Directed by: Fiona Tan
Netherlands, Japan, 2016, 80 min

In this noteworthy and visually striking picture, a multimedia artist takes up the history and memories that form our internal essence and fill our souls. Walking a line between documentary and feature in her experimental movie, the director once again goes beyond the boundaries of cinema, pushing it into new territory.

Directed by: Samuel M. Delgado, Helena Girón
Spain, 2016, 14 min

The black rock of a volcanic island hides the murky depths of a cave complex. The enchanting magic of the place exists out of time and geographical location, yet the heart of the island quietly whispers a testimony of local history and mythology.

Directed by: Johan Rijpma
Netherlands, Japan, 2016, 2 min

A shot of a real hand changes into a drawn image that develops and extrapolates outside the set boundaries of a grid and outside clearly established points. Experimenting with the transformation of the image – deformation occurs irregularly but, at the same time, submits to a clearly established system.

Directed by: Siegfried A. Fruhauf
Austria, 2016, 5 min

Is the image we see on screen in thrall to order or is it an eruption of visual chaos? Siegfried A. Fruhauf presents a volatile and frenetically-changing painting of a grid of squares that fill the image space at different angles and in varying sizes and quantities. The result is a compelling, almost physical experience.

Directed by: Paul Anton Smith
United Kingdom, 2016, 136 min

This fascinating and original compilation picture is a true delicacy for film gourmets. The debuting director brings together clips from more than 1,000 scenes that take place inside a movie theater, thereby creating an original tribute to the seventh muse.

Directed by: Ben Pointeker
Austria, 2017, 6 min

A cinematic poem shrouded in shadow and mist revealing an inner world, an inward dream landscape of anxiety, alienation, isolation, and desire. Entrancing poetry relies on a delicate grasp but it’s impossible to resist its inner magic.

Directed by: Rainer Kohlberger
Austria, Germany, 2017, 8 min

The black-and-white particles that constitute digital image noise – what sets them dancing? The rhythm of chaos or perhaps a secret algorithm? They are the means to give form to shapes, objects, and systems until they all dissolve back into a tumultuous expanse of particles. Or perhaps this isn’t the case? keep that dream burning reveals the elusiveness of our modern world’s digital esthetics.

Directed by: Sebastian Diaz Morales
Netherlands, 2017, 13 min

This fascinating experimental short deconstructs the fiction of cinema, but it also exposes the indivisibility of simulation and reality. The visually impressive work comments on the ideological basis of the film camera and artistic depiction, pointing to its existence and to the very act of creating a movie in a truly intriguing way.

Directed by: Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
France, USA, 2016, 75 min

Hundreds of audio recordings of Dion McGregor, a renowned sleeper who dreamt out loud at length and with remarkable coherence, were used as the basis of a fascinating excursion into the human subconscious where wild orgies play out, the practical details of a dwarf city are attended to, and strange scientific experiments are analyzed.

Directed by: Massimo D'Anolfi, Martina Parenti
Italy, Switzerland, 2016, 121 min

A Japanese scientist studies the miniature and immortal Benjamin Button jellyfish. At the other end of the world, unceasing repairs are carried out on the Milan Duomo. In the United States a Lakota community fights to preserve its culture. In a captivating visual essay composed of fragments shot across the world, the creators contemplate the nature of immortality.

Directed by: Ben Rivers
United Kingdom, 2016, 19 min

The Biosphere 2 complex in the Arizona desert is the largest artificially operated ecosystem in the world, established to research the sustainability of life on and off Earth. In his film, Ben Rivers submits an engaging study of utopian visions that vainly attempt to create an ideal world, but he also explores the relationship of the individual to an artificial environment and his or her role in the future of humanity.

Directed by: Christin Turner
USA, 2016, 12 min

A lone driver on a long journey to the unknown travels through the American landscape as night is falling. But with the approaching monolith of Devils Tower, his perception of the passing horizon warps into an almost hallucinogenic vision of the afterlife called forth by the mysterious spirit of the mountain. The film pays tribute to a sacred landscape while constructing a meditation on one’s own death.

Directed by: Audrius Stonys
Lithuania, Estonia, 2016, 56 min

This uncommon documentary portrait takes us to the Kazakh part of the Tian Shan mountains where a small glaciological station stands at the base of the Tuiuksu glacier, altitude 3,500 meters. Here, in a land of silence untroubled by historical events, lives a loner scientist who has dedicated her life to monitoring the climatic pulse of the planet.

Directed by: Jem Cohen
USA, United Kingdom, 2016, 57 min

Film poet Jem Cohen has been known for decades for his perceptive portrayals of various parts of the world. This time his hour-long film investigates life in the British coastal town of Southend-on-Sea – a place whose rhythm is affected by the unceasing ebb and flow of the tides. Objects reflected in windows, the inhabitants’ seemingly banal monologues, obscure and empty corners, and houses emanating the magic of the past – all these bespeak ordinariness but also the uniqueness of human beings.