Skip to main content
Square the Circle film image

MODES 1

Image: Square the Circle, VIFF 2023

This event has passed

At the intersection of the natural world, technology and the ongoing pursuit of colonization, sits a necessary reflection on worlds, cities, and people, and how they change over time.

 

This short film program includes the following films:

NYC RGB
Viktoria Schmid, Austria/USA (7 min)

Part of a series of works exploring early colour film processes, Austria’s Viktoria Schmid invites an alternative frame of reference to view America’s most overexposed city.

 


Slow Shift
Shambhavi Kaul, India/USA (9 min)

The immediacy of time is eerily visible upon Hampi’s fragmented landscape. As its primate inhabitants formulate their familiar yet uncertain surroundings, the UNESCO site endures.

 


Shadow Does
Laure Prouvost, Belgium/France/Austria (13 min)

A young girl engages in shadow play. A plain white sheet is all that stands between her and her grandmother, to whom she describes an ever-evolving world and everything what has come to pass in a lifetime.

 


Let’s Talk
Simon Liu, Hong Kong (11 min)

On the 25 year anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Great Britain to Mainland China, directives for “a new era” promising stability and prosperity are found on murals and public slogans.

 


Mother Land
Kantarama Gahigiri, Rwanda/Switzerland (10 min)

Confronting and trenchant, standing tall, an almost supernatural presence atop a mountain of tech waste, plastic and rubbish, she unearths the truths of Africa’s environmental degradation.

 


This Is Not Here
Charlotte Mungomery, Australia/Peru/Spain (10 min)

Two pedestal fans in dialogue propound a pointed parody of wellness. These ambiguous forms are perceived as objects with meaning, and spin tangential contemplation on the processes, experiences and absurdities of grief.

 


Square the Circle
Hanna Hovitie, Finland (18 min)

A cyclical comedy, framed within a round edge rather than the screen’s desired square or rectangular aspects. Square the Circle asks, how can one fear the dark, while living in a place consumed by darkness for the better part of the year?

 

Series Media Partner

Community Partner

Director

Various

Country of Origin

Various

Year

2022-2023

Series

MODES

Language

Various with English subtitles

18+
78 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

NAZA
Naza film image; two people sitting in a foggy night with skyscrapers in the background

NAZA

Dir. Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
80 min

NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Atonement
Atonement film image; person running through smoke

Atonement

Dir. Reed Van Dyk
118 min

A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
The Sandbox
The Sandbox film image; perspective from inside an open box with a face peering into it

The Sandbox

Dir. Kenya-Jade Pinto
90 min

Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology

Dir. Sophie Fiennes
136 min

Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. From The Sound of Music to Titanic, Jaws to The Dark Knight, Zizek offers new ways to understanding Hollywood.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

Dir. Sophie Fiennes
150 min

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made (Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky et al). Serving as guide is Slavoj Zizek, the superstar Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

You Had to Be There

Dir. Nick Davis
98 min

In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre