2020

At first glance, nothing happens in AMARYLLIS. But look again. A poetic and gentle study of amaryllis flowers, JAYNE PARKER's film demands more attention than we are often willing to give to the screen. This little ode to color on 16mm film is not a calophilic exercise, but a whole cinematic translation of people's fascination with plants, their pigments, millimeter movements, reactions to light. PARKER takes what we are used to seeing in the background and brings it to the forefront, actually arousing a paradox – the realization of an "anti-film" through deep cinematic practices. (Călin Boto, BIEFF 2020)

A world asleep, in quarantine, seen through the lens of its invisible observers. Surveillance cameras, a police drone, a futuristic telescope view of the sun all combined in the artificial perspective of an ubiquitous kino-eye that relentlessly surveys a post-human landscape of global proportions. (Oana Ghera, BIEFF 2020)

In a collage of radically different images, which combines everything from found footage to thermographic images and figurative color compositions, UNTITLED SEQUENCE OF GAPS tries to answer a series of questions starting from the concept of visibility and its paradigmatic twin, invisibility. Ranging from scientific and physical observations about the limits of the optic spectrum and about electromagnetic waves, which are used to derive meanings about memory, self-perception, and social perception, the film ponders on the fact of seeing and of being seen, and their intersections. (Flavia Dima, BIEFF 2020)

CAUSE OF DEATH is a simultaneous celebration and elegy of the female body - extensively using archival footage from the first half of the 20th century as well as animations and documents to represent both various feminine rituals across diverse cultures, or moments of intimacy with one's own body, but also to document the burning of "witched" and other forms of extreme violence against women. A cinematic slam poem that encapsulates and reappropriates, from a feminist perspective, two millennia in the history of womankind. (Flavia Dima, BIEFF 2020)

Does the terror of war or the terror of another man’s dead body become bearable when their realities are rendered on a computer? Does a weapon become less lethal? How about a veteran’s PTSD? To whom does it serve to simulate war theatres? Who identifies in these scenarios, ex-soldiers driven by the terrors of war, or future soldiers who fetishize this universe? These are some questions asked by MY OWN LANDSCAPES. A post-war open world of the senses, a 3D sanatorium for traumatized soldiers, a reconsideration of space and perception in an alternative universe, this is what Antoine Chapon’s film proposes. (Emil Vasilache, BIEFF 2020)

ANN OREN creates a choreography from the professional routine of a foley artist, played by Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, who works on the sounds of an equestrian training sequence. The intensive work of the artist gets a bit goofy, but not too much. However, the farce is waiting around the corner – more and more sensual, the artist dissolves their identity into that of the horse. Now they are ​​performing for the camera, in sync with the training sequences that OREN continues to insert. You can't think of the ideational implications while this queer, non-binary and naughty centaur is on screen. You’re charmed. Only after does decryption begin. (Călin Boto, BIEFF 2020)

A DEMONSTRATION lyrically unravels a fascinating moment in early modern European science, in which naturalists hastened a project that extends to the present day – that of cataloging the natural world. The taxonomies of people, plants, animals, rocks were born, and everything that couldn’t find its place in these scientific Procrustes’ beds fell under the umbrella of monsters. LITVINTSEVA and WAGNER are looking for visual remains of these taxonomies in performance halls, museums, libraries, but also in nature, a world full of small details from which the narratives and forms of monsters were built. We are challenged to resurrect ways of looking and thinking that are far away from us now, but that we can still access. (Călin Boto, BIEFF 2020)

On the 28th of October 2015, a migrant boat left the coast of Western Turkey, heading to the closest European coast – the Greek island of Lesvos. The shipwreck resulted in the death of at least 43 people, making it the deadliest incident of that period, also known as “the long summer of migration.” One of the survivors, artist Amel Alzakout, recorded the journey and the shipwreck on a waterproof camera attached to her wrist. This footage – which also forms the basis of her subsequent film PURPLE SEA – provides a uniquely situated perspective on this tragic event at the threshold of Europe. (Berlinale Forum Expanded 2020)

Panic-stricken, Sofia finds herself caught up in an otherworldly exchange with the Universe, meant to explain the purpose of her earthly experience. Imagined by LENTZOU as an emanation, the presence of the surreal is ever suggested, but never materialized. Lying somewhere between revelation and hallucination, this direct inter-planetary transmission oscillates between advice inspired by self-help advice and unexpected disclosures about the true nature of the Mars-born protagonist. Shot on 16mm film tinged in a bright red hue, this speculative journey towards the mother planet - where time does not exist, the old is the same as the new and dream is the true reality - has the rhythm of a planetary symphony, immersing the audience in an endless floating state. (Oana Ghera, BIEFF 2020)

A story that is dreamlike and ancestral, centered on a civilization that loses its offspring as soon as they’re old enough to leave. AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE NIGHT touches upon a series of profoundly human sensibilities, which give it its allegorical touch. The film’s oneiric opening sequence abounds in vivid symbols of childhood, of closeness or, conversely, of distance: a father that is untouchable, a brother that doesn’ know of his own death. Composed of night shots and infrared photographs, the film reminds one of Lynch’s dream world: something that appears distant and unknown, and yet is perfectly recognizable. ENTRANCE OF THE NIGHT presents three types of nature, each carrying a different story, a different point of view. (Emil Vasilache, BIEFF 2020)

ISMAËL JOFFROY CHANDOUTIS returns to BIEFF with another profound film, which puts forward the proposition of possibly recovering one’s memory through images. MINDSTREAM brings together mediums that are both different and chaotic, asking them to reconstruct a terrible event: a bomb attack on the subway. Sabine is one of the people who survive the attack and her memory is dressed in pixels, in found footage, and defragmented reconstructions of the spaces she was in, but that she can’t seem to remember. The issue with the image-document becomes clear at the moment when Sabine doesn’t seem to recognize that past as her own, and these recordings become simple carcasses for an inexistent and traumatic past. (Emil Vasilache - BIEFF 2020)

SUN DOG starts out from the macro image of a Russia, which one can't fully tell if it's apocalyptic or realistic, and the zooms in onto the oftentimes Lynchian micro of a couple of lives crammed into a couple of shabby high-rise apartments. JESPERS constructs a universe seemingly frozen in an eternal nocturnal blizzard, inhabited by gopniks and babushkas who live their lives in slow-motion, where it's never really clear if the moment of disaster is about to happen, or if it's already long gone. (Flavia Dima, BIEFF 2020)

ZWIRCHMAYR does not fight theory with theory. Starting from a text written by Jean Baudrillard, the director makes small case studies, surreal or performative vignettes that revolve around seismic movements and ruins, the topics covered in the essay. A man poses nude by the sea. Earlier, he was completely covered with gravel. Two empty bodies haunt a historic building. Frozen time, suspended time, an alternative reality, resurrections - the director's response to all this is, of course, the act of filming, which also concludes her film. (Călin Boto, BIEFF 2020)

Can you fuck to an irregular beat? PROGRESSIVE TOUCH depicts three moody, absurdist love scenes in which the goal is to “improve” sex by complicating its rhythm and choreography. Sex as dance as comedy. Enacted by three real-life couples, the dancers' every explicit move is synchronized to the propulsive, unpredictable score which borrows elements from progressive rock, trap, and math metal.