TRANSCENDING REALITY – From Rotterdam to Bucharest, Tiger Awards for Short Film Nominees 2014 at BIEFF

Taking further its fruitful long-term collaboration with the Dutch film industry, the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival BIEFF initiates this year a new inspiring partnership, with the innovative International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Offering a high quality line-up of carefully selected fiction and documentary feature films, short films and media art, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, now at its 44th edition, is one of the largest audience and industry-driven film festivals in the world, with a consistent focus on discovery, innovation and diversity.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam, represented by Mr. Theus Zwakhals – member of the IFFR Short Film programming team – offers Romanian cinema lovers the rare opportunity to view some of the most intriguing 2014 Tiger Awards for Short Film nominees, within a thought-provoking theme program: TRANSCENDING REALITY. An invitation to reflect on the ways we perceive the world around us, the works from this selection explore the ability of cinematic language to interpret and transform reality, thus revealing it from unexpected subjective perspectives.

In GIANT, by Salla Tykkä, the seemingly distant observation of the very young gymnasts from a Romanian training centre becomes a subtle stylization of reality, creating an alternative space-time, ripe for contemplation and reflection. Through the elegant choreography of the camera and the sensuality of the soundtrack – skillfully relying on the play between silence and noise – GIANT (Tiger Award for Short Film winner at Rotterdam 2014) offers a sensorial experience which makes us viscerally experience the tension between the human fascination with grace and beauty and the dehumanizing process of attaining them. (BIEFF 2014) The screening is possible thanks to the kind support of AV-ARKKI – The Distribution Centre for Finnish Media Art. (Excerpt)

Winner of the prestigious Turner Prize awarded by Tate Museum London, Laure Prouvost carefully plays with distance and intimacy in the surreal GRANDMA’S DREAM. Testing the border between reality and fiction, the short subtly slips from the artist’s grandmother candid wishes into violent and sensual imagery of suppressed desires and woes. The impersonality of stock material contrasts with the naïve tenderness of a whispered voice-over. Juxtaposing and superimposing the images following a flow of consciousness logic creates a world in which the viewer gets lost in the whirlwind of silent frustrations and made-up biographies. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF 2014) The screening is possible thanks to the generous support of the distributor LUX Artists’ Moving Image.

A portrait of a Foley studio, fluidly choreographed in a single shot, HACKED CIRCUIT reveals the multiple layers of fabrication inherent to filmmaking. Portraying sound artists working on the final scene of Coppola’sThe Conversation, Deborah Stratman exposes the invisible mechanisms of cinema, evoking paranoia and uncertainty regarding what we see and hear. Thus she creates an unsettling parallel between the stagecraft of Foley and the pervasive climate of government surveillance that threatens our right to privacy.

A film like an epitaph, TWO POINTS OF FAILURE by Michael Moshe Dahan dissolves in negative emulsion a photograph of Jean-Luc Godard, thus conceptualizing the slow disappearance of the analogue techniques of filmmaking and, with it, the death of an entire tradition in cinema. The image melts into abstract patterns of movement and color, the process then being reversed, ironically, by digital means. Screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, this short-film, inspired by the failure of a camera prototype commissioned by Godard, deconstructs and reassembles itself, being both a testament of a disappearance, and a question about the future of cinema. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF 2014) (Trailer)

Deconstructing the fictionalization of reality for propaganda purposes, MODEL VILLAGE reflects on the fake projections and empty promises of politics. Denied access to the village built for agitprop, director Hayoun Kwon resorts to a solution truer than reality: she makes a miniature replica out of plastic and Styrofoam and brings it to life through the soundtrack mixed from phone conversations, natural sounds and dialogue excerpts from films. An imitation of a phantasm, MODEL VILLAGE is a thought-provoking piece that exposes the lengths to which life can be fabricated, while instilling a chilling sense of fear in the face of governmental control. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF 2014) (Trailer)

WALK WITH ME by Peter Muhumuza Tukei & Johan Oettinger swoops the viewer into a little Ugandan girl’s world of imagination, as she first encounters and tries to make sense of death. Though a mix of live-action and stop motion puppet animation techniques, the demise of one of the girl’s animals is envisioned as a surrealistic struggle between disembodied doll heads and makeshift toy creatures. Far from being just a film for children, WALK WITH ME looks upon death with wide, innocent eyes and discovers that the world is both a cruel, but also beautiful place. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF 2014) The film is made within the DOX:LAB project of CPH:DOX Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival – a true laboratory of innovation which produces impressive works that daringly explore the thin line between reality and  fiction, works signed by young filmmakers from all over the world and screened in prestigious festivals like Berlinale, Venice, Locarno, Toronto etc. (Trailer)

The 5th edition of Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival BIEFF will take place between December 10th–14th, 2014, at CinemaPRO and Elvira Popescu Cinema.

BIEFF is honoured and grateful to receive support and inspiration from its partners: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs Cannes, Berlinale Forum Expanded, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Oberhausen Film Festival, IDFA Amsterdam Paradocs, Centre Pompidou, Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains, CINEDANS - Dance on Screen Festival Amsterdam, Tampere Film Festival, Sixpackfilm Austria and EYE Film Institute Netherlands.

BIEFF would not possible without the support of the Romanian National Cinema Centre, the National University of Theatre and Film Bucharest, the National University of Arts Bucharest, the Romanian Filmmakers' Union UCIN, the Romanian Cultural Institute, the French Institute in Bucharest, the Austrian Cultural Forum, Goethe-Institut Bukarest, German Films, Swiss Films and the Rule of Law Program South-East Europe of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

Media partners: 121.ro, AaRC.ro, Asociația Paspartu, B365.ro, CalendarEvenimente.ro, Carturesti.ro, CineFan.ro, CinemaRx.ro, Designist.ro, DorDeDuca.ro, FilmReporter.ro, GingerGroup.ro, iFestival.ro, IQads.ro, LaPunkt.ro, LiterNet.ro, OrasulM.eu, PostModern.ro, Revista Arte & Meserii, RomaniaPozitiva.ro, societatesicultura.ro, Studentie.ro, Sub25.ro, TOTB.ro, Urban Things Romania, VinSiEu.ro, WeART.ro, Ziarul Metropolis.