Biography (2023)

Under the Weight of a Waking Dream

‘Under the Weight of a Waking Dream’ is Zefier's debut swan song to the ending year. Comprised of poetry and endless enumerations is a diaristic film chronicling the lessons and contradictions found throughout the human experience.

Pico Sacro [The Holy Mountain]

In a leafy forest, a Galician sovereign who longs to attain wisdom meets a sorcerer, who tells him: “Go back to your country and study the Earth and the Stars in the sky; anywhere in the world reflects an image of it. You will ride on this arrow, which you must keep for a hundred years and a day. After this time, stick it in the widest valley of all those you possess, with the tip facing the sky. Then the Moon will come and, just as it exerts its action on the waters of the sea, it will act on the arrow, turning it into a holy mountain." - Legend about the Pico Sacro Inspired by Hokusai's views of Mount Fuji and Cézanne's paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire, "Pico Sacro [The Holy Mountain]" aims to reveal the mystery and the magic that underlie reality.

INTERVENTIONS AND INTERFERENCES

Through a collage of spaces and times, the interventions and interferences of nature and human beings in the south of Brazil reveals themselves... or try to hide.

1/2 Man

A visual documentary of Einstürzende Neubauten, the German underground band, by Japanese cult director Sogo Ishii, made during their 1985 tour of Japan. The band makes an elaborate and remarkably choreographed appearance in the ruins of an old ironworks which was scheduled for demolition; footage of same was incorporated into the movie and a brief appearance on stage.

The Pleasure in Pain

A short film that follows key figures of the London kink scene on an exploration into BDSM and the notorious fetish event Klub Verboten. The film touches upon themes of psychology, trauma, LGBTQ+ rights and black representation.

Reflections of a society

In this 21st century, under the cloak of capitalism, governments, and other systems by which society is governed, this short film shows the true social reality of many people “on the street”.

Trials and Initiation

Here is an actor, one who has been asked to dwell in the perilous gap between text and image. In the voids where traces of the past have been erased by an unknown error, she begins to assemble her own script.

fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen

fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen explores how everyday routines and gestures are transformed when a mother loses her child in the violence impacting Swedish outskirts since the early 2000s. The film resists simplistic media depictions of the suburbs and shows how a home can hold both mourning and the mobilization of women to fight for their own and others' children.

Looking Back Before You Leap

A collection of memories from a tumultuous time at University.

The Psychedelic Experience

Experimental movie, where a man comes home and experiences LSD. His kaleidoscopic visions follow, with readings inspired by the Tibethan Book of the Dead.

FASCISM(s): A Film in Six Parts

Six sequences about Fascism and its segments throughout history.

Alternate Earth

A scientific expedition travels to an alternative Earth in hope of finding a new home for humanity, which has destroyed its own planet. But is it even possible to escape old patterns?

The Parallel Coast

A story of The Map and The Territory. Shot in BC, California, and Nevada. Original music by Tashi Townley, Jack Brintnell, Luc Wiebe, and George Lee.

Jo

Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike is Zefier's third film.

¿Por qué la gallina cruzó el camino?

A hen questions the meaning of her life on a farm.

Fair Use Vol 1. (All This Trouble)

A compilation of TV news about black culture.

Late Anthropocene

Hand processed expired Kodak 7291, Camera: Beaulieu R16, Lens: Angenieux 12-120mm with +3 Diopter, Polarising filter for the clouds. Hand processed in C-41 chem using a Lomo UPB-1A tank. Still haven't mastered removal of the rem-jet anti-halation layer (thats all the white 'static' on the film). The film expired about 40 years ago.

The Garden Cadences

Jone is ready to fly. She finds herself at the beginning of something new, but before she moves on, there needs to be a closure. Jone is one of Mollies, the queer-feminist collective that had been living for a decade at a trailer park next to Ostkreuz, Berlin.

In The Pines

This work re-examines the relationship between the elements that make up the quality of space, namely: "subject" and "object", "organic" and "mechanical", "reality" and "representation", "wholeness" and "partiality", " determinacy” and “indeterminacy”, “visibility” and “invisibility”, “natural” and “non-natural”.

