Is the past the future we want ? The race to get back to normal made us question this very idea of normalcy itself – Is it normal that our planet is dying because of our economic priorities? Is it normal when lockdowns only protect the rich while the economically disadvantaged are left jobless and take to the streets? Is it normal that our children and relationships are dependent on the thin addictive threads of technology Is it normal that we live in a world without kindness? This film uses poetry and visual metaphor to explore these questions.

Is the past the future we want ? The race to get back to normal made us question this very idea of normalcy itself – Is it normal that our planet is dying because of our economic priorities? Is it normal when lockdowns only protect the rich while the economically disadvantaged are left jobless and take to the streets? Is it normal that our children and relationships are dependent on the thin addictive threads of technology Is it normal that we live in a world without kindness? This film uses poetry and visual metaphor to explore these questions.
2020-12-18
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7.0With depth, intimacy, and humor, FLOAT! captures filmmaker Azza Cohen's magnetic grandma’s life-affirming journey learning to swim at 82, inspiring audiences to defy societal expectations of aging and to boldly look forward at every stage.
0.0The Crowds of Chernobyl explores the reasons behind people's fascination with the (arguably) most famous exclusion zone in the world, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The film attempts to explain the drive behind the 'dark tourism' industry that has blossomed in the nuclear wasteland since 2011, when the site was opened up for tourists. As the interviews from a wide of people unravel why some (including the interviewees) might even make the zone a permanent part of their life; the haunting and provoking visuals invite the viewer to make up their own mind.
0.0A brief history of the emergence and artistic innovations of tango in 19th-century Argentina and Europe. The film offers a mosaic of tango melodies, art works, dance performances, historical footage, photographs of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century, and texts by Celedonio Flores and Enrique Santos Discépolo.
0.0With shared economic, environmental, and humanitarian concerns, communities of local planners, designers, and citizens work toward cross-border collaboration. Ronald Rael, an architecture professor, takes an opportunity to use art to prove the uselessness of building borders.
0.0Strangers in the Dark is an experimental film about how light pollution makes a glow-worm’s love life a living hell. Combining different techniques from animation to archive material the film follows glow-worm’s attempts to find a partner in an environment that is no longer dark at night. The story about light and darkness moves from the scale of planetary to microscopic, from the calmness of nature to a hectic city and from artificial light to the green shimmer of a glow-worm’s behind.
0.0Refuge(e) traces the incredible journey of two refugees, Alpha and Zeferino. Each fled violent threats to their lives in their home countries and presented themselves at the US border asking for political asylum, only to be incarcerated in a for-profit prison for months on end without having committed any crime. Thousands more like them can't tell their stories.
0.0On the coast of the Arctic Ocean of Chukotka live people cut off from the world. Their life revolves around hunting walruses and whales and protecting villages from bears coming from the tundra. This turns the film into a reflection on death. Marine animals become the food of people, animal leftovers are used to feed arctic foxes on a fur farm, human cemeteries become prey for bears. It seems that all the inhabitants of these places are involved in the cycle of food and death. The film departs from the usual rhythmic structure of cinema, being built on the principle of a shamanic ritual, a meaning-forming event for northern peoples.
A historical documentary documenting the rise, function, and abandonment of a 17 story building that once housed The Rochester Psychiatric Center. This film tells the story of the building through historical footage, interviews of former staff and patients who recount their memories of the behemoth facility while also exploring the abandoned building as it is today.
0.0Rae Ripple, a welder from the outskirts of West Texas transforms neglected metal into works of art and in the process finds healing from her traumatic past.
0.0A look into the world of sustainable fashion with Emma Gorton-Elicott the owner of Fruit Salad, a Bristol based independent sustainable & slow fashion business. Emma discusses the difference between slow and sustainable fashion and what you can do to curate a sustainable wardrobe.
7.0A documentary that follows the journey of a young man named Kristian, who suffers from anxiety and a fear of flying, as he attempts to overcome his fears and travel to Tokyo, Japan. The film captures the raw emotions and experiences of Kristian including the challenges he faces along the way.
7.8People of different age, profession and social status answer two simple questions: who they are and what they want from life.
0.0"Come In" explores how Morse history is entangled with the history of the Spiritualist church. The Spiritualist Church was founded by the Fox sisters in 1850. They claimed that they were mediums who could communicate with the dead and they justified this ability by citing the new ability, through Morse, to speak with someone far away almost instantaneously. After fifty years of practicing Spiritualism, the sisters declared the religion a hoax, and many years later Morse code officially lost its role in the commercial realm. As Spiritualists continue to send messages to the dead in spite of the sisters’ statements, and Morse operators transmit messages into the ether with hope, Johnson asks: How do communication networks and technologies affect our calls and responses and make visible our desire for reciprocity?
4.5Stanley Kubrick’s first color film, commissioned by the Seafarers International Union to promote the benefits of union membership. Shot inside the union’s Atlantic and Gulf Coast District facilities, it features scenes of ships, machinery, cafeteria life, and meetings, highlighting the daily routines and camaraderie of seafarers. Thought lost for decades, the film was rediscovered in 1973 and preserved by the Library of Congress.
6.0Image production is fiction-weaving. Together with Sheena Absalud, we spent an entire day in Pride Month in my room documenting ourselves using different cameras: three mobile phones, one action camera, one CCTV camera, and one laptop, while asking each other questions about our asexuality. Recognizing the role of the moving image in constructing prejudice, self-identity, and desires, and therefore the expansion of neoliberalism, "The Function of Fiction" attempts to abandon temptations to define “asexuality” and its place in the context of “LGBTQIA+”, in pursuit of new socialities and possibilities. Music in the film was spawned with plants and machines.
6.3Le chant du Styrène is a 1958 French documentary film directed by Alain Resnais. The film was an order by French industrial group Pechiney to highlight the merits of plastics.
7.0The story of two young single mothers who join forces to make a new kind of family unit for themselves and their children.
0.0In the hills of rural Pennsylvania, the leader of a local militia must prepare his men for the turbulent political landscape of 2020 while at war with his own conscience. For over ten years, 48-year-old Iraqi War Veteran and machinist Christian Yingling has commanded a troop of private militiamen and women concerned with the government’s infringement on their constitutional rights. The group practices paramilitary drills, stockpiles food and ammo, and attends gun rights rallies in preparation for a doomsday scenario. Now that a worldwide pandemic has hit, followed by a summer of racial injustice protests and a Presidential election like no other, Christian—out of work and nearly out of money—must confront his allegiance and choose to act or not.
0.0A five-year-old boy is completely uninterested in food, which results in conflicts with his mother. The effort she invests in feeding him is equal to the boy’s effort not to eat the offered food. The longer the lunch, the clumsier is their balance on the verge of fight. The duel between the boy’s resourcefulness and the spoon, the tears and mother’s love, ends with the victory of the more persistent. The last bites are either left on the plate, or leave with the boy to bed in his mouth.