LIST OF THE FILMS SCREENED AT SHORT FILM FACTORY
IN NOVEMBER 2019
WEEK 1
Title of the film: My best friend
Genre: Narrative, Comedy
Duration: 22’
Country: Romania
Director: Catalin Bugean
Synopsis: A newly immigrant family from Romania, wants to buy the traditional pig for Christmas. Not knowing too many people, not having Romanian friends in Chicago, they decide to ask their employees about a place, from where they could buy the Christmas pig. They send them to Pet shop. They prepare the pig for the Christmas dinner in the old traditional way, and they are so happy they could celebrate Christmas, about the same way they did back home in their villages.
Title of the film: Happy Marriage
Genre: Narrative, Student
Duration: 12’
Country: Slovakia
Director: Erik Jasaň
Synopsis: The movie Happy marriage tells the story of a married couple which breaks apart after the death of their only child. Andrej and Eva, husband and wife, are inevitably getting to the point of the imaginary crossroad. There is nothing keeping Eva in the marriage so she deeply desires to leave. Andrej is becoming self-aware of his aggressive nature and tries to change the situation of their marriage.
Title of the film: In Brief
Genre: Documentary, Experimental
Duration: 7’
Country: Italy
Director: Carlo Perassi
Synopsis: In Brief starts from Post-history, by narrating scientific facts, like a documentary, regarding an enormous timespan in the Universe’s far future, whilst developing a silent drama around the heart of being human.
Title of the film: ‘CRACK IN THE WALL’
Genre: Narrative, Drama
Duration: 14’
Country: Turkey
Director: Hakan Ünal
Synopsis: Vahit is a religious,night-shift janitor, living alone in a patchy home. One day, he wakes up blood in sweat from an erotic dream and notices the wall where he puts the Koran is cracked.
Title of the film: The Widow
Genre: Drama, Crime, Thriller, Film Noir, Romance, Action, Suspense
Duration: 29’
Country: Australia
Director: Brendan Young
Synopsis: Set in Melbourne, Australia in 1965, a Sicilian widow fights for her life when members of the local Calabrian mafia murder her husband and try to seize control of his produce business.
Title of the film: About My Mother
Genre: Drama
Duration: 18’
Country: Japan
Director: Yumi Otsuka
Synopsis: This is the offbeat story of a woman named Yumiko, a serious, yet apprehensive and honest single mother of a son and daughter, both in their twenties. After observing the mother meticulously sew up a hole in her son’s sock, the daughter urges her to “live a little.”
One day, while walking in a neighborhood park, she stops and listens to a band play an instrumental version of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘I’d Rather Be a Sparrow than a Snail’(El Condor Pasa). Upon hearing this tune, she briefly loses herself in the music before coming back to reality, but something in her psyche has changed. She recognizes that her attempts at being the perfect mother have gone largely unappreciated.
WEEK 2
Title of the film: STURLING
Genre: Drama, Action, Dark Comedy, Superheroes
Duration: 13’
Country: Italy
Director: Rodolfo Gusmeroli
Synopsis: Domino Sturling is a professional villain, the best in the world, who finds himself dismissed due to be replaced by a younger man. He has to fight to demonstrate to himself and to the world that he is still the villain number one.
Title of the film: Lumens
Genre: Animation, Student
Duration: 6’
Country: United States
Director: Manuel Moreno Lee
Synopsis: In a land where the sun has disappeared, a young woman embarks on a quest.
Title of the film: Artemiev – Rains
Genre: Music Video, Student
Duration: 5’
Country: Russian Federation
Director: Vladimir Galeev
Synopsis: A film about invisible thread between people, and what next after connection is lost.
Title of the film: Tina & Sendy
Genre: Drama
Duration: 17’
Country: Croatia
Director: Hani Domazet
Synopsis: A journey through one day and one night. One porn audition, two girls and the big force that will put that female friendship on test.
Title of the film: Off
Genre: Drama
Duration: 12’
Country: Singapore
Director: Dag Kaszlikowski
Synopsis: In the futuristic world, the pressure of convenience forces Min to make a choice about her boyfriend she is not ready for.
Title of the film: .tibbar
Genre: Student, Comedy
Duration: 7’
Country: Germany
Director: Antoine Matuttis
Synopsis: Two drunk guys hit a homeless man with their car. Full of panic, they get out of the vehicle to check the bloody wound on the strangers head. His condition seems to be worse than they thought…
Title of the film: Freedom
Genre: Drama / Political
Duration: 2 minutes 20 seconds
Country: USA
Director: Yuri+Ana
Synopsis: Freedom discusses the current empathy problem regarding immigrants by posing the question: why do we cherish some values in car commercials but shy away from them when it’s people’s life on the line?
