Video Essay/The Essay Film: Some Thoughts of Discontent(2013)

The Water Map(es)

The Water Map is an essayistic journey through the ethnography and landscapes of the Region of Murcia. These places are in the process of disappearing due to the increasing and abundant agricultural exploitation. Water has marked the territory and the culture of the area, and with its disappearance, the memories of four characters fade away.

Don't Work (1968-2018)(fr)

A year in the life of Elsa Michaud and Gabriel Gauthier, students of Fine Arts in Paris, lovers in troubled times, overwhelmed by maddening verbal and auditory stimuli, witnesses of a globalized violence more visible than ever in a chaotic digital era, in which the slow execution of simple gestures in a silent performance is an act of resistance.

Swimming, Dancing(en)

Swimming, Dancing examines audiovisual representations of the Yangtze (1934–present), from silent film to video art to the contemporary vlog. Inspired by the city symphonies of the 1920s, Swimming, Dancing pieces together a “river symphony”, evoking the images, sounds and contradictions that make up the river’s turbulent history.

Magnicidios Poe(es)

The sarcastic account of the assassination of five Spanish politicians between 1870 and 1973 is mixed with the narration of five short stories by Edgar Allan Poe illustrated by five skillful pencil artists. A documentary, a video essay, a collage, a provocative experiment where various pop culture figures and icons perform unexpected cameos. The macabre joke of a jester. Never more.

Heimat Is a Space in Time(de)

Director Thomas Heise picks up the biographical pieces left by his family, and composes an epic picture of four generations of his family, of a country, of a century.

gap(pt)

Stream of consciousness awakened by the shots of an inauspicious summer.

The Scars(eu)

The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?

Ôrí(pt)

A look at the Brazilian black movement between 1977 and 1988, going by the relationship between Brazil and Africa.

A lo Mejor Algún Día(es)

The Mermaids(en)

A video essay by Luiz Rosemberg Filho on the standardization of beauty through mass media.

Agit-Prop(en)

A documentary about the life and work of poet and visual artist Moacy Cirne.

Pornografia(en)

An essay-film about images and politicians.

Magritte or the Object Lesson(fr)

The surrealist painter René Magritte questions the objective reality and emphasizes the arbitrariness of the relationship between an object, its image and its name: the evocation of mystery consists of images of familiar things gathered or transformed in such a way that they no longer conform to our ideas, whether naive or wise.

Prison Images(de)

A film composed of images from prisons. Quotes from fiction films and documentaries as well as footage from surveillance cameras. A look at the new control technologies, at personal identification devices, electronic ankle bracelets, electronic tracking devices.

El Estado soy Yo(es)

The images from the landing of the first expedition of the spaceship Columbia are juxtaposed to a reflection on the function of the visual medium, and artistic creation as a whole.

Respice finem(cs)

"A refined film essay about the loneliness, wisdom and humility of old women. The film, most valued by Jan Špáta, was awarded the Grand Prize at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, the Trilobit Award and Special Mention at the IFF in Karlovy Vary."

The Cooking Show(en)

The cooking show is as old as television itself. But why do we like watching the making of a meal that most of us will never cook, let alone eat? Dirty Furniture’s jam-packed video essay is a rollercoaster ride through the history of the genre, at once a staple of television viewing and a hotpot of shifting perspectives and sociocultural values.

Letters from Wolf Street(pl)

A street in downtown Warsaw transforms into a kaleidoscopic portrait of Polish society. Behind the viewfinder is an Indian immigrant, who seeks to overcome the boundaries between himself and an anxiety-ridden country.

Motion Pictures are Your Best Entertainment(en)

Television was invented as a result of scientific and technical research. Its power as a medium of news and entertainment altered all preceding media of news and entertainment

this evening out of boredom washed my hands three times in succession in the bathroom(en)

Reminiscences of a trip to Čáslav