Looking Back Before You Leap (2023)

Acadia Acadia?!?

In the late 1960s, with the triumph of bilingualism and biculturalism, New Brunswick's Université de Moncton became the setting for the awakening of Acadian nationalism after centuries of defeatism and resignation. Although 40% of the province's population spoke French, they had been unable to make their voices heard. The movement started with students-sit-ins, demonstrations against Parliament, run-ins with the police - and soon spread to a majority of Acadians. The film captures the behind-the-scenes action and the students' determination to bring about change. An invaluable document of the rebirth of a people.

Quarantine

A short film of the first weeks of strict national lockdown, filmed in Barcelona on a classic home video camera Hi8. Narrates the story of three women who share a flat and who create a microworld not only to survive the global pandemic but also to survive themselves.

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?

Printemps Now!

How Montreal is transformed from winter to spring. Inspired by Berlin: Symphony of a great city, Printemps Now! is a cinematographic poem, an audiovisual symphony of the city of Montreal transitioning from winter to spring.

Once Faithful

Days slip away in a former baptist church haunted by its past

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).

Origins of consciousness

Experimental meditation on land, consciousness, and artificial intelligence. Shot in the Okanagan and West Kootenays. Original music by Jack Brintnell.

An Ordinary Texas Homicide

An experiment in video and sound collage by John Ledingham and Liam McCarrell. Inspired by the novel "Libra" by Don DeLillo.

Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor

This documentary recounts the difficult choice actress Mary Astor had to make after learning her personal, very intimate, diaries had been stolen. The film tells the story of Astor's 1936 child custody case.

RICKY

Confined within the repetitive monotony of his home, Ricky grapples with a pervasive sense of aimlessness, questioning the very essence and purpose of existence. Driven by an internal struggle for meaning, Ricky ultimately decides to break free from his passive routine.

The Diary of a Projectionist

This is the story of my grandfather, Tiago Florit, who for 50 years was a film operator at the Teatre Principal de Maó, in Menorca. It is a review of his life, from his birth to his death, in a cinematographic key. A true love story to cinema.

13 figures de Sarah Beauchesne au 71, rue Blanche

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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.

Animot

The experimental documentary filmed at rescue centres in Prague and Vlašim refuses the anthropocentric perspective and views the world through the eyes of wounded animals. The term Animot was taken over from Jacque Derrida. While the French philosopher and deconstructivist uses the term to refer to everything animalistic and non-human, the film, on the other hand, uses intimate details to point out the proximity between human beings and animals. They are connected by their vulnerability, helplessness and mortality.

Leningrad. Stimmen einer belagerten Stadt

It was one of the great crimes of the Second World War: from 1941 to 1944, a total of 872 days, the siege and starvation of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders lasted. Over a million people fell victim to the blockade, most of them dying of hunger. Countless of these starving people wrote diaries with the last of their strength, and cameramen filmed in the paralyzed city. Evidence from the hell of the siege, many of the film recordings, but above all the written memories on which this documentary on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation is based, remained under lock and key after the war. The voices of those who had suffered through this terrible time should not be heard by anyone, because they did not fit the pathos of the Leningrad heroic song that was officially sung. Most of the recordings come from women. The writers feared neither the enemy nor the Communist Party or Stalin, who often proved incompetent in providing for the population.

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.

American Animals

Lexington, Kentucky, 2004. Four young men attempt to execute one of the most audacious art heists in the history of the United States.

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?

The Balcony Movie

Composed from the conversations that the director holds with people passing by in the street under his Warsaw apartment, each story in 'The Balcony Movie' is unique and deals with the way we try to cope with life as individuals. All together, they create a self-portrait of contemporary human life, and the passers-by present a composite picture of today's world.

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

Sparni

It’s the second semester of junior year for Pierce “Sparni” Sparnroft, a gifted jazz vibraphonist studying at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Sparni’s prospects on the vibes were rejuvenated by their new professor, the world-renowned Steve Nelson, and are to be showcased during a student-driven recital in May 2023. But all the while, Sparni must face a crisis within.

Slaughter (Besmel)

"Slaughter" is an experimental short film that delves into the archival and historical footage of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, depicting a symbolic narrative surrounding the ritualistic act of animal sacrifice, known as "Besmel." It serves as an allegorical representation of a nation's sacrifice amidst the backdrop of political transformations.

Memory

Memory is a collaboration with musician Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), exploring the relationship between a musician and filmmaker and their personal reflection on memories. From Super 8 home movies and entirely handmade, this film explores familiar memories, the present moment combined with past experiences and how it all seems to evade from our present memory.

Giri Chit

GIRI CHIT tells a tale of the subtle trace of irreconcilable worlds. A worker driving a mobile sweeper in hypnotic circles across an already immaculate surface. The high drama of cosplay aficionados clamoring to be seen. A cast of thousands toiling hundreds of feet above the street. Giri translates as ‘duty’ in Japanese, but the concept is in fact far more complicated. Giri is a sort of interpersonal political capital that informs careers, family relations, and much more. Its presence and flow is palpable in Japan, where this film was shot. A “giri chit” then may be a hypothetical voucher for this intangible flow (with a tip of the cap to Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”). Selected Screenings and Awards: DaVinci Film Festival (Best Experimental Film), Chicago Underground Film Festival, Athens International Film and Video Festival, Dallas Videofest, ICDOCS Film Festival, NewFilmmakers at Anthology Film Archives, Oxford Film Festival, Director’s Lounge Berlin

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.

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.

The Hunting Ground

A startling expose of rape crimes on US campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. The film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue—despite incredible push back, harassment and traumatic aftermath—both their education and justice.

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.