Whimsical, questioning and utterly absorbing, a collection of animated work delving into worlds of wonder, subversion, and Marxist mystery. Playing with form and overflowing with provocation, these works are fun and some re-construct ideas of animation, paying homage to experimentalists who came before.
This short film program includes the following films:
backflip
Nikita Diakur, Germany/France (12 min)
Given his own limited abilities and the present danger of physical injury, filmmaker Nikita Diakur decides to teach his computer-generated avatar to do a backflip; what follows is priceless.
Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look
Carlos Velandia, Colombia (8 min)
Unpacking the male gaze by splicing together a staccato montage of found footage, which include images depicting the mother, the wife, and the object of desire, an ode to obsessive deconstructionism emerges.
Zoon
Jonatan Schwenk, Germany (5 min)
Salamander-like creatures copulate under the moonlight. A feast ensues, propelling a hungry group of two-legged forest dwellers to new heights.
Intermission
Réka Bucsi, Hungary (5 min)
Set to a minimalist score, simple dots and lines appear at first, then connect, meet, and separate again, as the forms become ever more complex with time, celebrating the joy of ornamentation.
Perforated Realities
Gustaf Broms, Sweden (16 min)
As identification with the self slowly dissolves, the borders between beings evaporate and the environment disintegrates. This mirrored photo performance, which could also be considered a kind of reverse-engineered stop-motion, takes frames away rather than adding them, forming a myriad of sentient beings.
Hardly Working
Total Refusal, Austria (21 min)
Total Refusal returns to MODES with new work following 2020’s dazzling live performance of Operation Jane Walk, and their anti-war masterpiece, How to Disappear. In the moments when the algorithm of their existence shows inconsistencies, the Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) of the popular action-adventure game, Red Dead Redemption, break out of their routines momentarily to display their faultiness and present something touchingly human.
Various
Various
2021-2022
Various with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
The Librarians
Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.
Little Amelie or the Character of Rain
Baby Amelie believes herself to be a god. Her parents (Belgian diplomats in 60s Japan) can barely cope -- but find the perfect nanny to restore order in this delightful animated feature.
