future ready: cusp
| Canada, 7:00, 2023 |
- KJ Edwards

A temporal observation of nature, reflecting on the relational: the tethering of animal, earthly and human energies through moments of connection, both calm and chaotic, moving toward a shared future shrouded in uncertainty as the planet warms.
The central screen is made from phytograms where the artist placed plants in an eco-developer, then left the film strips in the sunlight for an hour. The artist then fixed the emulsion in place for three days in a salt bath. All B&W film was shot on a bolex and eco-processed with caffenol by the artist.

KJ Edwards is a Kanien’kehá:ka, mixed-settler filmmaker and media artist. Their family is from Kahnawa:ké and Longueuil, Quebec, Canada; while KJ was born and raised in Treaty 6 Territory, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Holding a BFA in Film Production from the Toronto Metropolitan University, KJ is trained in narrative, documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques, using both analogue and digital workflows. She is a 2023 MFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where her thesis work involved eco processing analogue film, reflecting on the unpredictability of the medium as that of a collaborator, and the ways that dreams and memory can offer creative pathways toward content creation.

In the Ice, everything leaves a trace
|Germany, Greenland, Switzerland, 13:07, 2023 |
- Christoph Oeschger, Gianna Molinari

As Arctic ice melts, borders shift once inaccessible places and resources become accessible, and new claims to raw materials and territories are made. The Arctic is changing like never before, from a romanticized image of wild, harsh nature to a technological place full of economic interests. The Arctic has become a hotspot of border shifts and geopolitical interests. The essay film "In the Ice, everything leaves a trace" is a poetic approach to this place and makes the invisible visible.

"In the Ice, everything leaves a trace" Is the first outcome of joint research of the Author Gianna Molinari and the Artist Christoph Oeschger. We started in Greenland; there, we recognized that the Arctic is also elsewhere: In the tubes, under microscopes, electronics and maps. What is in our heads as a romantic image of wilderness becomes a playground for geopolitical and economic interests.

Christoph Oeschgeri*1984 in Zurich) is an photographer, artist, publisher, and since autumn 2017 artistic associate in the Department of Transdisciplinarity at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He studied media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG) and photography at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). His work has been shown in various museums including Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe (DE), Centre de la Photographie Geneve (CH).

Gianna Molinari, born in 1988 in Basel, studied literary writing at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel and modern German literature at the University of Lausanne.

The Concrete River
| United States, 15:00, 2023 |
- Nora Sweeney

An exploration of how different communities spend time along the Los Angeles River, a 51 mile waterway largely channelized with concrete that cuts through various neighborhoods of Greater Los Angeles. While people fish, skateboard, paint, play music, have quiet moments to engage with the landscape, or carve out a place to live by the banks, egrets and herons roost in trees growing in the middle of the river. I was drawn to the river as an unregulated public space where people converge with each other and nature, finding respite from the city.

Nora Sweeney is a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Los Angeles. Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, she received her BA from Oberlin College and MFA in Film/Video from CalArts. She taught documentary filmmaking and photography for two years at a women's college in Madurai, India through a fellowship from Oberlin Shansi. She currently teaches Film Production at CalArts and Film Studies at Long Beach City College. Her films have been screened at REDCAT (Los Angeles), Antimatter (Victoria), Chicago Underground Film Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Athens International Film + Video Festival, and in the Black Maria Film and Video Festival, where Something Like Whales won a Jury's Choice Award (1st Prize).

Floods Recede to Luxury
| United States, 4:00, 2023 |
- Kathleen Rugh

Ten years after Hurricane Sandy flooded the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, new luxury housing is built ever closer to the water’s edge, poised to ignore the risks of future storm surges. Using in-camera layered exposures the film examines the neighborhood in this time of transition and imagines what may still come.

Kathleen Rugh is a filmmaker and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her film and photographic work has been exhibited in screenings and galleries throughout the US and internationally, including the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Images Festival, Antimatter [Media Art], EXiS Experimental Film Festival, and the Chicago Underground Film Festival. She has received funding for her films through the New York State Council on the Arts.

bleared eyes of blue glass
| Korea, Republic of, 8:30, 2023 |
- Kyujae PARK

The "bleared eyes of blue glass" in the title of this experimental short expand on a verbal image from Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves, considered the most experimental among the 20th-century British writer's literary works, from which the young filmmaker took inspiration for his film, borrowing passages and visions to explain his own understanding of what cinema is. A film that plays with water - precisely - and light, and yet in a very dark b&w lit up by rare flashes of colour, making a journey in the night in which the shadow of a man gradually acquires substance.

PARK Kyujae makes films with Super 8, 16mm, and digital, exploring the play of light, personal things, and nature. Along with his colleagues, he organizes independent film screenings in Seoul on a non-regular basis. He translates films for film festivals and cinematheques.

Study of a landscape
| France, 6:00, 2023 |
- Damien Cattinari

A dark hole stands in front of us, surrounded of trees. Little by little, as if carried away by the river, something rises from the shadows, and makes enter the landscape in drifting.

Damien Cattinari was born in 1993 and lives in Marseille. After studying geology for 5 years, he graduated from the documentary school of Lussas in Ardèche. Through the prism of poetry, his films explore the question of the fragility of the landscapes. His recent screenings include: LES ÉTATS GÉNÉRAUX DU DOCUMENTAIRE (2019), FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL JEAN ROUCH (2019), DOBRA FILM FETIVAL (2022), TRAVERSEVIDEO (2023), LA RELEVE (2023), FESTIVAL ECRA (2023), CINEMA DU REEL (2024).