Atòmica 2024
Atòmica 2024
AS FILHAS DO FOGO
Director: Pedro Costa Country and year: Portugal, 2023 Duration: 9′ Language: Cape Verdean Creole, Portuguese Version: VO Spanish Subtitles Place: Filmoteca de Catalunya Date: Wednesday 21/2, 18:30; Friday 23/2, 21:00 Catalan Premiere
Synopsis: “One day we will know why we live and why we suffer.” In Cape Verde, three sisters were separated by the eruption of the Pico do Fogo volcano, the top of the country. The three perform a song while the dramatic contours of the work, a multidisciplinary project by filmmaker Pedro Costa, merge into an atavistic pain.
Festivals: Cannes, Karlovy Vary, FID Marseille, TIFF Toronto, New York International Film Festival, BFI London, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma Montréal, Yamagata Documentary Film Festival, FIC Valdivia, Belfort Entrevues, FIC Gijón, Márgenes, Viennale, Lima Alterna, among others.
MAN IN BLACK
Director: Wang Bing Country and year: China, 2023 Duration: 60′ Language: Chinese Version: VO Catalan Subtitles Place: Filmoteca de Catalunya Date: Wednesday 21/2, 18:30; Friday 23/2, 21:00 Catalan Premiere
Synopsis: Wang Bing is one of the greatest names in contemporary cinema. His long filmography is based on an impressive non-fiction journey that narrates the past and present of his country. In Man in Black he portrays the renowned Chinese composer Wang Xilin who, at 86 years old, reveals his life and work before the camera. The filmmaker captures in intimacy, between light and dark, through words and music, the intense soul of this artist, a survivor of the repression suffered during the Cultural Revolution.
Festivals: Cannes, New York Film Festival, IDFA, FID Marseille, Centre Pompidou, Museo Reina Sofia, DocLisboa, Dok Leipzig and others.
Laberint sequences (3D)
Director: Blake Williams Country and year: Canada, 2023 Duration: 20′ Language: English Version: VO Catalan Subtitles Place: Filmoteca de Catalunya Date: Sunday 25/2, 18:00 3D format Catalan Premiere
With the author presence
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Synopsis: American experimental filmmaker Blake Williams, explorer of the language of 3D images, bases his new work Laberint Sequences, on the Horta Labyrinth in Barcelona. The film traces several disoriented, vertiginous journeys through the garden, in search of an intangible center, until it cracks its own structure, swallowed by a fantastic underworld.
Awards: The Edge Shorts Audience Nashville Film Festival
Festivals: Cinéma du Réel París, Jeonju IFF, Documenta Madrid, Wavelengths Toronto IFF, Experimental Festival of Film Arts Belo Horizonte, Sydney Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Black Canvas Mexico, Viennale, Lima Alterna, Dokufest, Melbourne IFF, Istanbul FF and others.
Čiulbanti siela (3D)
Director: Deimantas Narkevičius Country and year: Lithuania, 2023 Duration: 70′ Language: Lithuanian, Polish Version: VO Spanish Subtitles Place: Filmoteca de Catalunya Date: Sunday 25/2, 18:00 3D format Spanish Premiere
With the author presence
Synopsis: The Lithuanian artist Deimantas Narkevičius, who has a range of work covering the fields of cinema, video, art installation and sculpture, delves into Čiulbanti siela (Twittering Soul) in a fictional feature film with stereoscopic vision. In the heart of nature, among witches, fairies, snakes and souls that fly like birds, legends weave the strata of collective memory. Stories as magical as their three-dimensional photography, accompanied by popular songs and told in a unique dialect of Lithuanian and Old Polish.
Festivals: FID Marseille, Tallin Black Nights, Lima Alterna, Lo Schermo dell’arte, IFF Rotterdam.
AL DJANAT
Director: Chloé Aïcha Boro Country and year: Burkina Faso, Benin, France, 2023 Duration: 84′ Language: Bambara, French. Catalan Premiere
Date and place: First session. Filmoteca de Catalunya, Friday 23/2 at 18:00. VO Catalan subtitles. Presentation by Myriam Mallart, doctor and teacher at the University of Barcelona. Buy tickets
Second session. Zumzeig Cinema, Saturday 24/2 at 17:00, VO Spanish subtitles. Buy tickets
Synopsis: Burkinabé filmmaker Chloé Aïcha Boro returns to her hometown due to the death of her uncle. The loss of the lighthouse of the lineage causes the large, complex family to enter into a long dispute over the inheritance. During this time, the director will paint a precise portrait of the tensions and balances between women and men, tradition and postcolonialism, Islam and animism, between those who have stayed and those, like her, who emigrated. Author of three other feature films and two novels, her view is an impressive description of contemporary times in West Africa.
Festivals: Visions du Réel Nyon, Hot Docs Toronto, FESPACO Ouagadougou, MajorDocs, IDFA, Afrika Film Festival Köln, Festival du Film de Femmes de Salé, among others.
