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Edinburgh International Film Festival · 2013

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013

Black Box

Daring experiments in film form. This year there will be a Black Box Live event, which will see multi-projector, perceptually immersive performances with live sound by Edinburgh'sScreen Bandita, Paris-based Collectif Nominoe and the Finnish artist Sami van Ingen. All the programmes in this strand contain strobe effects.

The shorts are split into the programmes are listed below. Those that are in competition for the inaugural shorts award are marked accordingly. Which programme a short falls into is listed in itallics.

Programme

40 films · 2 reviews

Jump to a film

"10"

Review preview for "10"

People drift through the scenes occasionally but are more like ghostly hints of civilisation, ephemeral against the landscape.

Amber Wilkinson · 3 out of 5
A documentary film poem, a travelogue, a twin town odyssey across the world.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2013; Director: Telemach Wiesinger)

Full review

2012

Makino Takashi returns to EIFF with another perceptual treat – moving from abstraction to figuration, and from analogue to digital, 2012 tells the story of a year that developed subconsciously.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2012; Director: Makino Takashi)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

21 Chitrakoot

Composed of 1980s chroma-key backdrops from a famous Indian television series, Kaul constructs a mysterious, barren and unsettling landscape emptied of its original narrative purpose.

(Country: India; Year: 2012; Writer: Shambhavi Kaul)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

7346 120' WE

A mysterious abandoned roll of unexposed 16mm film is taken on a bike ride through the streets of East Vancouver.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Director: John Woods)

Black Box 1: In(-)action

Abdou's Dread in Teatro Argentino, Roma

Between two rehearsals of Peter Brook’s The Magic Flute, performer Abdou Ouologuem demonstrates how he deals with his dreads on stage.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2013; Director: Guillaume Cailleau)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Aldona

Aldona lost her sight in 1986, probably due to the Chernobyl disaster. We follow her on a daily walk through a sculpture park of Soviet-era statues.

(Country: Lithuania, Norway; Year: 2012; Director: Emilija Skarnulyte)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Cyrstal World

Inspired by J.G. Ballard’s dystopian science fiction novel, crystal growth is woven into the iconic 1955 film Night of the Hunter.

(Country: UK; Year: 2013; Director: Pia Borg)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Déjà-vu

Five women carry out repetitive actions, creating the sensation that we've seen this before.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Director: Jean-Guillaume Bastien)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Doll Parts

Minimalist and contemplative road movie featuring two young women on the margins of society.

(Country: US; Year: 2013; Director: Muzi Quawson; Writer: Muzi Quawson)

Black Box 1: In(-)action. In competition

Felinheli; Hefin And Als

Animated drama of actions, reactions and interactions, expressing the poetry of life’s banal comings and goings through everyday spaces.

(Country: Sri Lanka; Year: 2013)

Black Box 1: In(-)action. In competition

Funny Games Ghost

Scenes from Michael Haneke's original film are overlaid with scenes from the subsequent US version.

(Country: Austria; Year: 2012; Director: Karin Hammer, Stefan Hafner)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

The HandEye (Bone Ghosts)

A mechanical voice hypnotizes an unseen subject through a surreal combination of statements and commands set to an equally illogical series of images.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2012; Director: Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Hate

Stereographic images are created from two separate, but simultaneously captured images in the 1959 version of the Finnish national epic Kalevela.

(Country: Finland; Year: 2012; Director: Sami van Ingen)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions. In competition

Hay Algo Y Se Va (There Is Something. Now It's Gone.)

Family footage is gathered and sifted to create a perpetual sea of bodies, gestures and gazes that collide to create a familiar yet estranging reunion.

(Country: US; Year: 2013; Director: Kimberly Forero-Arnias)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

HedonHeathen2

Into the pink crystals from the snow swept landscape, a journey from the hibernation of winter to a thawing arctic.

(Country: USA; Year: 2013; Director: Lana Z Caplan)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Hold

(Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Director: Kim Anderson)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

I Was Here

A fixed view of the Pantheon in Rome is animated by the ghostly flux of tourists and passers-by filmed in long exposure times.

(Country: Canada, Italy; Year: 2012; Director: Philippe Léonard)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Métamorphoses du papillin

This handmade film explores the cycle of life through metamorphosis, both natural and chemical, evidenced in the visible breakdown of the celluloid material.