The Severed Heads Are Smiling.

A passenger picks up a woman at dawn who is to be a guest until midnight. Their journey begins...

A Field of Sheep

A field full of sheep is observed through the camera, preserving that moment in time forever.

Being in a Place: A Portrait of Margaret Tait

Drawing on a wealth of unseen archival material and unpublished notebooks, the film weaves a complex and personal portrait of Margaret’s life, from the perspective of a fellow artist sensitive to the potential Margaret envisaged for film as a poetic medium.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

Dreaming Dogs

A pack of strays – seven dogs and one woman live in the shadows of Moscow. Hidden from the totalitarian authorities, two species share their existence on the verge of disappearance. They are straying in constant restlessness through a savage landscape where the city is cracking. Shot from the animal’s point of view, patterns of mutual dependence and taming begin to blur.

New Life

"Bagong Buhay" is a short experimental film that dispels the common belief that packing up and moving to a new place will magically improve one's quality of life. The film challenges this presumption by portraying two contrasting ways of life through objects and locations, encouraging viewers to think critically about the complexities of what makes a better life. In the Philippines, it's believed that relocating to a new area will bring about positive changes in one's existence. True satisfaction is a complex and multifaceted notion, and "Bagong Buhay" encourages us to ponder that relocating to a new place is not a surefire way to attain it.

And there was evening and there was morning. The first day

With the lack of personal video archive, Youhanna (the filmmaker) creates false memories using lost home videotapes shot between the 1990s and 2000s in Europe, Africa, and Asia, with the help of an Artificial intelligence programme, until a real, personal video archive surfaces, transporting him into the past to relive one more memory with his late mother.

á-B-C-D-é-F-G-H-CH-í-JONESTOWN

A children's film about the largest mass suicide of the 20th century reconstructs the 1978 event. The Reverend Jim Jones forced nearly a thousand followers of his People's Temple sect to drink poison in the settlement of Jonestown, Guyana, South America. A third of them were children. Jan Bušta gives sadists, voyeurs, and necrophiliacs one minute to leave the cinema. His self-reflective documentary, which is the result of ten years of time-lapse filming, does not depict dramatic scenes. To the sound of an audio recording from that fateful day, we see a collage of child ghosts preaching about escaping the corruption of the world.

First Drafts: The Outcasts

What if you rediscovered the script you wrote when you were 12? And what if you performed it with real actors, without changing a word? In this unique comedy, actors faithfully bring their director's hilariously bad childhood script to life, while their "Teacher" Michael Smallwood uproariously reacts to the chaos.

Golden Chains

A new exploration of familiar places located in the region of Rhône and Isère throught an reinvention of digital nuances, a study of perceptions and fluidity around the nature of motion in landscapes and human interactions.

Feet in Water, Head on Fire

Date palms imported and cultivated decades ago flourish in the Coachella Valley in Southern California. A cacophony of voices from across generations reflect on the shifting landscape of the region; some remember the first few acres that were planted, while others enjoy the luxuries of new golf courses. Feet in Water, Head on Fire is a sensorially vibrant 16mm experience that takes us on a journey of past, present, and future. Director Terra Long hand-processed the footage utilizing leftover dates and native plants intertwining the environment into the fabric of the film. Through complex and nuanced scenes, non-sync interviews blossom into a wonderfully gentle but memorable portrait of a community in flux.

Passing Clouds

In rural Scotland, a flock of sheep is sheared to survive the summer while a shepherd finds protection during the winter thanks to the wool. Are the clouds above them simply witnessing the process or do they actually take part in it? Shot on Super 8 with its characteristic unexpected light leaks, Passing Clouds explores a different possibility to the birth of clouds. Throughout the film, the sheep, the shepherd and his dogs guide us towards understanding the mystery of this mythical cycle based on what happens once a fleece is no longer attached to a sheep's body.

The Noise of Time

In the town of Xoco, the spirit of an old villager awakens in search of its lost home. Along its journey, the ghost discovers that the town still celebrates its most important festivities, but also learns that the construction of a new commercial complex called Mítikah will threaten the existence of both the traditions and the town itself.

next stop is...

A filmic letter to New York City, the subway, and self.