Projects in genres: Experimental

Synopsis

With an elephant's ivory tusk as the protagonist, artist-filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland's film meditates upon the endless tactility of museological and ecological conservation, inviting reflection upon forms of representation, replicas, and embodiments of various materials, disciplines, and institutions.
Official Selection Locarno Film Festival 2019 - Moving Ahead - World premiere
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Wavelengths

Synopsis

In the town of Krabi, a popular tourist destination in southern Thailand, the pre-historic, the recent past and the contemporary capitalist world awkwardly collide. The town’s local folklore and histories are promoted as attractions to foreigners, while the town’s traditional labour force is muted and hidden from the tourists’ eyes. A nameless character, whose identity continually changes, takes us around town to explore various sites that capture Krabi in its current state. These sites uniquely illustrate how Krabi’s folklore is propagated and commodified to fill the need of tourism industry.
A docu-fiction work from Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong developed from ideas explored in their 2018 Thailand Biennale installation piece 'The Ambassadors'.
Official Selection Locarno Film Festival 2019 - Moving Ahead - World premiere
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Wavelengths
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Special Presentation

Synopsis

Emblematically deconstructed, the analogue rhythm of the Gong Man is soon disrupted by audio arrhythmia, as if the heart has skipped a beat and trying to make up for lost time. A cacophony of sound along with a blend of colours lose their focus and slowly drifts into sonic pleasure.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

1972, Blossom, Texas.

After running away from home Simon decides to leave town, by chance he finds a way out and quickly goes to pick up his friends for the journey of a lifetime.

Synopsis

This is a ghost story. A series of uncanny events lead The Seeker to a forest in Poland where she meets a distraught elderly woman who hands her a note written in Polish that she cannot understand. Returning months later with an interpreter she hears the story of The Deathless Woman, a Roma matriarch who was buried alive in the forest by German soldiers in 1942.
The Deathless Woman draws us from the scene of her death to other sites of Roma persecution. She hovers above the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau on the night the Roma revolt against their Nazi captors. She glides under the lake in Várpalota where 118 women and children were massacred in 1945. She passes through the burnt-out house in Tatárszentgyörgy where neo-Nazis murdered a Roma family in 2009. She even crosses into the virtual realm and enters the digital landscapes of the Internet, encountering hate speech and video games where players are invited to gun down unarmed Roma as they run through the streets.
The film interweaves The Deathless Woman’s ghostly narration, The Seeker’s journey of discovery, fantastical re-imaginings of buried secrets; and documentary testimony from witnesses to atrocities against the Roma in Poland and Hungary.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

A film of three interconnected narratives – a story of the artist's grandfather, one of ‘the land’, and another detailing an encounter with Nigeria – which the film attempts to tell in as many ways as possible.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Bright Future - Ammodo Tiger Short Competition - International premiere

Synopsis

A naïve actress new to the industry allows her senses to be seduced by this world, trusting a well established director which leads to dramatic consequences.

Synopsis

The film uses puppets and automata as human surrogates, and combines original material with found-footage and archive photographs. The idea of hypnosis occurs throughout, notably in the records of its use in the treatment of hysteria at the Salpetriere Asylum in 19th century Paris.

Synopsis

A confrontation between two swimmers in a locker room ends in tears. A collaboration with London-based musicians GUO.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Official Short Film Competition - Dare Strand

Synopsis

Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy designed New Gourna in 1954, introducing ecological principles for mud architecture to Egypt. He dreamt that rural populations might have sustainable lives.
Stills and an experimental soundtrack take a haunting look at efforts from the 1940s in sustainability in the Middle East.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Perspectives

Synopsis

A film that considers the effects of amnesia. Through the lens of alien abduction, mesmerism, the radio frequency detritus of cold war history, and Britain's decolonial process in Kenya, the film weaves an expressionistic account of memory loss and the trauma often involved with its recovery.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Bright Future

Synopsis

An optimistic declaration of a young seven-year-old's truth.