The First Light Show (2024)

Queen of the Damned

Lestat finds acceptance in a tattooed and pierced world, rekindling the desires of all-powerful Akasha.

Aftersun

Summertime. In a camping, three little girls listen to an old mysterious story about a missing kid. They start to investigate.

The Sunset Special 2

This exclusive luxury cruise presents itself as the perfect holiday and family utopia. However, all artificial facades of this attractive consumer product dissolve, as a psychedelic dream world unfolds, illusions break and the crude reality beyond superficial comfort is unveiled.

Friend of the World

After a catastrophic global war, a young filmmaker awakens in the carnage and seeks refuge in the only other survivor: an eccentric, ideologically opposed figure of the United States military. Together, they brave the toxic landscape in search of safety... and answers.

Heartstorm

A young woman goes on a cathartic journey through memory and imagination inspired by the performers at an open mic.

African American Express

African American Express is an abstract animation exploring the impact of consumerism in the Black community. Told in the style of Soviet Propaganda, this animated short dissects the pattern of excessive materialism and consumption prevalent within the Black population.

3 Minute Warning

Three characters unknown to each other, experience a supernatural entity slowly unveil itself.

Day Watch

A man who serves in the war between the forces of Light and Dark comes into possession of a device that can restore life to Moscow, which was nearly destroyed by an apocalyptic event.

Astronomical Echoes

Made by film students, the short film is a tribute and authorial reinterpretation inspired by old Pink Floyd music videos as a psychedelic trip. Using overhead projectors to capture a liquid light show, the narrative is stitched together from a retro photograph, bringing a bit of 60s psychedelia with an air of nostalgia. With the combination of two of the band's songs ("Echoes" and "Astronomy Domine"), the music video brings the concept of the realism and ludic, of the present moment and insanity. Composed of characters who are part of a fictional band and travel through the delight of a mind that lives in the past while resting in reality.

Men in Black II

Kay and Jay reunite to provide our best, last and only line of defense against a sinister seductress who levels the toughest challenge yet to the MIB's untarnished mission statement – protecting Earth from the scum of the universe. It's been four years since the alien-seeking agents averted an intergalactic disaster of epic proportions. Now it's a race against the clock as Jay must convince Kay – who not only has absolutely no memory of his time spent with the MIB, but is also the only living person left with the expertise to save the galaxy – to reunite with the MIB before the earth submits to ultimate destruction.

Dogville

When beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.

The Mermaid

A trip that the author makes to a distant beach trying to find the place where his grandfather made a painting years ago.

Cheers,

A bartender takes on the physical form of her imagined alter egos.

Time to Change

Angolan director and screenwriter Pocas Pascoal reminds us that it’s time for a change, proposing through this film a look at colonialism, capitalism, and their impact on global biodiversity. We observe that the destruction of the ecosystem goes back a long way and is already underway through land exploitation, big game hunting, and the exploitation of man by man.

The Blue Light

Hans the farmer is drawn into war as a soldier. Returning from the front, having been defrauded of his pay by his own king, he makes his way home. On his trip, he encounters a witch who asks him to fetch the light from a spring. He keeps it when the witch tries to deceive him and he discovers her foul magic. When the light is ignited, a little man appears who must serve the owner of the light, but it only has power if the owner has faith in himself. His courage bolstered, Hans goes to the king once more to demand his wages be paid.

Bramayugam

Thevan, a folk singer of the Paanan caste, has a fateful encounter when escaping slavery, leading to discover an ancient tradition altering his destiny.

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?

Winter Portrait

A misty afternoon returns a Mapuche couple to their wedding video. In their civil ceremony, they are noted as one of only two couples married in the indigenous language of Mapudungun.

Anhell69

A funeral car cruises the streets of Medellín, while a young director tells the story of his past in this violent and conservative city. He remembers the pre-production of his first film, a Class-B movie with ghosts. The young queer scene of Medellín is casted for the film, but the main protagonist dies of a heroin overdose at the age of 21, just like many friends of the director. Anhell69 explores the dreams, doubts and fears of an annihilated generation, and the struggle to carry on making cinema.

115

Emily enters a reverse time loop while creating incorrect fuel (element 115). JT, a boy she meets daily, helps her gather DNA, plants, and water. She creates a wormhole, but the fuel fails, causing a quantum collapse that reverses her through time.

