Manila Madness (2021)

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?

The Artist and His Canvas

An experimental film revolving around how an artist perceives a man and a woman.

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.

Jusqu’au silence

Anna comes from a violent past that has left her a recluse in her solitude.When a man knocks at the door her infancy returns....Will Anna open the door to the universe that she has created for herself to let life enter?

Preface to a History

A couple, Vlad and Sophy, navigate their relationship as well as their own struggles with mental health in the context of a highly connected, politically uncertain modern world while on a trip to a remote Canadian island in this avant-garde feature film. PREFACE TO A HISTORY, created with a tiny crew of four people, represents an experiment in using minimalist tools to create an overwhelming aesthetic experience in service of a simple, but specifically contemporary, story about two people attempting to navigate a fraying relationship amid all the anxieties and external pressures of modern adulthood in a technologically-interconnected and politically unstable era.

SIN PIEDAD

Under the relentless sun, a killer stalks through the mountains, where the innocence of a young couple becomes prey. With no shadows to hide their fate, the hunt is a macabre game in broad daylight, where fear is not hidden in the darkness, but burns with the rawness of the unperturbed noon.

Three Walls and a Window

A nuclear family sits in front of the television. The phone rings.

She Paradise

17 year old Sparkle discovers a free spirited group of Soca dancers at a car show in the bustling streets of downtown Trinidad. Enamored by the glimpse of sisterhood, she uses her wit to convince them to take her under their wing. The women bring Sparkle into a dizzying nightlife of partying, glamour, and money, but as things spiral out of control, Sparkle is forced to make some tough decisions.

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.

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.

Red Autumn

A Experimental Docu-Drama about the Red Army Faction's formation, and events leading up to their imprisonment and death, from 1970 to 1977.

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.

Bramayugam

A folk singer in 17th-century Kerala discovers a mansion. Inside, he encounters an enigmatic cook and a powerful master, setting in motion a chain of events that changes his life.

Jeff

A phone sex operator loses her grip on reality, caught in a hypnotic relationship with a caller making disturbing confessions.

Processing...

A man attempts to operate a mysterious device, but with each attempt comes a new set of problems.

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.

Ophelia

At night, a woman at different ages loves, suffers and frees herself. She’s called Ophelia.

Between You and You All

A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.

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.

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.

Self Portraits or: How to talk endearingly to possible victims

Quinn is a grade school teacher who is exploited by a group of memoryless individuals who reeducate his long-term partner Amy.

Introspection

Stephen, a blackbird, comes upon an abandoned mirror in a garden. Upon gazing his reflection for the very first time, Stephen begins to search within. Should Stephen return to his flock, or set out on an adventure to try and find his own way in life?

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.

Tales of the Ukulele Man

Ukulele Man, an urban legend, narrates two stories, strumming melodies that blur the line between myth and reality. But is he merely a witness, or part of the story himself?

Three Mirrors Creature's Flashes of Flesh

In the aftermath of an emotional shock, a ruthless high-class manager faces her own abyss, becomes pervaded by a sensory spirit and undertakes a purifying voyage.

Highlighters

Inside a bathroom, a woman dissolves. Not into water—but into identity. Set in an oneiric, liminal space, this experimental short dissects the most banal of routines—eliminate, change, wash—and refracts them through the prism of identity. What do we flush away, what do we conceal with powder and polish, what residue do we scrub from the self? The film doesn't offer answers. It exists in the space between viewer and image, where meaning is slippery and selfhood runs down the drain.

ALICE

During a turbulent night marked by the announcement of a pregnancy and escalating violence, the camera clings from one character to another at the heart of Wonderland.

Me + Her

Creating a universe between two small pieces of Cardboard. When Jack and Jill of Cardboard City are separated by Jill's torrid illness, Jack must think outside the box to assure they will be together again.

Catching Spirits

Destiny has been told since childhood she has seizures when she dances. When she’s challenged to face her fear and dance, Destiny makes a decision that could reveal a secret she doesn’t yet understand.

A Tapestry of a Legendary Land

As a modern artifact researcher prepares for the exhibition of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains," he unexpectedly travels back nine hundred years to the Northern Song dynasty, entering the heart of young painter Xi Meng. There, he witnesses Xu Meng's passionate journey and the collaboration with dedicated laborers as they overcome great challenges to create a timeless masterpiece.

Cheers,

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

The Listener

Plot unavailable

Blocked Together

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

Ground Control

A journey to an unknown star, a children's theatre play, an untalented writer and the fear of becoming the worst version of oneself. A mixture of live-action footage and animated scenes. A stream of (un)conscious stereotypes.

Yo, Diablo

Joey works as a waiter for a hedonistic community of summer holiday makers in a small Mediterranean paradise. It is unclear if their exaggerated behaviors are due to the fact that the summer is coming to an end or if its just the last of their summers.

Shadow / Self

Shadow / Self is a film project that combines dance, fashion and music to explore the darker side of the feminine psyche. A story of human struggle told with movement, beauty and light.

Star

In this experimental short film, a young man and woman enter into a relationship with one another and quickly learn the ups and downs of intertwining their life with the one they love.

Kshya Tra Ghya

A stream of mysterious rituals and symbols are encountered as a young boy journeys to school in the fantastical world of Kshya Tra Ghya.

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.

Cobweb

In the 1970s, Director Kim is obsessed by the desire to re-shoot the ending of his completed film Cobweb, but chaos and turmoil grip the set with interference from the censorship authorities, and the complaints of actors and producers who can't understand the re-written ending. Will Kim be able to find a way through this chaos to fulfill his artistic ambitions and complete his masterpiece?

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."