Atòmica 2023
Atòmica 2023
NEST
Director: Hlynur Pálmason Country and year: Iceland, Denmark, 2022 Duration: 22′ Language: Icelandic Version: VO Catalan subtitles Place: Filmoteca de Catalunya Date: Wednesday 1/3 at 20:00 and Friday 3/3 at 21:30. Catalan Premiere
Buy tickets
Synopsis: The prestigious Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason (Winter Brothers, 2017, Godland, 2022) leaves industry productions aside to create a home movie with his three children. The construction of a little house high up in a tree, in front of a spectacular landscape, will offer the opportunity to film together. The cinematographic testimony passes into the hands of the new generations as a breath of hope. Cinema does not die. It is born again and again, rewriting its original magic.
Awards: Grand Prix Festival Vila do Conde.
Festivals: Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Karlovy Vary, San Sebastian, Nordisk Panorama, Viennale, Black Canvas, European Film Festival Palic, Uppsala, Tallin Black Nights, among others.
SCALA
Director: Ananta Thitanat Country and year: Thailand, 2022 Duration: 65′ Language: Thai Version: VO Catalan and English subtitles Place: Filmoteca de Catalunya Date: Wednesday 1/3 at 20:00 and Friday 3/3 at 21:30 Spanish Premiere
Buy tickets
Synopsis: The Scala, a historic and majestic cinema in Bangkok, disappears. Thai filmmaker Ananta Thitanat films its dismantling by the workers themselves before it becomes a shopping mall. Between conversations and nostalgia, childhood memories emerge. Her family, linked to the exhibition world, lived in the cinemas. Their sheets were the stage curtains. Wandering around with the camera, she manages to capture the breath of a dying era.
Awards: Grand Jury Prize World Film Festival Bangkok.
Festivals: Berlinale, IDFA, Singapore International Film Festival, Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, International Documentary Festival Seul, among others.
MARYAM TAFAKORY. SHORT FILMS AND CONVERSATION
Iranian artist and filmmaker Maryam Tafakory (Shiraz, 1987) has distinguished herself in the field of filmmaking for her essayistic short films with profound ramifications. A fusion of poetry, ethnography, collage and performance, a work of goldsmithing in every frame and every word, to reveal and reflect on the invisible in her country’s society, religion and images. Her work has been shown and won awards all over the world. The session will consist of six short films, will be attended by the filmmaker and will be accompanied by a conversation with the Iranian translator and activist Ryma Sheermohammadi.
Duration of the film session: 58′ Language: Persian, English
Date and place: First session. Filmoteca de Catalunya, Friday 3/3 at 18:00. VO Catalan subtitles. With post-screening conversation (from 19:00). Buy tickets
Second session. Zumzeig Cinema, Saturday 4/3 at 12:00, VO Spanish subtitles. With the author presence. Buy tickets
Short films:
Fragments of (2016). The text becomes the body of a hand. 4′
Poem & Stone (2017). Distance and proximity are attributes of the body. 8′
Absent Wound (2018). “The same space, two dissociated worlds: a room in which several men carry out the rituals of Persian warrior training; a room in which a young woman performs the practice of purification. Through poetic language, Tafakory proposes an exercise in resistance to the consideration of women’s bodies as objects of repression” (DocumentaMadrid). 10′
I Have Sinned A Rapturous Sin (2019). “The confrontation between the recitation of Sin, an essential piece by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad, and the warnings of Islamic clerics about female promiscuity (and their absurd ‘remedies’ for lust) give rise to an audiovisual piece with a powerful poetic and vindicatory character”(DocumentaMadrid). 9′
Irani Bag (2021). Using excerpts from films produced between 1990 and 2018, this video essay questions the innocence of handbags, tote and travel bags, briefcases and sacks, as well as bundles, in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. 8′
Nazarbazi (2022). Nazarbazi (the game of looks) is a film about love and desire in Iranian cinema, where representations of intimacy and contact between men and women are forbidden. 19′
Subtitled film with the support of the Department of Culture and the collaboration of the l’Alternativa festival.
NOUS, ÉTUDIANTS!
Director: Rafiki Fariala Country and year: Central African Republic, France, R.D. Congo, Saudi Arabia, 2022 Duration: 82′ Language: Sango, French Version: VO Spanish and English subtitles. Place: Filmoteca de Catalunya
Data: Thursday 2/3 at 21:00 and Saturday 4/3 at 20:00 Catalan premiere
Buy tickets
Synopsis: Like all the university students in the world, Rafiki and three of his friends live a few years of intense studies. Love, classes, vicissitudes, discoveries. Dancing and singing. But their reality is that of Central Africa. A day-to-day life of limited money in a humble country where corruption surrounds them everywhere. Their yearning for progress will come up against steep difficulties. The camera’s eye will be a narrator, as close as it is astonished.
Awards: Silvestre Award Indie Lisboa, Best Film MajorDocs.
Festivals: Berlinale, Cinéma du Reel, EntreVues Belfort, Festival des 3 Continents Nantes, Viennale, MIFF Melbourne, Hot Docs Toronto, FIC Valdivia, Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa, IDFA, Frames of Representation London, among others.
