As it all burns
Director: Anna Ostasenko Bogdanoff, Tessa De Baudinière
Country of Origin: France
Synopsis: Marseille, a scorching summer. A group of skaters in their twenties ride recklessly in border places. Driven by their passion for skating, they chase a dream of absolute freedom, pushing the limits of their own bodies.
Cellulose Documents: Forget Me Not
Director: Katina Bitsicas, Scott McMahon
Country of Origin: United States
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: In Cellulose Documents: Forget Me Not, a new purpose is given to a found archive from the 1930’s of discarded studio portrait nitrate film negatives. The crumbling and decaying negatives were preserved through digital scans and reinterpreted by the artists by combining them with microscopic imagery of botanic material. This parallels the use of cellulose in nitrate film with the makeup of organic plant cell walls. Nitrate film was used by photographers and filmmakers from the 1880s to the 1950s, but was replaced by acetate safety film after it was found to be highly flammable and unstable. By preserving these found and unidentified portraits, we illuminate the obsolete material of nitrate film through the examination of cellulose at a molecular level.
The Garden Sees Fire
Director: Kiera Faber
Country of Origin: United States
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: "A mystical tale of cloaked identities, systemic traumas, and insatiable consumption: The ecology burns, reclaiming its environs.This visionary, artist driven analogue stop-frame animation synchronously incorporates buried and hand painted 16mm film frame-by-frame with drawing and armatured puppet animations; creating a surreal disorienting world-within-a-world."
I Was There
Director: Kamila Kuc
Country of Origin: Poland, UK, USA
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: A haunting exploration of familial bonds, intergenerational memory, and the enduring impact of shared narratives. Filmmaker Kamila Kuc steps into the emotional stream of inherited family history as the lines between documentary, testimony, and fiction blur. (A special thank you to DELERE PRESS BOOK, If Loss Were a a Currency https://www.delerepress.com/books/iflosswereacurrency)
It’s a Wonderful Night of the Living Dead
Director: John Bell, Dan Bell
Country of Origin: United States
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: It’s a not-so-wonderful life for George Bailey when a horde of flesh-eating ghouls come to town on Christmas Eve. Through the use of traditional rotoscoping and compositing techniques, It’s a Wonderful Life and Night of the Living Dead (both in the public domain) have been woven together to create this twisted love letter to the original films.
Primetime Mr. President
Director: Saif Alsaegh
Country of Origin: United States & Czech Republic
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: Only a few weeks after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, former President George W. Bush gave a televised speech on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln declaring that his country had prevailed. Primetime Mr. President analyzes the speech, dubbed as “Mission Accomplished,” through the lens of what Iraqis had endured and would endure as a result of the war and its aftermath, from horrible insurgency, civil and sectarian wars, political corruption, and the overarching sense of death and despair.
WHY-EEELA
Director: Ian Gibbins
Country of Origin: Australia
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: The Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo (Calyptorhyncus funereus) has a distinctive, relaxed loping flight and a loud plaintive call: ""why-eeela, weee-la"". It feeds on the seeds of diverse trees including eucalypts, banksias and hakeas. Much of this habitat has been destroyed or degraded by human activity. However, the cockatoos are often seen around the outer suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia, feeding on seeds in the cones of introduced Monterey Pines (Pinus radiata) planted along roadsides and in parks and gardens.
In this video, a yellow-tailed black cockatoo searches for food and missing companions in urban deserts, as we hear fragments of its calls...