Amelia 2.0

After his wife Amelia suffers an aneurysm that leaves her bedridden and slowly dying, police officer Carter Summerland searches for a way to revive her. He's approached by Wesley Enterprises pioneering a new program to extend life through robotics, they get caught in a public debate over human’s relationship with technology and her right to exist.

Vanishing on 7th Street

A mysterious global blackout yields countless populations to simply vanish, leaving only their clothes and possessions behind. A small handful of survivors band together in a dimly-lit tavern on 7th Street, struggling to combat the apocalyptic horror. Realizing they may in fact be the last people on earth, a dark shadow hones in on them alone.

Skyline

When strange lights descend on the city of Los Angeles, people are drawn outside like moths to a flame where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population off the face of the Earth. Now the band of survivors must fight for their lives as the world unravels around them.

House

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

The Black Belly of the Tarantula

Inspector Tellini investigates serial crimes where victims are paralyzed while having their bellies ripped open with a sharp knife.

Squirm

A violent electrical storm topples power lines into the rain soaked earth that is home for an aggressive breed of worms. The high voltage causes the worms to mutate into larger, hostile hordes of man-eating worms that lie in wait for the residents of Fly Creek.

Escargots

An adaptation of a children's poem called Chanson des escargots qui vont à l'enterrement by Jacques Prévert, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Filmed in Paris, France and Los Angeles, California.

The Grass Dwellers

Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.

Grid

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

Pacho's visual archive

After the death of my only brother I found rolls of undeveloped film. This documentary is a reenactment of those stills and an exploration of the aspects of my brother's life that I didn't know.

It’s Only a Film

Bobby breadcrumb lives a terrible life of hitting his head on doorways, running out of milk, and slipping on banana peels. In an effort to find meaning and change the script of his life, he journeys beyond the fourth wall to fight against the powers that be.

Three Women

"Three Women, is an ambitious work designed to be shown on multiple screens in a movie theater. Moving a step forward from the use of multiple screens as an expansion of cinema as exemplified by Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927), it presents what is literally a conceptual expansion of cinema in the form of a filmic work experienced in a theater in which the 15-channel, surround-sound audio constructed by Araki Masamitsu and Ito’s visuals organically intertwine."

Allure

An introverted girl struggles to form connections through a strange social media site.

Blocked Together

Whilst a boy mourns the passing of his younger brother, hope of unity is found in his grief.

He Who Dances Passes

A being from the beyond returns to Chile in 2019, embodied in a worker who dreams of social upheaval. Viral videos intertwine with fiction to narrate the experiences of a polarized country that wanders between drama and absurdity, illusion and failure.

Echo

A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?

Es Para Un Videodiario

Mike is a young student of cinema, who receive the task to make a Videodiary for his fiction production class in the fifth semester of his career; with only a cellphone in hand begins to document his life day after day, without imagining that he will capture important and emotional moments that will remember forever.

Here We Are

A housekeeper received a film made by her daughter. It's a film that combines found footages of Thailand during the Cold War with the present days images of Bangkok. Through these images she tells a story of the house owner and her own story of coming to the capital.

Haunting

One night, a supernatural figure emerges from the darkness to find a human who is grieving the death of his mother. As the figure watches closely, it soon discovers the value of human love and its strength to bring people together.

96 Souls

A university research scientist, about to lose funding and status, has a lab accident and discovers he can see people's true intentions -- making his situation even worse.

Agent Jayne: A Woman with a Mission

Synopsis: Agent Jayne: A Woman with a Mission” introduces audiences to the unfortunate reality of the youth drug trade, exposing the harrowing consequences of addiction and exploitation. As the story unfolds, viewers are plunged into a world of greed, danger, and moral ambiguity.   Written and directed by Waqar Peter Gill, the concept of Agent Jayne is based on real events and personal visual experiences. The film aims to emphasize a prudent issue of substance abuse amongst teens, which portrays the use of candy-like opioids. The film is a blend of social awareness amongst the youth and woman empowerment. Director’s Quote: Agent Jayne is a film designed to raise the profile of local upcoming talent, as wella s create an awareness of drug abuse amongst the youth.  As a result of the release of Agent Jayne, we can recognize the contributions of all individuals involved in this project.

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An unknown girl breaks out of her daily grind by undergoing an intense audio-visual trip.