Category: BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM – 2024 ARFF BERLIN

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: BLIND FAITH: Moments of Missed Understanding

Director’s Name: Robert Scott MacLeay

Writer’s Name: Robert Scott MacLeay

Producer: Robert Scott MacLeay

Country of Origin: Brazil

Country of Filming: Brazil

Language:

Runtime: 14 minutes 30 seconds

Film Description:

A performance art-based narrative that deals with the reaction to actions in a closed environment in which everyday actions and reactions (some positive, some negative) are drawn by chance by performance artists who are required to perform their chosen action/reaction sequentially in a completely honest manner in the moment. Once the initial action/reaction sequence completed the artists are free to follow the instincts awakened by the situation they created or to stop. The resulting narrative is presented behind a thin textured veil hinting that it takes place in another dimension, in another state of consciousness. The use of a neutral, seemingly hand-coloured palette and a slow, methodical tempo reinforce this sensation.

BLIND FAITH is a dream-like, non-linear narrative composed of one complete chance-based performance session peppered with extracts from two other sessions. It documents the complexity of messaging between two people, the interpretation of non-verbal communication and the difficulties inherent in reading messages that are not clearly articulated.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Return To Planet Underground (Part1)

Director’s Name: Gideon Homes

Writer’s Name: Gideon Homes

Producer: Gideon Homes

Country of Origin: Netherlands

Country of Filming: Netherlands

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes 10 seconds

Film Description:

A former underground techno dj working at a big famous law firm spirals down to dark sides of society where the war already started and finds himself in moral grayareas. With one eye on the past and one eye on the future he stirs among the ashes of the real underground.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Promised Land

Director’s Name: Jürgen Baums

Writer’s Name: Jürgen Baums

Producer: Jürgen Baums

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: English

Runtime: 24 minutes 48 seconds

Film Description:

Mash-up documentary on the history of the Middle East conflict around the region of Palestine. Inspired by 2. Mose (Exodus), Kapitel 23, 20 -33.

According to the Zionist understanding, Israel describes itself as the “state of the Jewish people”. This people has suffered unbelievably from thousands of years of persecution, not least the extermination of millions of Jewish people by the Nazis.

The more I have learned over time about the lives of Palestinian people in Israel itself, in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the more often I have asked myself (and this even before October 7, 2023, Hamas’ attack on Israel):

How can a people who have suffered immensely themselves throughout their history be in a position to inflict oppression, deprivation and deprivation of basic human rights on another people?

The enormity of the acts of war that the Israeli government and its military claim to have understood as a “response” to the Hamas attack led me to look for explanations in the Old Testament of the Bible and the Jewish Torah in particular. There you can find passages that can be understood in a frighteningly clear way as instructions for the conquest of the whole of Palestine and the expulsion of the Palestinians:

Excerpts from Genesis chapter 23, there especially verses 20-33. The texts accordingly accompany some sequences in my video on the history of Palestine and the Jews as well as on the war that has been raging between Hamas and Israel since October 7, 2023.

(WINNER)

Original Film Title: Heaven+Diary

Director’s Name: Masha Shalagina

Writer’s Name: Masha Shalagina

Producer: Masha Shalagina

Country of Origin: Finland

Country of Filming: Russian Federation

Language: Russian

Runtime: 21 minutes 5 seconds

Film Description:

Born out of the isolation of COVID-19 lockdowns, “Heaven” began as a prayer and a song. The lyrics of “Heaven” speak to God, expressing feelings of entrapment within one’s mind and environment.

“Heaven” quickly evolved into a music video, created in collaboration with Natalya Tarasova, Masha Shalagina, and Daniel Gorsky. Filming was set to begin in St. Petersburg, Russia, in February 2022. On the first day of filming, Russia invaded Ukraine, and the song instantly acquired a different meaning. The director, Maria Shalagina, an outspoken defender of freedom of speech and political freedom, immediately changed the music video’s course. She expanded its scope to include a diary section documenting the circumstances surrounding its creation.

The film was edited throughout the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was released in its final form in 2023.

“Heaven” began as a prayer and concludes as a prayer for freedom and peace, both internally and externally, individually and collectively.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: They Used to Visit Us

Director’s Name: Nora Hase

Writer’s Name: Nora Hase

Producer: Nora Hase

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: German

Runtime: 2 minutes 3 seconds

Film Description:

“They Used To Come Visit Us” is the first of a new series “Diaspora Stories” with Afrofuturism and The Black Fantastic at its heart and center. It is the beginning of a story about the possibilities that are stored in the morning hours, the in between sleeping and waking. It is also a very personal exploration of the missing connection that existing in the Diaspora brings with it. – Created with AI

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: At Home

Director’s Name: Isabelle Evertse

Writer’s Name: Isabelle Evertse

Producer: Elena Andreicheva

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: France

Language: English, French

Runtime: 7 minutes 20 seconds

Film Description:

This short documentary is an intimate meditation on the importance of care giving. Fed up of being “at home”, a mother takes her kids on a trip to a cave and ends up questioning society’s attitude towards her role.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: The Amaurose Chasm

Director’s Name: Collectif B.L.U.S.H. Collectif B.L.U.S.H.

Writer’s Name: Collectif B.L.U.S.H. Collectif B.L.U.S.H.

Producer: Collectif B.L.U.S.H. Collectif B.L.U.S.H.

Country of Origin: Canada

Country of Filming: Canada

Language: French

Runtime: 6 minutes 45 seconds

Film Description:

In the middle of the forest, B.L.U.S.H. collective members enters a space filled with digital waste. The performers, all three wearing opaque glasses obstructing their vision, enter this chaotic arena to undertake actions evoking both careful cleaning and a blind archaeological investigation. Thanks to the camera, this work – filmed a bit like as an animal documentary – invites the viewer to a performance in a terrain otherwise difficult to access.

(AUDIENCE AWARD)

Original Film Title: Pink City Film

Director’s Name: Mirijam Verena Verena Jeremic

Writer’s Name: Mirijam Verena Jeremic

Producer: Mirijam Seelbinder

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: German

Runtime: 13 minutes

Film Description:

Pink City Film

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: I Stole A Book

Director’s Name: Andie Z Chen

Writer’s Name: Andie Z Chen

Producer: Andie Z Chen

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 3 minutes 21 seconds

Film Description:

Kinetic Typography as reading of a visual poetry: A deliberate failure in a film assignment leads to a series of “live dangerously” events: micro-criminal activities and the near death experience of the mundane.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Newt

Director’s Name: Mind Wank

Writer’s Name: Mind Wank

Producer: Mind Wank

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 2 minutes 19 seconds

Film Description:

This A.I.-generated mockumentary explores the (extremely serious) theory that Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, is literally an amphibian.