1.

Film is dead

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Juan Benitez Allassia

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The last beams of light vanish into Díaz, the town I was born, located at the center-south of Santa Fe province, Argentina. It is a place of less than two thousand inhabitants, where the distance between us is always minimal.
This is a place, from which I have already left, where the passing of the sun transforms light into absolute darkness. During childhood I often went to the movie theater, which was nothing other than a projector and a screen in the middle of a club. But time filled this place crowded by moving images full of cobwebs. I go back to record this deterioration.
When I told my father this aim, I discovered that he, in the 70s, together with a group of friends, carried the first projector to his hometown, as well as collaborated in the filming of a documentary. However, my father was not able to accompany me in the project, like I would have wanted: he died two months before filming began.

The encounter with the family archive and the abandoned spaces of my town shape a new present. The film goes into the dimensions of memory to explore the ways in which the experience of the encounters is shaped. The beam of light from the projector cut into the darkness of this eternal present and my father’s story twists synchronically with mine again. Reframing and dismantling bring life where no longer is found.
I place my body where my father decides to leave us. I decided to resume his story to figure out mine.

2.

Ste. Anne

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Rhayne Vermette

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As a party wanders into the night, word arrives that Renée has emerged from obscurity. This cataclysmic moment ignites Modeste’s awkward reunion with his older sibling. Renée has been missing for years and her presence unsettles the family, which also includes her own daughter, Athene. As Renée begins to form her dreams from fragments of her past, ominous premonitions disrupt the land.
Shot over the course of two years, Ste. Anne traces an allegorical reclamation of land through personal, symbolic and historical sites all across Treaty 1 Territory, heartland of the Métis Nation.

3.

Luna in Caelo – Fear to Die

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Daniel Dávila

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During 2020, on the 20th anniversary of the edition of “Miedo a Morir” (Fear to Die), the second album by the chilean band Luna in Caelo, the health emergency caused by COVID-19 is unleashed in Chile. Daniel Dávila, guitarist and audiovisual producer, decides to resignify the title of the album, based on the experience of long months of confinement and anguish, making experimental films during his quarantine, and creating a visual interpretation for music with an atmospheric and cinematic vocation.

5.

Berg

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Joke Olthaar

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A journey at high altitude seen through the eyes of three mysteriously connected hikers. After their coincidental meeting we follow these three on their personal odysseys. The levels of concentration they exhibit in trying to avoid mistakes makes their experience of the overwhelming landscape even more intense.

6.

I have not been afraid of going blind for a long time

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Yannick Mosimann

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“Today, a flock of starlings swooshed past overhead.
In my mind, I repeat the sound over and over,
while I watch the footage.”

The filmmaker captures his environment with the camera, fearing he might be losing it more and more.
Strict rules about using the entire clip length and its original audio track inform the editing process. The tableaus and their insistence in duration create a pull into an increasingly isolated state of perceiving the outside world in its unspectacular yet strangely unfamiliar intensity.

7.

Wild Symphony

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Diego Samper

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The Wild Symphony is an exploration of sound as basic, essential energy, and of the archaic origins of music as invocation and spell. An invitation to listen to the living forest and to remember that we are still connected to the Wild, that we are part of that unique living being that covers our planet like a pulsating skin.

9.

Ad Nauseam: The Faitheist Church

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Tor-Finn Malum Fitje, Thomas Anthony Hill

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Christianity and atheism have merged and formed “faitheism”, a religious belief system worshipping Doubt as the only divine force (The Principle of Divine Doubt). This film is a deep dive into the problem of evil in the Old Testament, and in the process, the filmmakers have created numerous made-up doctrines and a meta-fictional story that is truer than life.

The Faitheist Church is the 7th film of the umbrella project Ad Nauseam, a series of essay films portraying a society where doubt no longer exists. In this day and age, neurologists have discovered the center of consciousness, the open kitchen solution has been ruled mandatory by law, and every new parent follows the hand book How To Raise a Child obediently. While the new elevator music, Uplifting Corporate, dominates nightclub playlists, a universal understanding of all the rules of football have been reached. And yet, this society is permeated by a chaos so disruptive that it’s hard for people even to breathe. Through stylized 3D animations and a satirical “clear-cut narration”, video artist duo Tor-Finn Malum Fitje and Thomas Anthony Hill comment on the current paradigm of truth, and attempt to challenge the post-modern notion that all ways of looking at the world can be equally true.