Touch Air(2023)

Astronomical Echoes(pt)

Made by film students, the short film is a tribute and authorial reinterpretation inspired by old Pink Floyd music videos as a psychedelic trip. Using overhead projectors to capture a liquid light show, the narrative is stitched together from a retro photograph, bringing a bit of 60s psychedelia with an air of nostalgia. With the combination of two of the band's songs ("Echoes" and "Astronomy Domine"), the music video brings the concept of the realism and ludic, of the present moment and insanity. Composed of characters who are part of a fictional band and travel through the delight of a mind that lives in the past while resting in reality.

Guinea(ja)

Yukari Nishihara, 25, earns her living as an art model and aspires to become an actress. One day, while she was out, she saw “a man's face about to jump off the roof of a building”, and since then she has been suffering from a peculiar constitution: she sees a suicide while on her period, faints, and develops a fever. The goddess of love does not smile on Yukari, who is unable to become a sweet girl with a nice boyfriend. The only things that can save Yukari now are her best friend Hana, who has a keen intuition, and a suppository that can break a fever in one shot. On the day of an important audition, Yukari has decided that this is her last chance. However, Yukari realizes that she has forgotten her antipyretic suppositories, and her eyes meet those of another soon-to-be suicide victim. She is in a desperate situation. What does Yukari do?

House(ja)

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

Love(tr)

A strange wire-fingered homunculus navigates through his dreams of different faces and faces, traversing a subliminal and endless variety. They are all different faces, but all have huge eyes that are questioned as to what keeps them apart, perhaps left broken by an impossible love.

African American Express(en)

African American Express is an abstract animation exploring the impact of consumerism in the Black community. Told in the style of Soviet Propaganda, this animated short dissects the pattern of excessive materialism and consumption prevalent within the Black population.

A Paw Over Dark(en)

A washed up actor performs night after night in a grimy theater to a nearly empty audience. However, everything changes when a clueless dog jumps on stage.

Oops! I've Been Driven Mundane(en)

A hermitic stop-motion animator is tasked with caring for a collection of strange plants.

ASTRAKAN(pt)

Rift(es)

Daniela (24) is a ghost in pain. Her life ended suddenly and painfully, leaving her friend and roommate, Mónica (22) alone in their shared apartment in Santiago, Chile. Daniela feels her frustration grow within her, as she fears that her time in limbo will never end.

All Souls Carnival(en)

Len Lye usually timed his films with great care to match their soundtracks, but for All Souls Carnival, he and composer Henry Brant worked separately, preferring to see if the score and visual track would synchronise by chance. Lye also experimented with a new Direct Film technique, drenching the filmstrip in colourful paint and marker pen.

Flaming Creatures(en)

Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a “comedy set in a haunted movie studio.” Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for an indelible, heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake. After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.

Echo(en)

A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?

Minuet(en)

An essay in colour harmonics and visual overtones. Conceived and produced as part of the Images Film Festival's Minute Movies.

HYPERSONIC Music Club(ja)

In 2017, a short anime film called Hypersonic Music Club was produced in Japan. It was directed and written by Osamu Kobayashi, a veteran of the industry who passed away in April 2021. For various reasons, this short anime was never released. It was made public on August 1, 2023.

Squares(en)

An abstract computer-generated film. The image is of squares revolving in space around and through each other. Colors and forms multiply and divide against a beautiful symphonic score by George Kleinsinger.

DARKMAN(en)

Seeing himself as a form unable to experience intimacy, he is given the chance when brought to the household of twin sisters.

behind the scenes(en)

An experimental documentary/animation hybrid exploring likeness scanning, AI, and what that means for identity.

Liminal Space(en)

Deep in an ocean facility, Aryanna, must face the unknown, as drips from water-tight air vents and scratches from within empty cells drive her to the brink of madness.

Revelation To The Disembodied(en)

Fragments of a collective post-human dream construct a world that straddles hyper-technological, ecological, and mythological dimensions.

Avalanche(en)

When Adrian's friend denies him a loan of money, a rampage of thoughts starts within him. Why won't Jacob lend him any money? And why won't he lend any to him, specifically?