. On time passing. On what we collect, what we hold on to, and how we maintain connection to homeplace, to ourselves.

Anna Kipervaser is a Ukrainian-born artist whose practice engages with a range of topics including human and animal bodies, ethnicity, religion, colonialism, and environmental conservation. Her engagement with these topics is informed by a commitment to formal experimentation, DIY and alternative processes, spanning disciplines including experimental and documentary moving image works in both 16mm film and digital video. Her work has screened at festivals internationally, including at Process Experimental Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Crossroads Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Light Field, Antimatter, Fracto, Imagine Science Film Festival, Prismatic Ground, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Athens International Film and Video Festival, Indie Grits Film Festival, Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogota, among others. Anna's work also screens in classrooms, galleries, museums, microcinemas, basements, and schoolhouses! Her films are distributed by CFMDC, Alchemiya, and Canyon Cinema. She is also a painter, printmaker, educator, curator of exhibitions, programmer of screenings.