(Country: Spain; Year: 2012; Director: Pere Ginard, Laura Ginès; Stars: /// min)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Niagara's Fury

Documentary explores the eerily empty spaces of tourism and consumption surrounding the famous Niagara Falls.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2013; Director: Benjamin R Taylor)

Black Box 1: In(-)action

No Place To Rest

A textured melancholic dreamscape in which a solitary figures wanders through a seemingly suspended time.

(Country: Australia; Year: 2013; Director: SJ Ramir)

Black Box 1: In(-)action

Persian Pickles

Paisley pattern is the star in a hand-made 16mm film about repeating shapes.

(Country: US; Year: 2012; Director: Jodie Mack)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Point De Gaze

Another richly textured 16mm work by Mack. ‘Named after a type of Belgian lace, this spectral study investigates intricate illusion and optical arrest.’

(Country: US; Year: 2012; Director: Jodie Mack)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Polaroid Versus Roman Photo

A photograph of Charlélie Couture and his musicians becomes an exercise in animating still images through the medium of film.

(Country: France; Year: 2012; Director: Yves-Marie Mahé)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Polytunnels

Using his signature structural aesthetic, Hamlyn films a tobacco farm in central Italy faced with dramatic change when EU subsidies end this year.

(Country: Italy, UK; Year: 2012; Director: Nicky Hamlyn)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Releasing Human Energies

Darkly humorous film about capitalism and control, using the old Kodak ‘China girl’ image overlaid with a text narrated by the film artist Morgan Fisher.

(Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: Mark Toscano)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Remanence 1 (Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost)

The creative potential inherent in deteriorating material is explored through electronic signals created by a tape of Jonas Mekas' Lost, Lost, Lost.

(Country: US; Year: 2012; Director: Joshua Bonetta)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Ritournelle

A sound-image collaboration between two artists across different cities. Light reflections are registered onto a roll of film with a prestruck soundtrack, creating surprising rhythmic harmonies.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2012; Director: Christopher Becks, Peter Miller)

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions. In competition

The Room Called Heaven

Experimental short against a backdrop of American plains and high altitudes.

(Country: Spain, US; Year: 2012; Director: Laida Lertxundi)

Black Box 1: In(-)action

Salt Lines

A salt line cycle, hand salted and painted 35mm film leader meant to bring to mind the process of salt extraction and the hard repetitive labor of those who bring us this commodity.

(Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: , Cade Bursell)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

The Sight

A song of creation: immaterial spawns volatile matter; obfuscated landscape emerges from splintering celluloid. Hand-processed at Phil Hoffman’s Film Farm in Ontario, Canada.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Writer: Jeremy Moss)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Sou

Intricate study of rock formations and strata through a series of animated still images revealing the layers and textures of time.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2012; Director: Tatsuto Kimura)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Speaking Corpse

Clipson’s Super-8 film poems celebrate the unique beauty of the small gauge format. Sound and image combine to create a hypnotic sensory experience.

(Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: Paul Clipson)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Tokens and Penalties 1

A performance for camera and a meditation on ritualistic practices and ceremonies set against a barren yet expressive landscape of salt fields.

(Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: Talena Sanders)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Trembling Place

Facing East, hard light softening the shivering embers of a reluctant stillness.

(Country: USA; Year: 2013; Director: Robert Todd)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Trespass

Technically rigorous real-animation depicting a figure that traverses geographically disparate locations only to be constantly thrown back to the trap of domestic environment.

(Country: Austria; Year: 2012; Director: Paul Wenninger)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Uncertainty Principle

Combining Super 8mm, 16mm, HD and mobile phone formats, this film captures random and choreographed moments in an attempt to create a space of dialogue between actions and representations.

(Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: Kelly Sun Kim)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

We Will Be Young

Contemplation of the life of a man living in the woods.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Director: Charlie Marois; Stars: FC Legault)

Black Box 1: In(-)action

When Faces Touch

Veteren bricoleur-inventor Gioli consistently explores the materials of analogue film. Here, the process of direct contact printing old photographs onto 16mm gives rise to a flurry of anonymous touching faces.

(Country: Italy, France; Year: 2012; Director: Paolo Gioli)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Your Hands and My Teeth

Visual fragments informed by place, light, sound and time articulate a feminine film language, expressing history and desire through a tactile sense of vision.

(Country: USA; Year: 2013; Director: Laura Bouza)

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters