2014

“Like a collaboration between Monty Python and Samuel Beckett in the last days of the Neue Sachlichkeit. You just have to watch it, then grab a net and try to coax your soul back down from the ceiling.” (Robbie Collin, The Telegraph)
 
“A cavalcade of oddness, humour, banality and even horror...manages the uniquely Anderssonian trick of not just making you notice the absurdity of existence, but reminding you to love that absurdity as well. Life is unlikely, humans are ridiculous, and the world is cruel: isn’t it great?” (Jessica Kiang, IndieWire)
 
“A cross between a Where’s Waldo cartoon and a Gregory Crewdson photograph, the best way to approach it is as you might a large-canvas painting or a Jacques Tati film. Where other directors seek out exceptional moments, Andersson endeavors to capture the poetry of the mundane.” (Peter Debruge, Variety)
 
Concluding the trilogy on being human (along with Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living), A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE follows Sam and Jonathan, a modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho, two travelling salesmen peddling grotesque party masks and quarrelling continuously. Sam, who considers himself the brains of the operation, ceaselessly patronizes his companion. Jonathan is slow and phlegmatic, finding happiness in the simple act of eating. Taking us on a kaleidoscopic wandering through multiple human destinies, the two inspire hilarity as much as gravity. We wander through the film, tasting the beauty and absurdity of the moment, surrounded by others all too much like ourselves. It is a journey that unveils the beauty of single moments, the pettiness of others, the humour and tragedy hidden within us, life’s grandeur as well as the ultimate frailty of humanity.

Réalisateur-terrible Bertrand Mandico returns to BIEFF with another tale of the psycho-sexual bizarre, aptly titled Our Lady of Hormones. Shot in textured Super 16mm and bursting with the artistic glee of a passionate genre cinephile, Mandico’s film employs rear-projection, stunning technicolour and a lively, and decadent mise-en-scene to tell the erotic story of rivalry between two actresses who become obsessed by a living-and-breathing hairy lump of meat. Fitted with a protruding phallic antennae, the pet-cum-lover becomes an object of desire and envy, kicking off a murderous tale fit for a Giallo or Hammer film. A veritable surreal experience which genre-hops through comedy, suspense and horror, Our Lady of Hormones is a cautionary tale of human nature’s impotence of domesticating the very (primal) impulses we desire. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF)

An intimate space where the highly personal note fuses with the general human condition is created by Nina Yuen in Raymond, allegedly a monologue of the artist's father, in fact an indirect account of her own family background. The visually striking narrative moves freely and playfully from calculations of the most curious sorts, such as the total number of miles driven from their home to her school or the equivalent in calories of the quantity of fruit the father has harvested during seventeen years, to reminiscences of his childhood, and memories of him as a young father and of her as a baby. At some point, the artist ingeniously weaves deep subjects into the fabric, like the origins of the universe, mortality and the passage of time, with captivating effect, creating a tender and enchanting personal discourse on the spiritual and emotional baggage bestowed on her. (Adina Marin, BIEFF)

The Invention of the Desert is, on the surface, an essay abstract for the study of singularity theory; at its core, however, lies a prophetic dictum, vocalized by a digital entity hailing from a future where mankind has disappeared. Fly-bys of architectural videos populated by digital simulacra of ourselves are appropriated as the narrator describes a world - not far from ours - where human civilization grew over-reliant on technology. Gradually, our virtual presence in the videos disappears, as we learn of Artificial Intelligence surpassing the human species. Frighteningly passive in its apocalyptic conclusion, The Invention of the Desert functions as a powerful alarm call, resonating within the droning pulsations of the synthesized soundtrack well after its credits abruptly cut off its lifeline. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF)

Paedophilia - a taboo that elicits immediate and unshaken aversion, but what if you were the one afflicted by it? Guido Hendrikx’s Among Us takes us through the confessionals of three highly-educated, closeted pedophiles, as they describe their history of discovery, repression and (impossible?) reconciliation with this affliction. Hendrikx captures the poetic bliss and dizzying confusion of the three subjects’ self-confessed trigger of visualization by focusing on the black-and-white cinematography’s greyscale palette. Never exploitative or sensationalistic in dealing with the unsettling dimension of its subject, Among Us operates as an non-judgemental platform for the avowal of repression’s life-long trauma. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF)