VAYCHILETIK
Director: Juan Javier Pérez Country and year: Mexico, 2021 Duration: 83′ Language: Tzotzil, Spanish Version: VO Spanish subtitles. Place: Zumzeig Date: Thursday 2/3 at 19:00 Spanish Premiere
Buy tickets
Synopsis: The Gods revealed to José, through dreams, his vocation to be a musician. He was given a role, to play in the sacred festivals of Zinacantan, a Tzotzil Mayan territory in Los Altos de Chiapas. Their ceremonies have a central role in society and the chosen few are appointed for life. Filmmaker and musician Juan Javier Pérez portrays the commitment, but also the exhaustion and fear of the divinities, of his father. At the same time, he immerses himself in an intimate portrait of the community and the sometimes overwhelming weight of its traditions.
Awards: Patrimoine Culturel Immatériel Festival Jean Rouch, Special Mention Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia.
Festivals: Ambulante, Festival de Biarritz Amérique Latine, Reflets du Cinéma Ibérique et Latino-Américain Lyon, Festival de Cine de Bogotá, Trinidad y Tobago Film Festival and others.
THE KITTENS' TEA PARTY + SOMBRA VERTICAL + HARDLY WORKING + 3 DIALOGUES ABOUT THE FUTURE + ABYSS
A session of five short films that mix, stir and twist contemporary digital images to take us deeper into their meaning. From conversations between robots to video-surveillance cameras capturing fridge-robbing bears, through political readings of video games, the symbiosis between humans and screens or experimentation with the magma of digital images.
The last short film in this session may affect people susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy.
Place: Zumzeig. Date: Sunday 5/3 at 12:00. Buy tickets
THE KITTEN’S TEA PARTY
Director: Miru Fiyu Country and year: Canada, 2022 Duration: 10′ Language: English, VO Spanish subtitles. Spanish Premiere
Synopsis: Canadian artist Miru Fiyu (AKA MilleFeuille) turns archival images, taken from the internet, into allegories of banal violence and decadent melancholy. In The Kittens’ Tea Party, the domestic, wild and working animals of a quiet residential neighbourhood live full of stress. Their tension is captured by CCTV cameras, recorded through windows and recalled in old postcards.
Festivals: ULTRAcinema México, Family Film Project Portugal.
SOMBRA VERTICAL
Directors: Felipe Elgueta, Ananké Pereira Country and year: Chile, 2022 Duration: 15′ Language: VO Spanish. Spanish Premiere
Synopsis: “Facing the imposing Andes rises Santiago de Chile, with six million inhabitants, clouds of pollution and skyscrapers of social housing that stretch as far as the eye can see. Felipe Elgueta and Ananké Pereira create a mosaic of moments from the daily lives of overcrowded migrants, the outline of a fragmented urban landscape” (Visions du Réel).
Festivals: Visions du Réel, IFF Message to Man, MIDBO Bogotá, Sanfic Santiago de Chile, Frontera Sur, Antofacine.
HARDLY WORKING
Director: Total Refusal Country and year: Austria, 2022 Duration: 20′ Language: English, VO Spanish subtitles. Catalan premiere.
Synopsis: The Total Refusal collective continues its investigation into the language and meaning of videogames, after explorations such as Operation Jane Walk or How to Disappear, among others. In Hardly Working they focus on the secondary characters, a sort of digital Sisyphean machines that apparently live in a loop. Among the collective’s objectives is the desire to “unveil the political apparatus behind the glossy, hyper-realistic textures of these media”.
Festivals: Locarno, Seminci, Vancouver, Auckland, Tallin Black Nights, Nouveau Cinéma Montréal, Viennale, among others.
3 DIALOGUES ABOUT THE FUTURE
Director: Alina Manolache Country and year: Romania, 2022. Duration: 15′ Language: English, VO Spanish subtitles. Spanish premiere
Synopsis: Romanian filmmaker Alina Manolache delves into the worlds of robotics to engage machines in conversation and observe their conclusions. What vision of the world does artificial intelligence have? How does artificial intelligence see itself? Three pairs of robots engage in dialogue, and in their algorithmic reflections there is also room for tenderness. What seems to concern them most is the definition of being human and the future of humans on Earth.
Festivals: Kasseler Dokfest, BIEFF – Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival, Eastern Neighbours Den Haag.
ABYSS
Director: Jeppe Lange Country and year: Denmark, 2022 Duration: 14′ Langauge: no dialogues. Catalan premiere
Synopsis: “Composed of 10,000 images found through the Google Reverse Image Search engine, the piece Abyss by Danish video artist and experimental filmmaker Jeppe Lange is based on the misunderstandings caused by artificial intelligence’s interpretation of images: it does not focus on scale, emotion or context, but only on colour, patterns and correlations”. (Visions du Réel)
Festivals: Visions du Réel, Telluride, CPH:DOX, Chicago IFF, Tallin Black Nights, Festival Curtas Metragens de São Paulo, Festival Ecrã of Audiovisual Experimentations, Doc Alliance, Intersección A Coruña, among others.
