Category: Best Experimental ARFF Berlin 2023

Original Film Title: THREE BETRAYALS

Director’s Name: Catalina Ouyang

Writer’s Name: Catalina Ouyang

Producer: Catalina Ouyang

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Runtime: 30 minutes

Film Description:

THREE BETRAYALS is an experimental film that takes as its conceptual center the three-body problem, which, in physics and mathematics, describes a chaotic system between particles. The chaos of the three-body problem lies in its indeterminacy; the motion of particles cannot be predicted. The film looks to the three-body problem and its components as a framework for the interrelation between self, mother, and grandmother. The unsolvable nature of the three-body problem echoes lapses in a family’s knowledge of one another as the artist takes up their own unsolvable project: to recover intergenerational histories through repetition, exhaustion, and gesture.

Moving back and forth between the past and present, the film intersperses dance footage and voiceover with recent footage of their mother and grandmother. Also punctuating these personal documentations are scenes from the life of Anne Sexton, the American poet who was alcoholic, suicidal, and abusive to her daughter. Ouyang orients Sexton as a cipher within their work that exemplifies how they are “constantly approaching some edge of annihilation.” As the artist states, “I think there is something profound and complicated to be said for identifying with a so-called monster, even calling yourself forth to love a monster.” By collapsing their personal histories with Sexton’s biography and mathematical theories of motion, Ouyang explores the body as a vehicle of self-mutability, temporal transference, and rapturous discovery.

Original Film Title: RUM 444

Director’s Name: Peter Svenzon

Writer’s Name: Falk Richter, Lars Norén

Producer: Peter Svenzon

Country of Origin: Sweden

Country of Filming: Sweden

Language: English, Swedish

Runtime: 16 minutes

Film Description:

A dance piece for film. An international collaboration with the dance artists and playwrights Lars Noren and Falk Richter who have shared their texts…

” Where do I belong
Who do I referent to when I talk about I
Who am I
To whom or to what does this I belong
What defines you
What makes u recognisable
What do you want people to identify you as
So that people understand who you are
I want to Reboot Restart
Europe can be so claustrophobic”
/Falk Richter

Original Film Title: Touching the Ungrieved Grief

Director’s Name: Sah D’ Simone

Writer’s Name: Sah D’ Simone

Producer: Sah D’ Simone

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: Indonesia

Language: English

Runtime: 8 minutes 40 seconds

Film Description:

“Touching the Ungrieved Grief” embraces and celebrates the unique perspective of Sah D’Simone, a queer person of color who both stars in and created the film. 

The project authentically explores the depths of grief through the power of movement, inviting viewers on a transformative journey that challenges conventional storytelling.

The Balinese performers, with their masterful command of evocative movements and dance, become conduits for the unspoken emotions surrounding grief. Their physical expressions bring forth the raw essence of sorrow, unveiling the profound layers that exist within the grieving process. 

Through the abstract lens of the film, the interplay of visuals and poetic language guides viewers on a transformative journey through grief’s intricate landscape. It reaches beyond the surface to touch upon the often-unacknowledged realms of ungrieved grief, which reside deep within the human psyche, regardless of conscious awareness. 

The film encapsulates the paradoxical nature of the human experience, wherein pain and beauty intertwine, revealing the profound truth that grief, in its complexity, can be both heartbreaking and enlightening. 

As viewers bear witness to this cathartic exploration, they are invited to engage with their own personal encounters with grief, finding solace and connection in the shared tapestry of human existence. 

This project serves as a heartfelt tribute, honoring the memory of Sah D’Simone’s beloved mother who has departed this world, while fostering an empathetic bond with audiences in their own journeys of loss and healing.

Original Film Title: One White Feather

Director’s Name: Florence Rose Broomfield

Writer’s Name: Florence Rose Broomfield

Producer: Rohit Bose, Sarah Kalam

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 17 minutes 35 seconds

Film Description:

A surrealist adventure story of identity and feminine desire through the eyes of a queer woman.

Synopsis: 
Following a strange encounter with a swan found on the streets of London, a girl begins to lose her grip on reality. She is led to a large house where the lines between dreams and memories become indistinguishable, as she struggles with her relationships, her obsession with perfection and her identity. 

