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Square the Circle film image

MODES 1

Image: Square the Circle, VIFF 2023

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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

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La Gradiva
La Gradiva film image; man standing next to a large marble statue

La Gradiva

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Whispers in May

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Whispers in May follows Qihuo and her friends in China’s Liangshan Mountains as childhood gives way to womanhood. It blends close observation and scenes of the girls' search with animated fragments of Yi oral myth to create a hypnotic coming-of-age film.

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