SPONSOR
The University of Michigan Penny W. Stamps
School of Art & Design
COMMUNITY PARTNER
ASIFA/Central (Midwest USA chapter)
This program of recent animated films from near and far includes two opposing worlds trying to co-exist; three different points of view; parasomnic experiences; the depths of their souls; the heart of the ghosts; a beautiful but disappearing world; vanishing in the wilderness; linguistic phenomena; a library as the backdrop; traces of bodies and faces; a process of transformation; sunlight and homemade slime; an attempt to reconcile opposites; and a powerpoint presentation at a business meeting.
The Quest for Freedom and the Longing for Belonging
Noam Paul
Jerusalem, Israel | 2020 | 3 | HD Video
The film’s name is taken from the book Liquid Love by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. The film investigates the tension and the pendulum swing between freedom and belonging in the context of relationships.
3 geNARRATIONS
Paulina Ziólkowska
Warsaw, Poland | 2021 | 9 | HD Video
A child is born. A daughter becomes a mother. A mother becomes a grandmother. A grandmother … she just wants to die. Generations shift. Family members need to step into someone else’s shoes. Step forward into their future roles. But do they? Is this a step one simply makes, or an invitation to a generation’s dance? One step forward, two steps backward to escape becoming your own mother.
A White Screen Is Visible
Sohaib Bouaiss
Rotterdam, Netherlands | 2020 | 8 | HD Video
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
A White Screen Is Visible is a short film based on the filmmaker’s experiences growing up in multiple cultures. It abstractly documents the search to find his identity, guided through the parasomniac experiences that frequented his youth.
Fulesee
Christina Benz
Zurich, Switzerland | 2019 | 4 | 4K Video
Sunday, Fulesee. Two people go diving in a lake. They understand each other without a word, everything seems ok. But the dive leads them not only to fish and into darkness—it also reaches into the depths of their souls. At 30 meters below the surface, fears and stories for which they cannot find any signs in diving language suddenly rise up.
The long wail of a passing train
Anne-Marie Bouchard
Québec, Canada | 2020 | 8 | HD Video
An experimental animated film built around a single sound recording that evokes travel, the need to communicate, solitude, fragility, the desire for freedom, the arrival of fall, and our ephemeral existence.
Rites of Spring
Yiorgos Tsangaris
Nicosia, Cyprus | 2021 | 4 | HD Video
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Traveling theater troupes with their pagan roots and Christian Orthodox tradition—two seemingly opposite worlds, both mysterious and both enchanting to the author.
Reservoir
Micah Weber
Braddock, PA | 2021 | 8 | HD Video
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
Image—terror—sculpture—garden—animation. From the politics of the slaughterhouse to vanishing in the wilderness: an archive of images harmonize into an ambience of violence, disengagement, and disappearance. The tone of this work should be read as an object.
Agreement
Brynne McGregor
Austin, TX | 2020 | 8 | HD Video
An animated conversation in which eight voices agree and disagree about the agreement that is language.
A Comprehensive Theory
Rui Hu
Shanghai, China | 2021 | 8 | HD Video
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
In several languages, the word clue carries a reference to threads or ropes. In A Comprehensive Theory, a library serves as a representation of order, containing the collection and organization of human knowledge. The various linear forms have the quality of duality, as both connection and restriction, life-saving tools and deadly weapons, chaos and order, and parallel and entanglement.
Kill Time
Ben Rinehardt
Richmond, VA | 2021 | 8 | HD Video
WORLD PREMIERE
Traces of bodies and faces devouring and cutting up the world.
Klimax
Bea Hoeller
Ludwigsburg, Germany | 2021 | 3 | HD Video
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
In Klimax, we explore the inner world of female lust in order to redefine images of the female sex, already negatively connoted, and thus create new aesthetic associations of femininity. Our main protagonist, Barbie, goes through a process of transformation. She emerges like Alice in Wonderland into a magical world, a place of temptation and joy.
3 Wetlands
Jane Cheadle
London, UK | 2021 | 11 | 4K Video
WORLD PREMIERE
A triptych stop-frame animation made on the floor of my London flat using water, cardboard, and homemade slime. The animations were made over a long period of time and the project was pulled together during successive pandemic lockdowns while imagining wide open marshland, mires, and swamps of different kinds.
The Wellspring and the Tower
Melinda Kádár
Budapest, Hungary | 2020 | 8 | 4K Video
When the wellspring that feeds the ecosystem runs dry, its cry for help triggers a process that uses all of the world’s resources to build a tower.
Eternal Demise
Dan Rule
New Orleans, LA | 2021 | 2 | HD Video
Wherein a PowerPoint presentation at a business meeting details some thoughts and ideas about individual and collective death.