The programme brings together seven short experimental films where celluloid is not merely a medium but a living, breathing fabric of the film. These works lack narrative logic: instead of a linear story, they offer fragments of gestures, landscapes, and sounds, bound together by rhythm, music, and inner pulsation.
Musicality permeates each film: dynamic montage set to electronic and acoustic motifs (Commute, A Slippage in Five Movements), sound collages where human breath, industrial noises, or the clatter of wheels become part of a collective score (Vibrant Matter, Sinking Feeling, Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air). Many works embrace ritualism: the camera repeats a gesture, returns to the same place or movement, as if performing a rite (II, Unstable Rocks). The urban environment intertwines with natural landscapes: railway tracks, bridges, industrial districts, empty rooms—juxtaposed with rocky shores, wind in the grass, and light gliding over water. The motif of a journey, often literally embodied in rails and train movement, becomes the image of an inner voyage.
UNSTABLE ROCKS
2024, Germany-Portugal, 25 min., col., b/w, short-feature
Director Ewelina Rosinska
II
2022, Canada, 15 min., col., short-feature
Director Александр Лароз
COMMUTE
2024, USA, 9 min., col., short-feature
Director Henry Hills
A SLIPPAGE IN FIVE MOMENTS
2024, Brazil, 15 min., col., short-feature
Director Valentina Rosset
VIBRANT MATTER
2024, Brazil, 7 min., b/w, short-feature
Director Pablo Marín
SUSPICIONS ABOUT THE HIDDEN REALITIES OF AIR
2025, USA, 9 min., col., short-feature
Director Sam Drake
SINKING FEELING
2024, USA, 21 min., col., short-feature
Director Zachary Epcar
Visionary film about the fragility of nature. Between 2018 to 2023, Ewelina Rosinska, armed with a Bolex film camera, traveled across various regions and places in Portugal—alone or with a group of artists and eco-activists. Her focus lay on ethnography, agriculture, and the movement against gentrification.
Henry Hills’ most recent film consists of footage recorded from a moving train during his trips from his home in Vienna to his work as a professor at FAMU in Prague.
A musical experiment based on a composition by Tōru Takemitsu. The film is inspired by a graphic score where notes are depicted as circles and dots. It engages with the elemental and the sensory: the shimmer of light on water, landscape patterns, and hand movements.
A quiet urban symphony filmed on black-and-white 16mm film. Elements of the urban environment resonate with one another, creating an inaudible hum. The materiality of the film becomes increasingly apparent.
The film explores secret U.S. government experiments during the Cold War, when ordinary citizens were used as test subjects. Through archival footage, shots on expired film, and sound compositions, the filmmaker transforms the history of these trials into a haunting cinematic experience.
Human bodies and voices are juxtaposed against flickering abstractions, industrial noise, and the stark lines of corporate architecture. An anxious exploration of the post-postmodern era, beyond the glossy surfaces of “non-places.”
A muted film about the daily rituals of the filmmaker’s parents. Through long takes and montage of repetitive gestures, it explores space, the movement of figures, and their relationships with each other.
