An ode to the cinema of fantastic fictions. Surreal scenarios of the future interwoven with mythological and absurd components. Between dystopia and utopia, humans appear as tyrants, philosophers, wise people, and Amazons. Newts and wels catfish can speak, rocks and turtles philosophize. All kinds of (conspiratorial) connections are drawn, and some considerations are immediately discarded. The present hovers over all stories, because one thing is certain: the world must be saved. With empathy. There is time between empathy and sympathy. (Jessica Manstetten)
The protagonists in THE NEWT CONGRESS are newts. The large, slimey salamanders animated by puppetry lurch through the ponds on the sidelines of a conference. Meanwhile, the conference is about the labor and the bodies of the newts. How can the global newt-population be exploitet for construction or medical experimentation? The scene is based on Karel Čapek's "The War with Newts" and creates a link to our reality to discuss economic exploitation and animal-human relations.… >>>
- Director: Matthias Sahli, Immanuel Esser
Referencing the death scene with Edward G. Robinson in the 1973 movie “Soylent Green”, an old man on a hospital bed moves through an endless hallway and reflects in a monologue the 112 years of his life and how humans were able to avoid their own extinction.… >>>
RUIN OF A FICTION schafft einen Raum für die Vorstellungskraft, in dem verschiedene Erzählungen und Metaphern miteinander verschmelzen und neue Mythologien zwischen Kino, Geologie und Popkultur entstehen. Die Metapher der „Kinohöhle“ (entlehnt aus einem Text von Robert Smithson, A Cinematic Atopia. Towards the Development of a Cinema Cavern) wird zu einem metaphorischen Ort, der ein Mediengedächtnis mit geologischen Sedimenten verbindet.… >>>
Premiere:
World Premiere
- Director: Giovanni Giaretta
Jani and her new friend Kiefer, a talking fish, are on flight through Jani's home. Because the family is ruthless, dystopian-colorfully beam the drowning industrial waste and nuclear power plants in the background. A secret order is also pursuing both. The short film employs surreal means driven by unbridled imagination, as does the protagonist Jani, to break free.… >>>
Nominated:
A38-Production Grant Kassel-Halle
