Recortes - 20240315

Metamorphoses I

For the multimedia exhibition Tangenten I (Tangents I), Dammbeck and co-organizer, sculptor and painter Frieder Heinze had planned to collaborate on a film that would combine non-camera animation with 35mm footage of a train ride between the two Dresden districts of Radebeul and Pieschen. When the exhibition was banned in 1978, Heinze turned to other projects, but Dammbeck continued working on the film by himself. Metamorphoses I—the first experimental film ever to be shown publicly in East Germany—marks the filmic beginning of Dammbeck’s long-term art project the Herakles-Konzept (Hercules Concept).

Shadowplay

Mixing visual, sound, and storytelling elements from different eras and regions, "Shadowplay" depicts a world filled with dysfunctional work culture through an unorthodox conflict between an office worker and her shadow, and seeks a hidden connection between the dominance of corporatism and the illusion of self-importance.

The Orchid

An experimental film directed by author Samuel R. Delany

Digest Diversity

Experimental short-film made by brazilian students about the trópicalia and cinema novo movement. The narrative revolves around the song Géleia Geral from the album Tropicália ou Panis Et Circensis and also around the political, artistical and social time from that period.

The Masked Monster

A young woman, overcome with hunger, trades her brother for a sack of rice. The cost will be even higher than she bargained for.

Postcolonial Queen

"Postcolonial Queen" is a video poem and collage film that satirizes Hong Kong's complex identity through dance, city visuals, and a reenactment of Queen Elizabeth II's visit. It captures nostalgic memories shaped by colonial history, using bamboo scaffolding to represent societal changes and mirrors to reflect surface-level modernity, hinting at deeper identity questions. The narrative weaves together collective memories and personal stories, contrasting the historical event of the queen's visit with a young woman's reflections on her past relationship. This intermingling of narratives invites viewers to explore the fluidity of identity and the evolving essence of Hong Kong amid tensions between progress and tradition.

4to Piso

4 Seasons 1 Day

A naturalistic snapshot of the southern countryside.

Les Dames Aveugles

The Tragedy of an Artist

The Tragedy of an Artist, is an experimental short shot over the course of a week. This film is meant to illustrate who Hero Foltz is as a person and his struggles with self identity

FUCK MERZBOW

An abstract exploration of teenage hood and future discontents. It is the search for an alternative.

Touch

What happens when two hands touch? How close are they like? And how can proximity be measured, and even more so, in times of a pandemic and distancing? We think we touch things, that we can take other people by the hand, but physics tells us quite another story.

Vertigem Branca

What remains for me is to promote my own ruin. Aware of inevitable loneliness, the incarnation of cruelty.

Occurrences of Questionable Significance

When forest animals invade our cities, the world is in disarray. Office vixen Fiona struggles with her banana phone addiction. Will she succumb to it? Temperamental bunny Barbara only gives her stag sugar daddy Nestor his special massage, after he dines her and plays the big spender. This obscure short film pinpoints postmodern tropes of consumerism, eroticism, and art with an homage to the theater stage and references to literature. This work uses a fantasy language and needs no subtitles.

Saia da minha casa

Something is staring at me from the corners of my house.

A Little Love

Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.

Episodes of pollution

A young couple wanders through different corners of a polluted city while struggling with the contradictions of love, desire, and loneliness. Through sarcasm, memories, and emotional tension, they confront each other only to reveal that the real conflict lies not in the other, but in what they cannot accept within themselves.

The Outlander

A Zapotec man from the future tells the story of how in the 21st century a new invasion of “foreigners” was afflicting his village. While people in Europe were suffering a crisis that made them lose memory and a sense of their culture, a group of youth in his village in Oaxaca was trying to document their own culture by making a film during Carnival rituals. While the youth are pushed to invite a director from the city to come help them, ultimately changing their project to be a remake of Ingmar Bergman’s THE SILENCE, a Swedish woman comes exploring in search of magical lizards that could be the next remedy for memory crisis back home. Characters mix and stories blend into each other in this absurdist and melancholic lo-fi/sci-fi story narrated as oral history with multiple voices.

Sea of Glass

The creation of an infinite space. Light modulations over water surfaces, conjugating into multiple alterations. Time and light being reshaped through a liquid lens. The illusion of a starry night turns into a sea “roofed over by rainbows.”

Fox & Penguin

How do German couples communicate in private? What are they arguing about? Is the way to a man’s heart really through his stomach? This docu-fictional hybrid production discusses such questions with the help of authentic interview snippets that were edited under the staged plot. We get an insight into the life of an animal couple, who experience typical everyday situations on behalf of us humans. At first, our fox is emotionally contained, while the penguin lady may get wild as hell. With a wink, the filmmakers hold up a mirror to the audience in the cinema.