Looking closer at archival images and stories from the past, these artists re-examine and re-create to establish history anew. A daring mix of approaches that excavate new ways of seeing old perspectives.
Q&A Oct 1, Oct 4 & Oct 8
This short film program includes the following films:
Prelude Op. 28 No.2
Jenni Toikka, Finland (9 min)
Two distinct interpretations of Chopin’s notable repertory prelude, immortalized in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, now receive an updated treatment, with a shifting focal gaze and staging that implicates the performer as the listener and listener as the performer.
Laika
Deborah Stratman, USA (5 min)
Some forms we can only know by their shadow. Laika is an homage to the spirits of space test dogs, or any being we use in the name of progress.
Parasite Family
Prapat Jiwarangsan, Thailand (6 min)
Re-discovered film negatives represent families of affluence who absorbed Thailand’s wealth, like parasites. The journey from analog to digital, and finally to AI-generated images, gradually evolves these captured faces into a new species of monster.
The Fruit Tree
Isabelle Tollenaere, Belgium (15 min)
For Sharleece, looking out of the window of a house for rent in a desert town where she lives evokes unexpected memories of her childhood home in Los Angeles. The passing of time is ever-present.
Saving Some Random Insignificant Stories
Anna Vasof, Austria/Greece (14 min)
As a point of departure for Anna Vasof, a survey of the damage left by a flood in her parents’ house reveals a simple yet multilayered work about memory, loss, and how we deal with the past.
Neighbour Abdi
Douwe Dijkstra, The Netherlands (29 min)
How can you understand a violent history? Abdi reenacts his life in Somalia, marked by war and criminality, with the help of his neighbour and filmmaker Douwe Dijkstra (Green Screen Gringo, MODES 2016). Through playful reconstructions in a special effects studio, they embark on a candid and investigative journey through Abdi’s painful past, focusing on the creative process.
Various
Various
2021-2022
Various with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Love
This warm, thoughtful piece offers shrewd comic observations on modern dating as it trains a quizzical eye on the trysts of a female doctor, Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and her colleague, a gay male nurse, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen).
Sex
Two chimney sweeps living in heterosexual marriages find their views on sexuality and gender challenged by a series of unexpected events. In a set of sharply scripted conversations, both men confront heretofore unexplored aspects of their identity.
3 Faces
Iranian filmmaker Panahi and actress Behnaz Jafari, both playing themselves, receive a video in which a distraught teenaged girl, whose acting dreams have been quashed appears to kill herself. Panahi and Jafari decide to investigate...
Dreams
The third installment in the Sex/Dreams/Love trilogy is another rich, absorbing tale. 17-year-old Johanne writes a confessional about her flirtation with a (female) teacher. But the writing is too good to stay private...
Transit
Trust the director of Phoenix and Barbara to re-imagine a WWII romantic intrigue into something unsettlingly contemporary. With occupying forces closing in, a German refugee (Franz Rogowski) assumes a dead writer's identity and flees to Marseille.