Title of the film: Life
Genre: Experimental, Short
Duration: 3’
Country: Serbia
Director: Nenad Teofilovic
Synopsis: Life is a short story that foregrounds the issue of human existence.
Title of the film: The Hidden Dancer
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 9’
Country: United States
Director: Min Kim
Synopsis: A well-known dancer Barry Lynn passed away at the age of 103 in January 2018. Studied with many renowned modern dance pioneers, Lynn started his dance company after serving in World War II. Since moving to Wisconsin in 1978, he lived a quiet life performing and choreographing until the ripe old age of 100. This short documentary was filmed in 2013 when he was 98 years old.
Title of the film: Actually
Genre: Horror, Drama, History, Thriller, Mystery, Fantasy
Duration: 25’
Country: Estonia
Director: Mart Sander
Synopsis: Three people, who meet at a wayside hotel one stormy night, seem to share both past and future.
WEEK 3
Title of the film: Staying with Penny
Genre: Narrative, Comedy
Duration: 16’
Country: New Zealand
Director: Carolyn Dekkers
Synopsis: STAYING WITH PENNY: A SINKING SHIP OR A STEP UP TO SHORE?
For some people life can be like walking a tightrope. They’re just one step away from everything to come crashing down. Penny understands this and has built her world around the needs of the more vulnerable. ‘Staying with Penny’ follows Sam into this volatile dynamic, as he’s forced to choose between taking the safe road or finding the courage to ride the chaos he’s found himself in.
Title of the film: Modern Love
Genre: Black Comedy, Dramedy, Youth/Teen, Technology
Duration: 12’
Country: Israel
Director: Itamar Gross
Synopsis: Three years after he stopped using Facebook, Chaim gives the social network a second chance. When he becomes much more popular than he has ever expected, he must choose between his social network persona and his own true character.
Title of the film: Premonition
Genre: Narrative, Student
Duration: 13’
Country: United States
Director: Leticia Akel Escarate
Synopsis: JAVIER arrives in a small town looking for a job. In this place he faces a farming community led by Chivo, a stubborn man who doesn’t trust him and won’t allow him to work with them. Guided by strange dreams that haunt him by night, Javier will fight against Chivo’s prejudices to win his place in the community.
Title of the film: Kokosmos
Genre: Sci-Fi/Experimental
Duration: 02:00
Country: Russia
Director: Anna Radchenko
Synopsis: Shot in Moscow by the award-winning director and photographer Anna Radchenko, Kokosmos is a tribute to Russia’s infatuation with space.
Somewhere between a fashion film, a music piece and an experimental video, Kokosmos embraces reality and extends it through magical realism by visually answering the question: what if?
The video is Radchenko’s first piece combining CGI with real footage, a direction that she is looking to explore with her future productions.
Kokosmos is a collaboration with model Yana Dobroliubova, recognised for her striking and ethereal looks which break away from traditional beauty standards. Inspired by Dobroliubova’s unearthly aesthetic, as well as Japanese manga artist Shintaro Kago, Radchenko expresses our constant need to explore and search by focusing on the concept of the all-seeing eye.
The music and sound was custom made specifically for this piece. Collaborating with creative music and sound design duo Playhead, they worked with the London-based singer songwriter Alyusha Chagrin to create an otherworldly-sounding language to fit the scenario.
Similarly, the choice of clothing and make-up is also meant to fit with post-soviet space theme; Radchenko brings in elements of folklore by specifically selecting Russian fashion designers and sticking to a neon color palette featuring bright shades of green and purple.
Title of the film: Disharmony 2
Genre: Experimental
Duration: one minute
Country: Slovenia
Director: Peter Lebar
Synopsis: Disharmony is one-minute movie, the answer to EU and its search for common solution for people coming from the South. It was recorded at the Trail of Remembrance and Comradeship – PST, the place where the city of Ljubljana was surrounded by the barbed wire and separated the city from its hinterland in the 2nd world war.
Today, the wire is still separating, specifically on the southern borders of Europe; on PST it has become invisible.
Title of the film: Without Thread
Genre: Drama
Duration: 01:44 min
Country: Germany
Director: Yannick Rietsch
Synopsis: A woman entangles herself in a game with a stranger on the internet.
Title of the film: Joni
Gernre: Thriller
Duration: 28 Min 12 Sec.
Country: Germany
Director: Valentin Boczkowski
Synopsis: The film Joni shows the development of a girl whose identity never really seems certain.
When a girl returns home, everything seems normal until she is suddenly no longer recognized by her mother. At first she doesn’t take her mother’s behaviour seriously and disappears into her room. When the mother threatens to call the police, the situation becomes more and more menacing for her.
Title of the film: Lilith
Genre: Experimental, Drama, poetic
Duration: 12’
Country: United States
Director: Erofili Moraiti
Synopsis: A woman in her early twenties is having constant dreams about snakes, which make her question her sexual relationships with men and bring her closer to the jewish mythological tale of the demonized Lilith.