Original Film Title: Roots out

Director’s Name: Ivan Knyazev

Writer’s Name: Ivan Knyazev

Producer: Ekaterina Vitneva

Country of Origin: Russian Federation

Country of Filming: Russian Federation

Runtime: 2 minutes 56 seconds

Film Description:

don’t play with no chicken 
she scares me 
have a dog in the forest 
i can puff like an owl 
can you see me? 
they run away 
shouts a me 
no fun 
it creaks at night 
we hide 
bark tastes like bugs 
they point fingers at 
sky yesterday 
when you eat it 
soft like me 
are we scary? 
we are scary today

Original Film Title: DEŠER

Director’s Name: Joaquim Adrià Pujol

Writer’s Name: Joaquim Adrià Pujol

Producer: Vesta Tuckute

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English, French, German, Japanese, Lithuanian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish

Runtime: 11 minutes

Film Description:

A mysterious character navigates existential disconnect during an evening of food deliveries in Los Angeles. Revealing spirit, frustration, and the challenge of being a present father as life passes by outside his windshield, the Dasher experiences a blur of fleeting moments while never making contact with the diversity of humanity existing just behind the doors at each destination.

Original Film Title: まどろむ

Director’s Name:

Writer’s Name: Sakurako Shibata

Country of Origin: Japan

Country of Filming: Japan

Runtime: 11 minutes 25 seconds

Film Description:

A frog in a park where I used to play. 
A tadpole whose tail is disappearing. 
Our tails are gone.

When I was young, I dreamed of becoming a frog. 
Overlapping memories of me and humankind.

Original Film Title: 流水《心經》

Director’s Name: Qingnian Tang, Hana Tang

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 28 minutes 45 seconds

Film Description:

The Heart Sutra is one of the most important scriptures in Buddhism. The most widely circulated translation is by Chinese master Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty. This 260 character version is a favorite of many calligraphers throughout history. In this short film, the sutra is written on the surface of a small stream in cursive script. This performance attempts to convey the flowing nature of the text through calligraphy and cinematography, as well as the Zen phrase: “all dharmas are empty.”

Original Film Title: Children’s Album

Director’s Name: Natalia Ervits

Writer’s Name: Natalia Ervits

Producer: Natalia Ervits

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: English

Runtime: 28 minutes 45 seconds

Film Description:

The 28-minute film is a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Album, played by
the well-known pianist Mikhail Mordvinov (https://www.mordvinov.org/) 
released in March 2023 on the new Berlin label Medium Coeli 
(https://audioproduction.berlin/mediumcoeli-de/) and here, in interaction
with the painting by the sand artist Polina Sayfudinova 
(https://linasand.art/performance), becomes a music film. A new story 
emerges between the picture and the music, bringing Tchaikovsky’s pictures 
from the children’s room to life. 
We see the hands of the painter as she creates her motifs and at the same 
time the hands of the pianist Mikhail Mordvinov as he interprets the cycle 
musically. The sand pictures are transformed into a kind of animation that 
comes alive with small effects such as the falling snow or the stars that 
gradually light up in the sky. Sometimes the music merges with the painting, 
sometimes they alternate. Each time, a new dimension is created that lies 
beyond sound and image: the children’s room, where the cycle by P. I. 
Tchaikovsky takes place. The children wake up in the early winter morning 
and immerse themselves in their fantasy world. The boy plays with the 
soldiers and his rocking horse, the girl gets a new doll that gets sick and 
dies. They listen to music, they play and dance and in the evening their 
nanny tells a fairy tale about the Baba Yaga, they fall asleep and we see 
the images from their dreams. 
Sooner or later, many children who take piano lessons play pieces from Tchaikovsky’s children’s album. However, the lyrical miniatures, which are mostly accessible to very young musicians and seemingly simple, require particular caution and the full perfection of a concert pianist. The cycle tells – similar to Schumann’s “Children’s Scenes” – about the daily routine of a child. But one could perhaps also discover a deeper background here, which symbolizes a person’s path through life from birth to death.

Original Film Title: The Migrant Body

Director’s Name: Paula Gil Higa, Cal Hopwood

Writer’s Name: Mario Auriemma Higa

Producer: Haley Bradstreet

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 12 minutes

Film Description:

This film examines human migration through the creative lens of PH Dance’s Artistic Director, Paula Higa. Deriving from her personal experience as a dual citizen of Brazil and the United States, Higa researched various motives for individual displacement. People migrate for many reasons, from new life experiences to security, from demography to human rights, and from socio-economic grounds to climate change. Thus, this performance focuses on the meaning of self-discovery by uncovering physical geography, the gap between past and present, and the sense of not having a home. Dancemaker Paula Higa proposes a reflection on who is not a migrant in this world.