In Cutaway, premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2014, director Kazik Radwanski succeeds in telling a whole lot about the life story of a young man using nothing more besides close-ups of his hands in motion, and of objects upon which they take action, the latter turning into our only temporal and allegorical references. All we are to know about the personage is conveyed by the image of his hands which become, in the absence of dialogue and facial expressions, metaphors of his internal experiences. The realism of the shots and the minimalistic approach, together with an intentional lack of background information, enhance rather than restrain a profound empathy with the character, bestowing an emotional quality on the film, its objectivity notwithstanding. (Andreea Udrea, BIEFF)

Visually replicating the effects of radioactivity, FOREVER documents the dispersion of radiation and propaganda in the USSR, after the Chernobyl accident, through a woman’s story of adolescence. Personal and universal history collide in a nostalgic bricolage of archive and pop-culture material that creates a complex comparison between the ephemerality of film, that of the human body and of memory. The insistence of the officials on denying the existence of any danger makes the people’s inability to defend themselves painfully concrete. As the image withers into abstraction, the only thing that is left is to accept the imminent threat. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF)

In an attempt to plot his own existence against the coordinates 'time', 'place' and family history, Martijn Veldhoen turns his camera on his mother's life story in a unique cinematic experiment. Time and Place, a Talk with My Mom retraces fifty years in the life of Veldhoen's mother. She fell in love with his father, they had four children, then a painful separation followed and the wearisome years as a single mother of four. Beyond reminiscences of her personal story, we witness the turbulent cultural and social changes of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. The recorded material being insufficient, Martijn Veldhoen masterfully employs original visual reconstructions to create a personal and affectionate narrative. (Adina Marin, BIEFF 2016)

To Be and to Come Back is a short video portrait in which the author gives us a sneak peak of his grandparents, aligning scenes of work, critical discussions about his future and fragments of a supposed rehearsal for his 'fiction' film. The editing clearly states his wish to show us through metafiction and metaphor his relationship with his grandparents by explaining what his profession of a filmmaker is about. His grandmother doesn’t seem so well-convinced that he will succeed; therefore, the film turns to a be a funny and harshly selfportrait of the director, in which we hear the sulky voice of his grandmother, we see personal fragments and images of their house and we sense a need to look back and forth for our own good. (Claudia Cojocariu, BIEFF)

Winner of the Vienna Short Film Award, Fabian Kaiser’s The Breath offers an entrancing, original look at the fortitude of society’s unsung hero of safety, the firefighter. Heavy on atmosphere and free of dialogue, Kaiser’s hybrid documentary observes a group of firemen as they go about their exercise drills, decked out in recognizable orange suits and hermetically sealed oxygen helmets. Their mechanical movement, assured in its steps and slowed by the weight of their gear, expresses steadfast confidence, but the eyes of their superior hides human fallibility. When it’s his turn to don the mask, he proceeds down a labyrinthian passageway, on a rite of passage into fear and the unknown. With bated breath we witness his transcendence and inevitable return to our material world, cleansing himself for the next day to come. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF)

In his highly acclaimed Waves '98, winner of the Palme d'or at Cannes in 2015, Ely Dagher deconstructs his love-hate relationship with his home city, in a beautiful self-reflective piece of filmmaking.  Shots of live action are employed together with several types of animation techniques to tell the story of Omar, whose experience of living in segregated post civil war Beirut adds to the inherent turmoils that harrow any teenager. Quotidian expeditions up the rooftop of his school reveal yet the same grim view of a city drenched in despair and uncertainty, parts of which he is not even allowed to tread. Until the day a giant golden elephant turns up drifting in the sky. Sucked into the giant's belly, Omar discovers - and the viewer with him, a world he never knew even existed. It may be a hopeful version of the city that takes shape in Omar's imagination. At times, it  shatters to pieces, but the fragments come together again. Eventually, the dream comes to an end, and, above a city of a less grim appearance, a golden elephant floats gently away. (Adina Marin, BIEFF)

