Program 8: Bajo de superficie
75 Minutes
Light Matter is Curated by James Hansen
December 6, Kino Palais, Buenos Aires
The Blob
Mahda Purmehdi & Cesar Herrejon, United States, 2024, 3 minutes
World Premiere
Birds looking anxiously at a threat beyond the frame, and then the threat arrives. Mixing a found footage educational film with sci-fi and horror traditions and hand-painted manipulation of the film stock, a familiar narrative is inverted, recontextualizing the fear of others through the anthropocentric eye.
The Parrot
Sofia Krasnopolsky, Argentina, 2023, 12 minutes
Over the course of a few summer days, Lucía is left in charge of a house in order to take care of a parrot. As she comes up with a small domestic routine, from the neighboring gardens come the sound of celebrations, a film and children pretending to be spies.
mmm
Chiemi Shimdada, United Kingdom/Japan, 2024, 7 minutes
South American Premiere
‘mmm’ is an eclectic collection of the clouds of Japanese cinema from the 1920s to the present. Drawing inspiration from the 35mm film materials of Japanese physicist and cloud expert Masanao Abe (1891-1966) and the apprehension of a possible cloudless sky scenario in the future as speculated in the work of scientist Tapio Schneider, ‘mmm’ looks at the formlessness as an essential actor in the history of cinema.
it's under the flesh were you are tender
Agnes Hayden, Spain, 2024, 3 minutes
South American Premiere
This film delves into the intrusion of the physical and material body, structured around three instructions: scour, submerge, submit. It represents a progression in the search within, driven by the need to pierce through the flesh and opacity of the body to uncover what resides inside, whether out of morbid curiosity or as a form of love. One can only love what one knows. Discovering that interior - bloody, organic, natural, dark, and secret - lays the foundations of self-love. With the aid of new medical technologies, it is now possible to delve into our most vulnerable interior. Small robotic pincers assist us in performing this act of love. ----- 'It is I who drag my fingernail across the flesh, capriciously, seeking to understand what dwells beyond. How many layers until I reach the bone. How much I would have to excavate to turn around and return to the starting point.'
Trace of my Body
Yue Hua, China, 2023, 3 minutes
South American Premiere
A film about the female gaze and self-acceptance. In spring 2023, a physical illness forced me to re-examine my relationship with my body. Scars, spots, skin, hair, and my unflattering voice, everything belongs to my body. Shoot and direct animation on 16mm film. Content warning: Nudity
Tan/Vatan
Homa Sarabi & Meenakshi Garodia, Iran/India, 2024, 8 miniutes
South American Premiere
Tan/Vatan 16 mm Film, Handmade Film Tan/Vatan -Body/Homeland- is a collaborative experimental film. It is a conversation between two women and their intimate experiences of love and life. The film embodies a symbolic form borrowed from the origin cultures of the artists, in India and Iran. Tan and Vatan are mutual words in Hindi and Persian language, sharing the same meaning and pronunciation. Artists utilize the language, the medium, and their bodies to connect and visualize their experiences while engaging with the mechanical and physical experience of 16mm and handmade film.
Parangole
Abinadi Meza, United States, 2024, 3 minutes
South American Premiere
A rainy morning in Rio de Janeiro; film as a membrane, a memory veil, imprinted by the body and the environment. The title is a reference to the performative cloaks/capes of the late Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, made of various materials including fabric, paper, and plastic. This cameraless film is a textural exploration of the environment that surrounds us in a given site.
Holographic Will
Mike Stoltz, United States, 2024, 6 minutes
South American Premiere
This film exists as a 16mm print and that is the preferred method of exhibition when possible. STROBE/FLICKER WARNING A domestic swirl filmed while the building was being sold. How much longer can we afford to stay? A kaleidoscopic portrait of destabilization during the struggle to stay in a rent-controlled apartment amidst an affordable housing crisis. Shot frame-by-frame, moving the camera between every image. Single frames move forward in time, creating after-image combinations without superimpositions. A phased drum machine soundtrack emphasizes the percussive quality of the image. (With gratitude to neighbors and the Los Angeles Tenants Union Northeast Local)
Arder en Deseo
Eszter Katalin, Chile, 2023, 4 minutes
World Premiere
"Arder en deseo" is the result of a Super8 cartridge shot in April 2023 in Santiago de Chile, materializing three different desires for three different images: The first scene depicts "Plaza Dignidad" from various angles, the starting point of the Estallido social (lit. "social outburst") on October 18th 2019, the second is a quote of Hippolyte Bayard’s photographic self-portrait posing as a drowned man from October 18th in 1840 and the third one shows two empty chairs in connection with the first scene of the empty monument. In using the “obsolete” medium of analog film "Arder en deseo" creates a temporal anachronism, a technological ellipsis, in which memory, oblivion and disappearance enter into poetical dialogue fifty years after the Chilean coup d'état.
Adrift Potentials
Leonardo Pirondi, Brazil, 2024, 12 minutes
Buenos Aires Premiere
This pseudo diary film is made of found materials from an unfinished 16mm film. 'Potenciais à Deriva' is a film started by a Brazilian artist under a pseudonym while living in exile in Los Angeles, California. Isolated shots and previously assembled scenes reveal an intention to create a mysterious film comprised of disembodied interviews, empty rooms, radio recordings, soccer games, and sudden apparitions of the filmmaker that slowly ruminates on Brazil's colonial past, North American Imperialism and the military dictatorship of the time in a paranoid and anxious manner. Be aware that the film's final version never came to exist. This version presented is my mere attempt to produce a film with these otherwise lost images.