Angela Schanelec, Mark Jenkin, Lisandro Alonso and three world premieres in Imagina

The Imagina section this year includes films shown at the Berlinale, Cannes and Venice, and also from galleries and film schools. Return filmmakers (Piret, Weisgerber, Vermette) and debut entrants who should have been shown long ago (John Smith) are joined by established names such as Angela Schanelec with her latest, My Wife Cries, which intrigued viewers in the Berlinale’s main competition, Lisandro Alonso, who returns with his new film Double Freedom to his groundbreaking title Freedom, and Mark Jenkin, whose mysterious, star-studded Rose of Nevada premiered in the Orizzonti competition in Venice. This year, KVIFF’s section for experimental film presents three world premieres and three international premieres.

World premieres

Czech cinema is represented by director Jakub Kučera’s Because I Have To, a feature-length portrait of artist Miloš Šejn, and by the short yet intense Volklore by Viktorie Štěpánová. In Because I Have To, we join the solitary Šejn in a cave and in the mud, and we watch the artist in his natural environment. This quiet, contemplative film presents the artist’s view of the world and tries to share his sometimes almost naive sense of wonder with the audience. Volklore, by contrast, draws on expressiveness and intoxicating exuberance. Consciously shot in an overwhelming ADHD style, this short film manages to both entertain and comment, mirrors the frenzied pace at which we devour content on social media. The world of Volklore gives rise to both trendiness and empty bullshit.

Another film to make use of animation is Alejandro Aguilar’s Mexican short Exvotos, whose three enchanting vignettes share the motif of accidents and tragedy – and one religious artifact. Who signed the contract with the (animated) devil?

International premieres

Last night I stayed within myself and this morning I decided to live here is a dreamlike film which acknowledges that it sprang from a need to escape the sterile environment of contemporary Rotterdam. With this film, Dutch director Fé Baan explores potential intersections with the work of Chytilová and Herzog.

Canadian director Erin Weisgerber new film Black Seas works with old film negatives that were too damaged to be restored. She makes use of snippets from the work of Alexander Sokurov and Irakli Kvirikadze. As a hypnotic soundtrack plays in the background, figures emerge from the mist like ghosts, thus allowing film material slated for destruction to tell entirely new stories.

The short film With a Kind Regard uses black-and-while stylization to achieve a sense of detachment. An urbex-style tour of a giant former pig-breeding facility, the film is built around the stories of people for whom this place once represented opportunity, except that era is long past. Dystopia is not a question of the future; all you have to do is open your eyes and look around.