18.10.2026 at 21:10. Prompted Reality 2: Three Casualties, 47 Storeys, The Hollow Coin, War Pigeon, Steve Hates Fish, Illusion of Reality, Rodina, Small Hall 2

Description

An investigation of three movie scenes, showing stunts that led to the deaths of the stunt doubles performing them.

About the director:

Jens Pecho

Jens Pecho studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne as well as the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. As a visual artist, he works mostly with text- and video-based installations. His works have been shown internationally at museums as well as film festivals, among them the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Forum d’Art Contemporain – Casino Luxembourg, the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany, the Message to Man IFF Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation.

Description

Paul Litherland re-enacts a video recording of himself (circa 1996) in which he recounts jumping off a building (with a parachute) in downtown Montreal. In this remake, Paul not only retells his story word for word, he also attempts to mimic all of his original pauses, hesitations and gestures. With 20 years in-between both recordings, Paul’s imperfect attempts to copy his younger self expose the performative aspects of memory.

About the director:

Paul Litherland

Paul Litherland is a visual artist working with photography and video. He works with many artists in his role as a documentation specialist and produces artworks connected to this role as well as his experience as a skydiver. Now in his 43rd year of jumping from airplanes he has accumulated over 2250 jumps, including over 600 Wingsuit jumps and 35 BASE jumps.

Monique Moumblow

Monique Moumblow received a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MFA from Concordia University. Initially, she was primarily interested in performance art and worked collaboratively with Anne Russell. Since 1993, Moumblow has focused on single-channel video and installation. Recurring themes in her work are the figure of the double, the separation between voice and written word as well as the construction of narrative.

Description

A caller reaches 311 attempting to leak information regarding the combustion of a phone booth and its possible significance as it relates to the AT&T Long Lines Building, a windowless skyscraper in downtown Manhattan. Depositing a hollow nickel containing a microSD card, the individual speaks with a telephone operator who assists in discerning the essence of this ominous image. Shortly after the film was made, the building was reported to be a major communication node in a covert NSA surveillance network.

About the director:

Frank Heath

Director and artist. Born in 1982 in St. Joseph, Missouri, he lives and works in New York. His works contemplate vast, unfathomable subjects through a mix of observational documentary, landscape portraiture, droll humor, and prank phone calls. Using specific sites like abandoned structures, Cold War facilities, and natural phenomena as springboards, his videos examine observation, control, isolation, and human residue, with editing serving as the core space where his ideas take shape. His solo exhibitions have been held at Simone Subal Gallery, New York and the Swiss Institute, New York. Frank Heath’s films and artworks have been included in group shows and screenings at the Centre Pompidou, The Kitchen and the High Line (New York), The Power Plant (Toronto), and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. His film Protect Your Home (Get It Right) won the In Silico competition at the 34th Message to Man IFF. The Hollow Coin (2016), named Best Documentary Short at IndieLisboa and winner of the audience award in Hamburg, as well as War Pigeon (2017), both screen in the Prompted Reality special program.

Description

War Pigeon invokes the use of trained pigeons as aerial photographers during World War II. In this phone call to the customer service department of a bank, the speaker describes an unnerving encounter with a suspicious bird, which has led him to question his trust in the bank’s very existence.

About the director:

Frank Heath

Director and artist. Born in 1982 in St. Joseph, Missouri, he lives and works in New York. His works contemplate vast, unfathomable subjects through a mix of observational documentary, landscape portraiture, droll humor, and prank phone calls. Using specific sites like abandoned structures, Cold War facilities, and natural phenomena as springboards, his videos examine observation, control, isolation, and human residue, with editing serving as the core space where his ideas take shape. His solo exhibitions have been held at Simone Subal Gallery, New York and the Swiss Institute, New York. Frank Heath’s films and artworks have been included in group shows and screenings at the Centre Pompidou, The Kitchen and the High Line (New York), The Power Plant (Toronto), and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. His film Protect Your Home (Get It Right) won the In Silico competition at the 34th Message to Man IFF. The Hollow Coin (2016), named Best Documentary Short at IndieLisboa and winner of the audience award in Hamburg, as well as War Pigeon (2017), both screen in the Prompted Reality special program.

Description

Filmed directly from the screen of a smartphone using a language translator app that has been told to translate from French into English, Steve Hates Fish deliberately confuses the software by instructing it to interpret the English signage in a busy London shopping street. In an environment overloaded with information the signs run riot as the restless software does its best to fulfil its task, looking for French words to translate in places where there are none.

About the director:

John Smith

John Smith was born in Walthamstow, London in 1952. He studied at North-East London Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art, after which he became an active member of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op. Inspired in his formative years by conceptual art and structural film, but also fascinated by the immersive power of narrative and the spoken word, he has developed a diverse body of work that subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary, fiction, representation and abstraction. Often rooted in everyday life and personal experience, his meticulously crafted films playfully explore and expose the language of cinema.

Since 1972 Smith has made over sixty film, video and installation works that have been shown in independent cinemas, art galleries, museums and on television around the world.

In 2012, John Smith attended Message to Man as a jury member for the In Silico experimental competition, and also presented a retrospective of his work. Since then, he has participated in the festival on numerous occasions. This year, two of John Smith’s films have been included in the Prompted Reality special program.

Description

An experiment in which documentary footage is set against its own versions, reworked and “brought to life” by AI. The film faces the viewer with questions of truth, memory, perception, and the evolution of reality in digital space.

About the director:

Liza Zenkova

Born in Novosibirsk. In 2019, she pursued higher education in St. Petersburg. In 2022, she was a resident at Gosfilmofond and served on the student jury of the 32nd Message to Man IFF. In 2024, she graduated from the St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television with the diploma film Alone with Oneself. In 2025, as part of a laboratory run by the Culture 360 festival, she worked on Illusion of Reality.