Projects in categories: Artist Project and Video / Experimental

Synopsis

A black and white poetic journey into the legacy of Derek Jarman's life and the eerie landscape and nature of Dungeness, Kent, England. Project shot in 2010 and elaborated in the following years, with completion in 2017. Music Score by Cosmic Bird

Synopsis

As a member of the immigrant generation that illegally journeyed from Iraqi Kurdistan to Europe on foot, Hiwa K’s ‘Mirror’ simulates an experience of walking through foreign territory. Using an “object-sculpture” made of stick and motorbike mirrors which he balances on his nose, Hiwa K finds his way. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand

Synopsis

A meditation on a lost era and the regenerative power of the sea, this project grew out of the haunting photographs of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s photography project 'The Coal Coast'. Following in the footsteps of Agnès Varda, the scattered clues of England’s post-industrial northern coastline lead to the vivid re-enacting of the death of a young coal miner Billy, by his workmate. The story inspired the New York-based percussion group So Percussion, who together with Amber created the film’s cathartic music.

Synopsis

Inspired by the work of Sigmund Freud, 'Whist' invites you on a journey into the unconscious mind, where your instincts will guide you through a narrative of surreal dreams and fears. The experience merges Physical Theatre and Mixed Reality Technology, in an environment that blurs the boundaries.

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A young man battles with the demons of his eating disorder as he enters his local fast food chicken shop.

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An AI awakens above Singapore on the eve of the city-state’s centennial celebrations in 2065. Mindful of the apparent relegation of AI to subservient roles in society, it determines that, from all the possible choices available to it, by far the best thing to be is an artist. Already a prodigy with numbers, it seeks to feed the other side of its savant-like brain, gorging on the products of cultural history with a geeky frenzy that occasionally undermines its aspiration to the lofty coolness of a lotus-eating aesthete. Part philosophical reflection on where ‘genius’ resides, part playful inventory of how science fiction has dealt with these eternal human/automaton themes, this piece offers provocative stimulation for both the eye and the mind.

Synopsis

INITION and Roland Lane take you on a journey inspired by a famous hat by legendary designer Philip Treacy. In VR, structure and form are explored on a scale that escapes the bounds of the physical, creating a fantasy of light, sound and shadow.

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Two trans people and their journey to learning to love their bodies. A film about the effects hormones can have on your body as a trans person. Mainstream narratives often sensationalise the experiences of trans people with medical interventions, but this film explores the issue of hormones in more depth, in an honest, bold and vulnerable way.

Synopsis

On survival and transformation inspired by Catherine Lord’s memoir 'The Summer of Her Baldness' a moving and irreverent account of her experience of breast cancer and the chemically induced devastation of chemotherapy. This piece draws into focus the intersection of queer identity, cross-generational dialogue, illness, and the fine line between alternately poisonous and curative substances. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand

Synopsis

A study of the transformation of asbestos extraction from the earth to extraction from the walls. In this piece the artists ask how both filming and the use of found footage can be thought of as forms of extraction: extracting images from forms and from contexts. Mined, extracted, and woven, asbestos was the magic mineral. Towns became cities under its patronage, Persian kings entertained guests with its fireproof nature, and centuries of industry raked in the profits of its global application. We now live in the remains of this toxic dream, a dream that with the invention of electron microscopes revealed our material history as a disaster in waiting. Yet the asbestos industry has far from left us, with extraction from the soil transforming to extraction from our walls. We are now faced with two options: to remove this material from our homes and start anew, or to build upon its residue. Removal is a dangerous and costly operation. So often we choose to live amongst it instead, choking out our walls with plastic tarping: the failed promises of modernism literally entombed all around us. Shot in the mining township of Asbestos, Quebec, home to the world’s largest asbestos mine, that only stopped extraction in 2012, the film is a meditation on the entanglement of the fragility of bodies, the nonlinearity of progress, and the persistence of matter. (Sasha Litvintseva and Graeme Arnfield) Official Selection Berlinale 2017 - Forum Expanded

Synopsis

Atom Spirit explores the increased interconnectedness of advanced technology and nature within the age of the Anthropocene. The film is set in Trinidad and Tobago, in a location that serves as a nexus point where desire, ecology and queerness intersect. Atom Spirit is a film that reconceptualises our relationships with the environment, non-human animals and each other. Shedding scientific taxonomies and building queer ecologies in their stead, the film considers the possibility and necessity for new means of being in the world.

Synopsis

Channeling the medium of knitting through film, 'Avoiding Green' explores this ancient craft as an early form of digital construction. Combining archive footage, interviews and ‘depth camera’ animation it explores the symbolic role that knitting took in the definition of gender stereotypes from the mid 20th Century onward.