art

Silvan Skrivanic was the last inhabitant of a remote island in the Adriatic Sea, but even the traces of his existence are gradually disappearing – whether in the memories of others or in a landscape ravaged by a harsh climate. With the fading shadows of the human soul, it is as if life itself is disappearing from the island, leaving behind only the wind, the skeletons of animals and the inscriptions on the walls that have lost their meaning for others.“The traces of the last soul and the prints of its existence, the messages of a place where everything has disappeared.”

It started with an autobiographical art project. Miriam Bajtala used the floor plans of the 18 apartments she had lived in until now. They served as canvases on which she used words and colors to transfer her memories of the given space as well as the disadvantageous socio-economic factors that shaped her as a woman and a foreigner. In the confrontation she had begun with her own family history, the author is now continuing the film, which is fiction, documentary and performance. Different spaces and dimensions of existence – national, class, gender – are constantly layered on top of each other and rearranged in it. The result of the act of visualization and updating becomes a spatial curriculum vitae. “My experiment of creating a conceptual coming-of-age film.” — Miriam BajtalaSource: sixpackfilm

Jan Merta (1952) is currently one of the most important Czech visual artists. In his painting work, shaped by the postmodernism of the 1980s, he leans towards abstract abbreviation and symbolic depiction of reality through everyday objects. The film is a snapshot of his life filled with painting, working in his garden and cohabitation with his partner. The civilian camera follows Merta as he prepares an exhibition for which he attempts to create new works. However, his engagement with the current geopolitical situation enters into the work, as well as the discovery of new compositional principles and creative otherworldliness that co-create his enchanted personal world. “Is this art, or can I throw it away?”

Inspired by Junichiro Tanizaki's literary essay of the same name, the film is a visual ode to the shadow and its perceived marginality and necessity for living in the light. In traditional Japanese houses, there are spaces dedicated to the sun and places shrouded in the cover of darkness. The form of shadow is modelled by means of permeable materials, deliberate obstructions, or even candle flames, so different from Western mass-produced products. The transformation of shadows with the movement and intensity of light is analogized by the director to celluloid photography and film. Unlike modern digital technology, they are also subject to change as the passage of time affects their chemical stability. Without the shadows cast on the projection screen, we would not be able to watch this film either, reliving a feeling already familiar to prehistoric cavemen sitting around a campfire. “Fleeting shadows ebb and flow in a glistening half-light, an enchanted dreamlike state that reflects on our place in the world, the passage of time, and the very essence of life and its fragility.”Quote source: F3M

Czech painter and artist Otto Placht (1962) is sometimes called the painter of the jungle. His creative and private life is divided between Prague and Peru, where he draws inspiration from the depths of the Amazon rainforest, ayahuasca and the local people. The film shows his creative process in the interiors of Prague and a studio built right in the rainforest. Poetic shots of nature are interspersed with the harsh realities of the big city, in which Placht's passionate love life and complicated family life are also revealed. The artist's paintings have proven to be not only a fascination with and homage to immaculate nature, but also an environmental plea for its protection. “My material base is Europe, and my spiritual space is opened by the South American rainforest. One cannot exist without the other.” Source: Czech Radio

Paula Albuquerque's conceptual film is based on a propaganda documentary from the 1950s, which she came across during her research in the archives of Amsterdam's Eye Film Museum. It deals with the “educational” colonisation activities of the Netherlands in Suriname. The archival footage showing the interaction between a Dutch nurse and the indigenous tribes was used by the director to create a double cinematic work that, through a digital glitch that replaces the silhouettes of the indigenous population, allows her to highlight the ideological nature of the original film and restore the lost sovereignty of the “spirits”, who for centuries have been perceived as the inferior ones.“You notice there is a huge difference in how the body of the white male is represented when exhausted… and when we look at BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour]. Then, the body is always poor, dirty, sick. It’s always in relation to slavery or colonialism, or in positions of servitude.” — Paula AlburqerqueQuote source: Screen Daily

Enric Miralles, one of the most gifted Spanish architects of his generation, died prematurely in 2000 at the age of 45. He found his final resting place in Barcelona's Igualada Cemetery, which embodies everything that characterised Miralles' work. In the seemingly unfinished space of the forest burial ground, it is difficult to separate the inside from the outside, and nature permeates the architecture. The documentary portrait of an extraordinary personality unfolds as a dialogue between the author's lyrical subject and Miralles' presence in the buildings he designed. The architect himself saw his work almost musically, as a “variation of the same thing”, the same motif and melody. The documentary film, which introduces us to eleven of Miralles' exceptional buildings, is in tune with this wave. Whether it's the Santa Caterina market in Barcelona, the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh or the boarding school in Morell, there is always a clear imprint of the same authorial hand. An artist always defying conventions and, above all, all boundaries, real and imaginary.“Moving with freedom through different places and floating in the city of Barcelona, the narrator's voice, written by one of the most interesting Spanish authors of the moment Sara Mesa, talks to a ghost; it searches for him, evokes him in its spaces, asks questions about his architectures, crossing the threshold between death and life.”Quote source: FilmFreeway

