2011-2020

Introduction
A group of activists risk their lives fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in Chechnya.Read More »

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A veteran newscaster desperate for ratings secures an interview with a mass murderer on death row the night before the man is set to be executed. What our newscaster thinks will be an easy ratings boost turns into a dangerous psychological game between two manipulative alpha males.Read More »

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Working between text, sound, and moving-image, Hayama crafts profoundly beautiful short films whose obliquely mythopoetic narratives explore what might best be termed “ecological anomie.” Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as the Lumière brothers, medieval Japanese poetry, and proto-scientific treatises by Goethe and Aristotle, Hayama’s works probe the essential loneliness experienced by a human-kind which has been estranged from the unity of nature by our modern systems of perception and knowledge production. While many experimental filmmakers operating in a romantic mode have taken nature as a subject – often seeking to spectacularize her optical presence through the creation of “transcendent” imagery – Hayama’s films are characterized by an uncommon sense of aesthetic restraint, a conscious preservation of critical distance in the face of nature’s inscrutability and our own primordial entanglement within it.Read More »

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University student Ryo works at a bar part-time to earn money. He is not enamoured with his job or life for that matter. He is introduced to a female pimp who first tests him, and once he passes the hurdle, employs him as a male escort. Ryo takes to his job like a duck to water and prides himself in satisfying his diverse clientele. Getting to know the needs and wants of his customers helps Ryo understand himself better.Read More »

Il castello (The castle) is a movie about Malpensa airport, a place where bureaucracy, procedures and control put a serious strain on the freedom of individuals, animals and goods passing through. The airport is a strategic place where all law enforcement agencies of a country come together. Here’s where new control measures are tested: a permanent security testing area unlike any other public place. Italian and foreign secret services, customs police, Guardia di Finanza (financial police), Carabinieri (police), security guards, sniffer dogs, currency dogs and explosive detector dogs, closed circuit tv cameras everywhere and the ever-growing fear of an impending unknown danger. By watching the law enforcement agencies in operation we put together a portrait of a customs border in four movements.Read More »

On a gray, foggy morning outside a large Polish city, Zhenia (Alec Utgoff), a masseur from the East, enters the lives of the wealthy residents of a gated community. Using hypnotic, almost magical techniques to get a residence permit, he starts working. The well-to-do residents in their cookie-cutter homes seemingly have it all, but they all suffer from an inner sadness, some unexplained longing. The attractive and mysterious newcomer’s hands heal, and Zhenia’s eyes seem to penetrate their souls. To them, his Russian accent sounds like a song from the past, a memory of their seemingly safer childhoods.Read More »

Immobile in a home where the sands of time fall to the rhythm of the rural Azerbaijani sounds, a mother waits for her son. When he arrives, their conversations circle around existential questions and news from afar. Unrest cloaks the world outside. Mother and son grow closer, silence melts into words, and life springs between them. The son leaves, and winter settles in to the forever-outdated house in which temporalities blurs and past and present beat to the rhythm of the same clock.Read More »

Four short stories are set along the roads of Donbass during the war. There are no safe spaces and no one can make sense of just what is going on. Even as they are trapped in the chaos, some manage to wield authority over others. But in this world, where tomorrow may never come, not everyone is defenceless and miserable. Even the most innocent victims may have their turn at taking charge.Read More »

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“after – image” is an art-science project by Grayson Cooke, exploring material memory and forgetting. It features time-lapse macro-photography of photographic negatives being chemically destroyed.

This project was produced in consultation with scientist and artist Amanda Reichelt-Brushett and with sound by Matt Hill.Read More »