Title of the film: Linoleum – Alain Chamfort / Compagnie Niki Noves
Genre: Music Video
Duration: 05:50
Country: France
Director: Niki Noves
Synopsis: In a dark room, we find two men forehead to forehead, sitting on the floor, heads connected by a helmet with an organic look. They are surrounded by silhouettes motionless and tense. In parallel in a sanitized white space, these two men face each other at a distance. They seem to have the power to influence the behavior of the other. Their violent and fierce manipulations quickly blow them to the limit of the knockout. This struggle has the effect of animating the individuals around them in the dark space. Alain Chamfort is the link between these two spaces. He is the witness and the narrator. He walks in the dark towards a ray of light. In the air there are particles that gradually draw a yellow landscape, a chaotic exterior that indicates a post-apocalyptic era. A child appears in the distance through the yellowish fog. He walks in the midst of a group of women and men of all ages walking in the same direction, looking out at the horizon of a new land.
Title of the film: Impermanence – An Inner Journey
Genre: Time Lapse Movie
Duration: 6 minutes
Country: production in France shot in Thailand, China, Burma, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India (Ladakh) and Cambodia.
Director: Nicolas Jouhet
Synopsis: Making this film led me to travel to many holy places in Asia. But it is not this trip that I wanted to tell here, but an inner journey through the progressive understanding of impermanence. This leads us to realize that everything is linked, that we are all connected. This understanding can come with meditation, but also through the contemplation of nature. How can we not feel united to the whole universe when one immerses oneself in a starry sky?
As this knowledge takes root in us, we act with greater kindness for ourselves, others, and the planet.
The time lapse makes it possible to contract the time, it is the ideal technique to turn into pictures the impermanence.
WEEK 4
Title of the film: In the heart of the Grangettes
Genre: documentary
Duration: 26’33”
Country: Switzerland
Director: Hassan Lakhdar
Synopsis: Discover, with Noor and Martin, a magnificent place, where the Rhône flows into Lake Geneva. It’s sublime! Les Grangettes in Switzerland is part of the wetland convention of international importance RAMSAR. You can find there a multitude of environments, waterbirds and plants.
Title of the film: Prologue
Genre: Experimental Short
Duration: 3:23
Country: Poland
Director: Adam Mańkowski
Synopsis: It could be Chernobyl, Chicago, or a dystopian near future; and it could be a world more wolf than lion, more hyena than either.
Composed entirely of found footage, Prologue tracks an evolving dialectic between text and visual images in a pastoral of detritus where the same indifferent sun unapologetically observes the various implied dangers and devastation in even the most routine actions.
Title of the film: Tiffany
Film Type: Animation
Genre: Drama/ Fantasy
Duration: 00:06:15
Country: United States of America
Director: Christina Christie
Synopsis: While packing away her deceased grandmother’s affairs, Pauline discovers that one of their stained glass sculptures has come to life. As the lights in the house go out and their memories together begin to dim, Pauline realizes there is joy in celebrating the legacy of those who have been lost.
Title of the film: Serpendipity
Film Type: Animation
Genre: Comedy / Fantasy / Romance
Duration: 00:07:07
Country: United States of America
Directors: Kevin Barwick and Carlos Mejia
Synopsis: Gordon does not want to freeze during his dinner date. Not only is Gordon nervous, but he also has a secret- he has snakes for hair with a bad habit of turning people into stone. Will he find love or is this a date with disaster?
Title of the film: To Watch the Truth in the Eyes
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 30 min
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Director: Vesna Marich
Synopsis: How does the Sarajevo Canton, Bosnia and Herzegovina, treat disabled young people and children with learning disabilities? How are their lives affected by a chaotic and complicated political system? The lives of two families, Hajrich and Sunjich, are very different. The Sunjich family has the means to make the life of their daughter Edna fulfilled. She is a happy and successful teenager. The Hajrich family are stuck because there is no access for disabled people in their building and even the basic right to go out with their daughter Senka is an everyday struggle. But, there is the light at the end of the tunnel.
Title of the Film: The Wind on Your Skin
Genre: Drama
Duration: 18 minutes
Country: Namibia
Directors: Jana von Hase, Birgit Stauber, Naomi Beukes
Synopsis: A Community is shaken when a young girl is killed because of who she loved.
Title of the film: Livonija
Genre: History / Fantasy
Duration: 19:26
Country: Latvia
Director: Walter Mirkss & Conor Long
Synopsis: 13th Century. The peaceful life of the Baltic tribes is interrupted by the arrival of Crusaders from the west. With the tensions rising, people search for the advice of their leader – Bearslayer – but his location has been unknown for many years.
