OCTOBER 18 – 19, 2021

Pre-Conference Film Festival

In collaboration with Cinemaissí – Latin American Film Festival, we present you a selection of short experimental films.

The films reflect a world in constant destruction, reconstruction and deconstruction. The three pieces seek for new ways to tell stories, offering us audiovisual experiences connecting multiple locations and histories, provoking our thoughts and senses to cross usual frames of reality.

The films were available for 2 days, 18th and 19th October to registered conference participants through the Howspace conference platform.

On Tuesday 19th of October at 17.00-18.00 (Helsinki time zone) there was a streamed discussion between film researcher and programmer Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha and doctoral researcher Camila Rosa about the films.

Experimental Short Films

Here and there

21 min | Melisa Liebenthal | fiction, experimental | Argentina-France

Sinopsis: Where is home? On the visual basis of Google Earth and with a playful tone, a young woman questions her present revisiting her family history of migrations.

Intention: Here and there (Aquí y allá) is an essay film with a first-person narrative around the meaning of home. Having emigrated from my country of origin, I feel the definition of home becomes ambiguous. I wanted to translate that feeling of indetermination by experimenting with the image and mixing virtual and real, fiction and documentary. Here or there? Maybe both, at the same time.

Coyolxauhqui

9 min | Collective Los Ingrávidos | experimental | Mexico

Sinopsis: A visual poem about the cyclical nature of traditional myths and rituals. Coyolxauhqui is a fiery evocation of femicide in rural Mexico. It recasts the dismemberment of the Aztec moon goddess Coyolxauhqui, by her brother Huitzilopochtli, god of sun, human sacrifice and war.

Intention: The film takes place in the deserted area of La Mixteca, where there are numerous assembly plants of duty-free components for exportation. Here, the original femicide of Coyolxauhqui connects with the horrific wave of femicides that began in Ciudad Juárez among young women employed in the plants. What happens in Juárez is connected to what happens in Mixteca—and what happened to Coyolxauhqui—because they take place within patriarchal neoliberal capitalism. The rewriting of the myth of Coyolxauhqui is radicalized with a deliberate superimposition of discourses mixing both mythical and historical time.

Homage to the work of Phillip Henry Gosse

22 min | Pablo Martin Weber | documentary, experimental | Argentina

Sinopsis: A young argentinian director reflects upon the metaphysical ideas of British natural historian Philip Henry Gosse as he experiments with images and sounds stored in his personal database.

Review: Using images and sounds from his own personal archive, and taking a broad approach to his subject matter – including insights into artificial intelligence, the philosophical theory of positivism, and even H.P. Lovecraft – Pablo Martin Weber builds a poetic film essay, which has as its consistent thread a genuine passion for science, and regard for the figure of Philip Henry Gosse.