A series of psychoanalytic thoughts expressed through voice-overs accompany images of body parts reconstructing a body that has violent sexual suggestions. ALL WE NEED IS SLAVES is an editing experiment with a very precise rhythm, presenting an original concept of combining erogenous zones of the body with sense organs, building the puzzle of a Sambuca dream in which the delirium takes the lead. The collage leaves no room for spontaneous interpretation, as the images’ transformation and succession is so quick, therefore, the spectators’ ideas over the movie appear strictly in the subconscious.  (Bianca Bănică, BIEFF)

A home-movie shot throughout a weekend in the countryside, THIS TIME, LAST YEAR depicts an almost symbiotic friendship between two girls and what happens when a third person comes between them. The film becomes an audio-visual transposition of a diary page in which memories and feelings are connected in an elliptical way, capturing the irrationality inherent to love. With a raw aesthetic at the border between diary film and found footage, This Time, Last Year by Ana Maria Savin explores not only the ties of human attachment and its consequences, but also the implications of memory and its deceitful alterations.

Part performance, part political critique, part genre film, yet 100% entertaining, Bjørn Melhus’ Freedom & Independence is a wonderfully witty and thought-provoking allegory of neoliberalism’s ideological folly. Guided by the voiceover proselytism of Ayn Rand, Freedom and Independence take on physical shape as they are sent to view the urban development of the future. Split between reality’s rational thought (Rand’s Objectivism) and theological faith (Hollywood melodrama), the titular protagonists reach an identity crisis. Although reigned back in by their ‘mother superior,’ their quest towards neoliberalism’s exigent individual empowerment ends with a song-and-dance of life’s most reliable Truth and constant: death. Wry, witty and wonderfully jubilant, Bjørn Melhus’ straight-faced film is a one-man show of cerebral activism. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF)

THE SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE looks at the hidden pleasures that lurk behind and in-between the artefacts of VHS adult films. An invisible protagonist starts a video cassette. The enigmatic smile of a young girl fills the screen, in slow motion, making us imagine an unrequited love story between her and the unseen character. Yet, as the source-material begins to censor itself via its unstable image calibration, the film gets fast-forwarded by the typical impatient viewer and the supposed “love story” takes an unexpected turn. Alexei Dmitriev plays freely with the viewer’s expectations, while exploring the possibility of reshaping the semantics of the images by manipulating their sound and taking them out of context. (Andrei Tănăsescu & Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF)

A hypnotic film of incredible visual appeal, BEAUTY animates classic paintings by artists such as Caravaggio, William Bouguereau and others in order to explore the main human experiences and feelings. Rino Stefano Tagliafierro starts from representations of innocence (infants, children and angels) which gradually evolve into studies of topics such as sexuality, pain, old age and death. All are highlighted by an ambient soundtrack that evokes inspirational and frightening feelings. The movie is a unique sensorial experience that revives classical works and delves into the essential duality of human nature, both demonic and divine. (Gabriela Lupu, BIEFF)

Digital artist and manipulator Edouard Salier delivers an award-winning vision of a near-future, dystopian Cuba, where its titular capital is occupied by a foreign force. Through the lens of a documentary crew guided by local slum-youth Lazaro, we’re immersed in a city under lockdown, a derelict ruin dwarfed by towering new structures and an oppressive force that controls the city. Gritty and harrowing, Salier’s cinema-verité footage reveals the city’s seedy pleasures and paralyzing pains with poetic visuals of unflinching realism. Through seamless digital effects  and unforgettable vistas, Habana goes beyond its narrative’s shock-and-awe conventions, emerging victoriously as a portrait of urban decay and humanity under siege. (Andrei Tanasescu, BIEFF)

HKDPGH is the protagonist’s journey on the beach of the subconscious on which waves break as rhythmically as thoughts. A meditative audio-visual collage of film and animation, the short compiles multiple audio poems and director’s voice-over confessions, exploring the existential turmoil of a person at a crossroads of his life. Like in a lucid dream, the man is aware that he sleeps, but is unable to wake up, deepening in strong symbolic explorations of a black and white dream. Bădeliță reveals to us the subconscious, while the subconscious itself buries and digs up memories, dreams and fears in an attempt to reconcile with reality. (Gabriela Lupu, BIEFF)