With the collaboration of:
KNIT'S ISLAND
Direction: Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L’helgoualc’h Country and year: France, 2023 Duration: 96′ Language: French Version: VO Spanish subtitles Place: Zumzeig Date: Friday 23/2 at 19:00 and Saturday 24/2 at 19:30 Catalan Premiere
With the presence of Ekiem Barbier and Guilhem Causse.
Synopsis: Knit’s Island is like Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin, and Marceline Loridan stepping into a video game. Three French filmmakers spend nearly a thousand hours in a survival game, transformed into peaceful characters – interviewers. Updating the foundations of cinema-verité, they build a kind of road-movie filled with surreal, alienating, funny sequences with ultraviolence often close to the surface. A huge and innovative portrait of global society at the beginning of the 21st century.
Awards: Burning Lights i FIPRESCI Visions du Réel, Cinematic Vision Camden IFF, Fugas Documenta Madrid.
Festivals: Yamagata International Documentary FF, Dok Leipzig, Ottawa International Animation Festival, MajorDocs, Dokufest, Millennium Docs Against Gravity, SXSW Sydney, Intersección A Coruña, Nouvelles écritures Centre Pompidou, Reykjavik IFF, Transilvania IFF and others.
BARELY PERCEPTIBLE WORLDS. SHORT FILM SESSION
Alterations of visual perceptions, enigmatic superpositions, supernatural recreations. Re-edits of forgotten archives that take on new life, strange observations of mysterious places. And some words, few, that summon other layers of meaning. Several filmmakers reveal imperceptible dimensions to us, capturing in unusual images the ordinary, discordant, incomprehensible world that surrounds us. A programme made up of recent short films by Viktoria Schmid, Shambhavi Kaul, Maria Castan de Manuel, Alice Brygo and Maryam Tafakory. Programmed by Miquel Martí Freixas and Margot Mecca.
Duration: 60′ Place: Zumzeig Cinema Date: Thursday 22/2 at 21:30 and Sunday 25/2 at 12:00.
With the presence of Maria Castan
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NYC RGB
Director: Viktoria Schmid. Duration: 7′ Country and year: Austria, 2023. No words. Catalan Premiere
Synopsis: During several stays in a twentieth floor apartment in New York, Austrian artist Viktoria Schmid captures the city’s urban landscape, researching the early processes of color film. Using a color separation technique, the temporal dimension is condensed into triple exposures (red, green, blue). The resulting superpositions reveal the uniqueness of each moment, which has never existed before and will never return.
Awards: Vienna Shorts Austrian Short Film Award.
Festivals: FIC Valdivia, Montréal Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Curtocircuito, Wavelengths Toronto, Encounters Short Film Bristol, Vancouver IFF among others.
SLOW SHIFT
Director: Shambhavi Kaul. Duration: 9′. Country and year: India, United States, 2023. No words. Catalan Premiere
Indian filmmaker Shambhavi Kaul visits the former imperial city of Hampi, currently in ruins and
declared a World Heritage Site. The contemplation of its inhabitants, a large colony of primates, opens a mysterious dialogue, a slow gap between the past and the present.
Festivals: Wavelengths Toronto, FIC Valdivia, New York FF, Vancouver IFF, Woche der Kritik Berlin.
POMPEIA
Director: Maria Castan de Manuel. Duration: 10′ Country and year: Spain, 2023. No words. Catalan Premiere
A young newly married couple enjoys their honeymoon away from everything in a Mediterranean
paradise. Around them, the atmosphere thickens.
Filmmaker and editor Maria Castan de Manuel rattles through intimate digital files damaged by
the passage of time. Breaths of abysmal pasts and volcanic futures.
Festivals: Zinebi Bilbao.
LE MAL DES ARDENTS
Director: Alice Brygo. Duration: 16′ Country and year: France, 2023. Language: French, VO Spanish subtitles Catalan Premiere
Notre-Dame burns before a stunned crowd. Using images captured in situ, artist and filmmaker
Alice Brygo reconstructs the scene using photogrammetry and sound scenography. A disturbing, immersive experience that witnesses the social tensions and apocalyptic dimension of the event.
Awards: On the Edge Prize Zubroffka FF, Best Visual Concept BIEFF Bucharest.
Festivals: Visions du Réel, Hot Docs Toronto, Guanajato IFF, Seminci Valladolid, Montréal – Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Kino Otok, Festival dei Popoli, Beldocs, Videoex Zurich and others.
MAST-DEL
Director: Maryam Tafakory. Duration: 17′ Country and year: Iran, United Kingdom, 2023. Language Farsi, English. VO Spanish subtitles. Catalan Premiere
Two women lie together in bed. As the wind hits the window, one of them remembers a date at the movies. Mast-del is about forbidden bodies and desires, both within and outside post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. A love song that the censors would never approve of.
Awards: Best Experimental Short Film Melbourne, New Horizon Shorts Black Canvas.
Festivals: Quinzaine des Cinéastes, Curtas Vila do Conde, New York Film Festival, Mar del Plata, Open City London, RID Montréal, Márgenes, Black Canvas, Vancouver IFF, Camden IFF and others.