Macabre Metrics (2024)

Triumph and Ruins

History as immersion and dispersion in the fragments of the past, a visionary journey accompanied by the voice of Patty Pravo. Presented at the Taormina Festival '97.

Sleepless far from home

Incapable of falling asleep, Mamadou starts to walk endlessly to tire himself and be able to have a final dream of where he was born.

High Sugar

A police officer has a fever dream after having too much sugar.

Blue Bayou

As a Korean-American man raised in the Louisiana bayou works hard to make a life for his family, he must confront the ghosts of his past as he discovers that he could be deported from the only country he has ever called home.

Borealis

After the mysterious death of his father, Aaron O'Donnell, a ruthless capitalist, decides to take the reins as the leader of Borealis. However, his brother Andrew sets out to hijack his dictatorship and warn not only the residents of Borealis, but all future visitors of the danger Aaron poses.

Relatório de um Episódio Depressivo

Plot unavailable

154

The prototype [TEST TYPE • 154] is a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence, which is capable of autonomously acquiring notions from its surroundings and - eventually - developing autonomy of thought. Given the nearly human nature of its learning capabilities, the laboratory that programmed it hires a kindergarten teacher, asking him to instruct the machine as if it were a newborn child. The learning process - which spans 7 days - becomes increasingly insidious in the long run, posing a peculiar yet crucial problem: can there be a form of autonomous thinking that excludes emotions?

[PER(IN)SISTENCE]

A woman confined to a colorless room finds herself forced to eat a mysterious meal while being tormented by strange creatures.

Negativ

A photographer during the Soviet-Afghan war becomes obsessed with a mysterious figure that appears in his images every time the person photographed dies.

I’d like that corner seat over there

An omnibus film based on Kim Oki's album Hip Hop Retreat. Twenty characters share the same table at different times, in different emotional states, each with their own story. Shot in one day, edited in one day.

Prelude: Dog Star Man

A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time. Part of the Dog Star Man series of experimental films.

Ms. Purple

Kasie, stuck in LA’s Koreatown, works as a karaoke hostess getting paid for her companionship by drunken men. When her dad’s hospice nurse quits she reconnects with her estranged brother, Carey, forcing them to enter a period of intense self-reflection as their single father who raised them nears death.

Guaret

Pedro is Mallorcan, born to a mother from Burgos and a father from Mallorca. Due to his distant relationship with his father, Pedro doesn't fully master Mallorcan as a language. He turns to the works of Damià Huguet to remember his father, as only his poems can fill the void left by his death. The poet's words transport Pedro to his childhood and his roots, even though many of the words are unknown to him, despite them belonging to his language. This becomes the driving force behind the protagonist's search for his own identity, his origins, what it means to be a man, father-son relationships, collective identity, and "mallorquinness". Pedro constantly questions the emotions stirred by Huguet's poetry, and, most importantly, who he is and where he belongs.

Tsui no Sora

After the sudden death of a student, mysterious things start to happen and a school seemingly falls into madness. Based on the game by KeroQ.

Stone

Via the New York Times: "...a severely obscure meditation on pre-revolutionary Russia in the form of an encounter between a ghost from the past and the ghost's present-day guardian. In fact, the two characters seem to be the shade of Anton Chekhov and the young man who tends a Chekhov museum in the Crimea, though that is never made explicit."

PRÓXIMO!

Plot unavailable

The Angel Was Born

Santamaria and Urtigo are two bandits on the run, one is white, the other black. Santamaria is a mystical visionary and believes in the imminent coming of a purifying angel. Urtiga, his inseparable companion, is a simple-minded and ingenious man who follows Santamaria around and participates in the crimes he commits. The two bandits take over a house after kidnapping its owner and his girlfriend.

Born In Summer

A filmmaker plays with diary-docu and fiction as his camera joins his ventures into a phone dating club. Bored to death, hormones running, and desperately wanting to talk to someone his own age (preferably a girl), he walks into a local phone dating club. Can he hook up with someone? Borrowing the form of a diary-movie, the director unfurls an unpredictable and imaginative look into his own persona. 8mm experimental film by Murakami Kenji, the film that made his name.

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.

Génesis

In an inner world suspended between oblivion and creation, a female figure moves through a dreamlike space where forgotten ideas take shape. Genesis is an experimental piece that explores the journey toward the origin of an idea — of oneself.

Mothlight

Seemingly at random, the wings and other bits of moths and insects move rapidly across the screen. Most are brown or sepia; up close, we can see patterns within wings, similar to the veins in a leaf. Sometimes the images look like paper cutouts, like Matisse. Green objects occasionally appear. Most wings are translucent. The technique makes them appear to be stuck directly to the film.

Eye Myth

After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

Static

A man dreams about his wife while stuck in an unknown place.

A Paw Over Dark

A washed up actor performs night after night in a grimy theater to a nearly empty audience. However, everything changes when a clueless dog jumps on stage.

Escuro da Alma

Plot unavailable

Maalbeek

Sabine is looking for a missing image: a day that has left its mark forever and that everyone remembers but her. But maybe this absence is what allows her to move on with her life?

Small World

A teacher spends a day in their classroom where nothing is what it seems.

The Forgotten

An exploration of memory after death.

Desert Vows

Hunter, a bride-to-be, feels overworked and unappreciated. Her artistic spirit is squelched by the shallow corporate world she’s in and she has had enough. Unfortunately, she feels as if she can’t turn to Ian, her commercial executive fiancé, for solace. As her wedding day approaches, Hunter and her three bridesmaids embark on a road trip to Las Vegas for one last hoorah together. As the girls venture from the city, they decompress and let their personal barriers fall. An impromptu sightseeing excursion into the desert leads to a clash of anxieties and attitudes between Hunter, the bridesmaids, and her fiancé as Hunter searches for the road that’s right for her.

The Sin By Which They Fell

After committing a gruesome act of violence, the fallen angel September reflects on their relationship with Rowan, the human who came to their aid.

Memory of a Displaced Body

A ritual in the form of a film essay that explores, through collage, the sense of exile experienced during early childhood migration. It examines the primal configuration of detachment from one’s homeland, family environment, and body, and the reclamation of origins as a symbolic center.

Answering the Sun

Rainer Kohlberger is prepared to go far when it comes to the physical experiences he evokes with his work. Answering the Sun demands the utmost from its audience. The invitation is to squint our eyes and allow the most amazing trips to unfold – just like when we were children letting the sun come in. However, the work is simultaneously a 60-minute bombardment of coloured fields and a wall of sound, followed by a hallucinatory, silent inky-black sequence.

Perfect Dark

A womans last moments before she is consumed by a darkness.

DHET!

The night takes a strange turn in Dhaka as a ride-sharing motorcyclist tries to reach his next passenger in time.

Dead End

Two brothers come into contact after a very long time due to the discovery that the world is going to end. Together, they find themselves face-to-face with the inevitable dilemma to either save the reality of their relationship or the world's existence.

WAR TIMES

An exploration of two souls inhabiting bodies from 1940's Hungary, and the beginning of the digital age.

Relax With Ease

A three part meditation.

Soft

A portrait of new found sobriety and love unravels as a young woman moves through the motions of melancholic life in seclusion.