Ida is cleaning out the house that her grandfather, an artist, used to live in. She wades through a studio overflowing with artefacts, oddities and lost history. Similarly to S P A C E S, Štrbová treats the theme of memory and loss, combining fiction and documentary, letting the images of nostalgic childhood and the suffocating past flow associatively. To the sound of Francesco Geminiani's Concerto grosso no. 12, subtitled Madness, the fragile physicality of both dead and living relics stands out. The head of a dead parrot, a cast of her grandmother's breasts or a moss-covered real estate agent represent the discoveries of a personal archaeological site and exhibits of an introspective museum of family history. “I like the fact that you don’t have to deal with whether things are fiction, animation or documentary. Nowadays, such pigeonholing is unnecessary. A film is just a film.”Source: Film a doba

A short poetic essay depicting a young girl, Faustine, explores the relationship between the director and the protagonist and how the film camera, as a silent, omnipresent mediator, defines it. With a certain amount of self-reflection, the film understands documentary film as a medium that has a dominant power over the subjects it captures by locking their souls and likenesses forever into the cinematic image.“The act of looking becomes tangible through technology, superstitions and phantasmic vision. A film, it states, is a space that takes a real-life person hostage, engulfs, and seals them in forever.”

Khlong Toei is one of Bangkok's central districts, home to the largest slum in the exponentially growing Thai metropolis. The place, which accommodates 100,000 inhabitants, could at first glance be characterised by chaos, overcrowding and pollution. However, the pure, immersive observation of the masterful duo Bêka & Lemoine, capturing the rhythms of day and night life in this fascinating environment, proves that it is in fact a living organism in which order reigns and time passes slowly but surely. The means of private and public transport that arrive and depart without ceasing, the cycle of life being born and fading away in the midst of the huge market that is the beating heart of the neighbourhood and the origin of the most diverse interpersonal interactions, the cleaning crews responsible for its cleanliness and its systematised space, children playing and eating together in narrow alleys and cozy rooms shared by entire families – all of these are humanly subtle yet authentically raw images of everyday life that shatter the stereotypical notion of slum life.“Deconstructing the clichés associated with slums, such as violence, gangs and illicit trafficking, the film is a full immersion and close observation of the living conditions, daily rhythms, micro economies and neighborhood relationships binding this community together.”

Turkey's first “eco” hotel, Naturland Eco Park and Resort, opened in 1991 and operated until 2014. A hybrid of documentary, black satirical comedy and circus-style performance, the film builds on fictional voice-overs that depict the experiences of hotel guests and staff and the gradual decay of the once-pompous and now dilapidated abandoned complex, which was closed due to overwhelming debts and left virtually untouched. Strange Abandoned Deranged is a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ambivalent place that is full of faded colours, scratched walls and kitschy life-size animal sculptures. Like the site itself, which was once a premier tourist attraction and a haven for local politicians and royalty, the unfulfilled dream of a harmonious fusion of capitalism and ecology is increasingly unravelling, revealing an unpleasant reality that has been carefully hidden behind the walls of a man-made paradise. Both the absurdity and the controversy surrounding Naturland are symptomatic of Turkey's modern history.“Through its absurd voice, it crafts a circus-like panorama. Standing amidst abandoned state land with a history that echoes a mockumentary—filled with countless tragic incidents and boundless absurdities from Turkey's past—it becomes evident that to chase the controversial story of Naturland Eco Park is to journey through the last thirty years of a country.”

Folk poetry collector Ōtani Masae visits the residents of the mountain village of Ubuyama in southern Japan and collects songs that are over a thousand years old. However, continuity is only an illusion and ancient cultural heritage is subject to fragmentary memory, rewriting and new contexts. Ballads, confessions and prayers are thus not a chronicle of old times, but a liberating manifesto against the patriarchal tradition that for centuries confined women to the solitude of their homes. Lyrically layered on 16mm filmstrip, with the intimacy of a family video and the poetics of a visual essay, the images explore the fragile power of ephemeral detail and the cathartic effect of communication and sharing.“By making this film, I have been able to discover and be amazed by the transformative power of the Japanese ‘uta’ (‘uta’ meaning song and poem at the same time). Gently, they help loosen iron bonds. They float over Ubuyama-mura’s heavy hetero-patriarchal heritage and its strict, unwritten laws of behaviour.”Source: Jorge Suárez Quiñones RivasFunded by INJUVE Grant for Contemporary Creation and Grant for contemporary creation and national and international mobility, Madrid City Council.

