What I Learned at the Harun Farocki Residency

A playful and poetic film essay journey that revives Peter Altenberg, the eccentric Viennese modernist who turned café life into an art form.

Depicting the biography of a corrupt banker poses a cinematic dilemma. How can the intentions of an individual systematic contexts and historical eventualities be brought into harmony? Thomas Furhapters nearly one hour film Michael Berger Eine Hysterie turns this problem outward by not covering up the moment of speculation. The subject of the film, Austrian investment banker Michael Berger, who became a dollar millionaire through a risky hedge fund, remains a chimera an absent individual who also cannot be captured through his crime.

Berkay Özdinç turns the ghost hotel into a protagonist, which conduces to the meeting of his parents and is thus associated with his existence. In the film which goes over the places, while wandering in the current state of the hotel, he reawakens the memory of the place with his parents’ narration.

A boy from Vila do Conde records a love letter on a cassette. His voice blends with music, archive images and stories from the past, some lived and others heard.

"No Refunds" is a visceral, tangled descent into the transactional dynamics of intimate encounters, told through the language of bodies, sheets, and reflections, where the purchase of queer sex work is laid bare. As the filmmaker simultaneously takes on the roles of client and audience, the boundaries between documentary and performance fade, unraveling the artifice at the heart of sex work and the act of filmmaking.

Make Moravia Great Again

This experimental Western horror film set in the Moravian region of Slovácko offers a new take on the legend of Saint Wenceslas. Against the backdrop of a shabby folk festival, the mythical prince Boleslav, a zombie from a wine cellar, battles his brother Wenceslas over the nature of Czech statehood and a plate of tomato soup.

The second part of the endless series about Moravia offers an even darker descent into the soul of Moravia, which is, however, intoxicating like a slightly delirious state after a sip of wine and chewing on a clod of mother earth. A visually distracting journey focused on the undercurrents of Moravian identity, whose echoes even Friedrich Nietzsche would not want to hear...

Metropia

Through the footage from his family's Handycam, the director creates a portrait of his family that is falling apart.

This film essay is inspired by Leonid Trauberg's eponymous autobiographical text. It also sheds light on his public condemnation in 1949 as a leader of the "cosmopolitans," accused of "only causing harm to Soviet cinema," as well as his enthusiasm for silent slapstick comedies, the novels of P.G. Wodehouse and G.K. Chesterton, and his fascination with the lost FEKS film, The Adventures of Octobrine.

An essay style film in the vein of Orson Welles' "F For Fake" and Jon Jost's "Speaking Directly". From 2011 to 2013, filmmaker Kristian Day randomly documented the art and actions of the award winning metal sculptor, James Bearden. Refusing to make another artist documentary, Day insisted on illustrating Bearden's creative process through surreal and id oriented story telling.

Die Liebe stört der kalte Tod

On April 1st, 2022, my grandfather passed away and i felt lost. I think my path changed when, some days after he passed away, i was offered a small VHS camera. "Moving Memories" is a visual journey that makes the viewer reflect on our momentary presence on earth and questions the nature of memory. Throughout this journey, we get to the conclusion that memories are more than just static photographs in our minds, they're alive and in constant movement, changing while we evolve as individuals. These memories have influence and help us to move on.

The six-hour essay in four parts examines the history of regimes and revolutions, leaders and martyrs, from a philosophical perspective. The collage of personal memories, staged scenes and archives of collective memory compares the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution and shows the exposure, conflict, crisis, and catharsis of the post-communist society. Democracy can be saved through creative laughter, dissolving the untouchability and hypertrophic egos of the representatives of state institutions. The Internet frees the society from representatives of the non-functional connecting link that prevents direct communication between citizens and institutions of power. “I can see you until I spot you. Once I spot you, I cannot see you anymore.” K. Vachek

The search for René Descartes’ daughter Francine leads an internet user into the depths of an AI’s mental space. This intelligence generates limitless images from words given by humans, until it starts working by itself. An alternative, fleshless new world, containing all the world's memory, emerges.

An experimental short film, shot during the COVID-19 pandemic, made by one person. Using recorded scenes and archival footage, the short presents an unorthodox narrative to explore the themes of self-identification, identity, gender expression and androgyny.

In a world bedazzled by intractable images, do we need the essay film now more than ever? Kevin B. Lee weighs up this distinctively self-aware, searching form of cinema through both video and text.

Bondy-Sur-Toile

A lo Mejor Algún Día