Manila Madness (2021)

Reconstruction

Reconstruction tells about a certain night in 1982, reconstructed in 2020 by the people who lived it through together. The film combines dance, drama and documentary, but most of all is a story of a friendship of a boy and a girl, and how jolly situations can turn sour and how, even though close, friends do not share same experiences – and that can have an effect on their friendship.

The We Should Game

Fame driven Ken Dean becomes the subject of a documentary when he attempts to start a pornography company. Following the failure of the company, Ken uses his father's religious music to start a Christian rock band but finds himself trapped in a gay conversion cult.

Blocked Together

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

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.

(NULL)

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

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.

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?

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.

Allure

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

Double Exposure

A photographer girl enters a street to take street photographs as usual and takes a few photos that she thinks are normal. When she washes the photos and hangs them, she sees that she is actually in one of the photos and goes in search of that person.

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.

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.

DARKMAN

Seeing himself as a form unable to experience intimacy, he is given the chance when brought to the household of twin sisters.

Black Kettle

A student moves into their accomodation, only to find their room already decorated, a strange, inhuman flatmate, and a kettle that won't stop boiling.

Cookie Logic

A young scientist studies the mechanics of time travel by having a conversation with a group of her future selves.

A Dying Tree

As the day ends for a worn-out office worker, he encounters the mysterious gaze of a chimpanzee, sparking a silent exchange that prompts him to make an irreversible decision.

Butterfly

A short experimental film, exploring the concept that one small change can have a profound impact on a person's life.

Lost Way

Collective experimental film by Team 8mm TENGOKU.

The Tuba Thieves

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

AA-PROXIMA-SUN

A girl approaches a divine entity that comes to the world in the form of a yellow umbrella, and ends up discovering her true self.

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."

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.

Barreira

Alma is at home, on the line with her girlfriend, when suddenly the light bulb in the hallway burns out, forcing her to face a certain dark corridor in her life.

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.

Milk, Rice and the Blood

"Siddharth" arrives in the city with a burning determination to uncover the truth behind the tragic fate of his beloved brother, Pradip. Pradip, hailing from a Dalit family, had always been an advocate for goodness and kindness, which unfortunately made him a target for the cruelty of the upper-caste individuals in the city. As Siddharth delves deeper into the city's shadows, seeking vengeance against those responsible for his brother's suffering, the poignant story of Pradip's life and the heart-wrenching revelations about his fate begin to unravel through a series of flashbacks and discoveries.

Aishiteru

Experimental short film that reflects through the voice of the protagonist, poetically, about a fateful intimate and personal event.

Declan Sennott’s A Fair Trade

In this black comedy crime epic, eighth grader Tommy Uris is pushed into a teenage drug dealing business run by his two classmates Frank Newton and Patrick Reynolds after walking in on a drug deal between them. As their business falls apart, so does their trust for each other, and they need to either resolve, or kill each other in the process.

Kino Kopf

Born from steel and glass Kino Kopf is created by two inventors. They are assembled by their mother, a nurturing artist, and their Father a greedy entrepreneur. Kino Kopf is the first of its kind a sentient humanoid VHS camera. They are given a life by their mother but presented to the world by their father. Kino Kopf is the next big sensation and spurs a technological revolution. They are soon forgotten and alone as new models surpass them. Kino Kopf is left alone to contemplate if they ever had a soul, as visions of an electric cowboy dance through their dreams.

2bhk

2 flatmates unfold the layers of their relationship on a random Sunday afternoon after they encounter a power cut.

Perfector

Plot unavailable

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.

Hebe

Hebe, in her journey from childhood to adulthood, finds herself compelled to explore the boundaries of the real and the illusory through her extrasensory perceptions. Endowed with a singular gift: glimpsing the past and future as an eternal present, Hebe defies temporal convention, questioning whether her premonitions are pre-written destinies or mere whispers of chance. Inspired by true events, Hebe invites us into the fabric of time to discover whether her gift can and should be controlled or whether she should surrender and succumb to it.

Lost Footage

How would a found footage film look if the footage was never found? This conceptual art experiment questions the very nature of film and cinema while serving as an ironic tribute to the found footage horror pop culture. The found footage format provides the narrative justification for such a film to exist: the non-existence exists because the footage existed yet it was lost and never found.

Queens of the Qing Dynasty

A suicidal teen develops a candid rapport with the student from Shanghai assigned to watch her in hospital. A nightly exchange of secrets, text messages and possessions quickly expands the boundaries of their relationship and alters their inner chemistry.

Memoirs of a Strangler of Blondes

First film by Julio Bressane shot in exile, "Memoirs" is a film about a man who repeatedly kills the same type of woman in same places, the same way. Filmed on the streets of London.

Heartstorm

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