The final stops of buses, trams and trolleybuses in the suburbs of Riga. “Non-places” with no specific character, where nothing special happens and yet there is no stopping movement. Some people go from here to work or school, others return home. Or they work in their flower and vegetable stalls near the bus stops. Morning, evening, in snow and rain. Weekdays and holidays. Laila Pakalniņa captures their work, waiting and passing, calm and impatient, in tight moving shots. Gints Bērziņš's black and white camera stays at one point, describing a circle that begins and ends nowhere. Ordinary stopping points, which we use without thinking about their function, become important crossroads in a wordless urban symphony, to whose unchanging rhythm the entire metropolis must submit. Exploring the poetry in everyday routine and repetition, the film completes the director's ornamental trilogy on public transport, complemented by The Bus (2004) and Homes (2021).“The ever-moving camera creates the form of the film, peering through the window of a bus, trolleybus, or tram, observing the world.”Quote source: Riga International Film Festival

Forest observation in negative colours captures the night life of wildlife out of the sight of man, but within his earshot. An anthropocentric element creeps into the natural still life in the form of noise from a nearby battle line. The night vision camera transforms the forest animals into fantasy creatures with glowing eyes and their home into a mythical space of love and war. Both, according to Jean-Luc Godard, exist side by side, like the quietly falling snow and bomb explosions, or the lovers' phone call and Putin's voice from hell. A poetic post-apocalyptic purgatory and homage to dead creators, it represents the eerie adjacency of life and death.“Jean-Luc Godard is dead. The only two subjects he ever dealt with were love and war, which were intertwined more firmly than he wished for them to be.”

Let's move back to 1999, just before the boom of high-speed internet. Globally watched MTV broadcasts its programme Total Request Live, and a group of friends decide to infiltrate the popularity factory. Chain email as a tool of anarchy and audience power? This charming short film is a guide to consumer disobedience in every era!

In August 1965, The Beatles arrive in New York to play their now legendary concert at a sold-out Shea Stadium to fifty-five thousand passionate fans. Outside their hotel, crowds of teenage female fans gather, eager to catch even a glimpse of the four idols. Archival footage from the press conference and television broadcasts soon spins into a narrative based on the autofiction of American poet Geoffrey O'Brien and the biographical accounts of writer Judith Kristen. On the border between reality and fiction, a poetic narrative unfolds, complemented by drawings by French illustrator Yann Kebbi. The context of the film is gradually expanded to include other significant moments captured on television at the time, evoking the spirit of the era and the associated ethos of youth. We are unsure whether the characters are real or fictional as they pass through a rich audiovisual kaleidoscope, guiding us through a lost but ever-present past in our consciousness.“Someday when we're dreamingDeep in love, not a lot to sayThen we will rememberThe things we said today.” Source: The Beatles - Things We Said Today

This playful poetic documentary finds its whole world in the library. In libraries, that is, because they are all connected in an imaginary universe made up of aisles, book spines, letters, words and stories. Night after night, two female travellers venture into it; sometimes their steps cross and they remain in brief conversation, sometimes they wander along their own routes of their thoughts and imaginations. Because in books you can find literally everything beyond the walls of the library. And all it takes is a slight change of letters, a red becomes read, an isle becomes aisle, and the whole cosmos is spun on its axis by the single powerful force of creativity and imagination. “I’m interested in the feeling and movement of everyday life and ordinary places. I start my films intuitively around that—the structure often comes from circumstances around making the film.” Source quote: Innersense

This poetic film from the streets of Athens mixes colourful imagery with a strong political message. The clash of two worlds – the human world full of dynamism and the world of ancient statues representing tradition and staticism – is depicted with a playful exaggeration in which statues come to life and people turn into statues. We follow a group of young artists and activists organising demonstrations to destroy historical monuments, especially the Parthenon temple, which functions as a metaphor for the old order preventing radical social change. This reveals the relationship between the current political situation in Greece and the doctrine of cultural heritage.“If statues could talk, what would they say?”

The main character of this black-and-white impressionistic essay is a river, and the camera adopts its perspective. It flows through the landscape, sometimes peacefully, sometimes wildly, affecting the lives of animals and people alike. For some, it is a source of inspiration and a part of folk rituals.