Skip to main content
Man Number 4 film image; blurry shot of someone's feet

Man Number 4

MODES

North American Premiere

A startling confrontation with a photograph taken in Gaza, in December 2023 (which now exists on social media), triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker. Focusing on pixilated details, the incoherent forms begin to take shape, while the human and un-human implications of this scene reveal a historical context that cannot be unseen. Accomplice, accessory, abettor. Does the passive or active observer play a role in these transgressions?

 

Community Partner

Director
Credits
Country of Origin

UK

Year

2024

Language

English

Film Contact
Links
Content Warning

Graphic violence

18+
10 min
Art, Music & Photography Experimental & Avant Garde Human Rights & Social Justice Shorts Women Directors

Credits & Director

Screenwriter

Miranda Pennell

Editor

Miranda Pennell

Miranda Pennell headshot; Man Number 4 director

Miranda Pennell

Miranda Pennell is a London-based filmmaker whose work often recycles images from British colonial archives to reflect on contemporary situations. Her films emphasise the role of the imagination in the interpretation of historical documents,
recently drawing on genre-fiction as a way of engaging with troubled histories.

Pennell received an MA in visual anthropology in 2010 from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and she completed her PhD research at the University of Westminster in 2016.

Her films have screened at Viennale, Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, FID Marseille, London International Film Festival and among others.

Recent selected group exhibitions include Evil Eye: The Parralel Histories of Optics and Ballistics (2023) Tabakalera, San Sebastian; The Light Becomes The Eye (2023), EUCA Annex, London.

 

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

The President's Cake

Dir. Hasan Hadi
105 min

Nine year old Lamia and her friend Saeed venture into the city to scrounge ingredients for a cake to celebrate Sadaam Hussein's birthday — a quest fraught with real peril in precarious times. Winner, Camera d'Or, Cannes.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Fabelmans

Dir. Steven Spielberg
151 min

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards, Steven Spielberg's bittersweet movie memoir is a portrait of the artist as the product of his artsy mom (Michelle Williams), his techy dad (Paul Dano), and a broken home.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Jurassic Park

Dir. Steven Spielberg
127 min

Two paleontologists are invited to preview a new Central American theme park by an avuncular entrepreneur (Richard Attenborough). What they encounter is truly a walk on the wild side. Spielberg's jaw dropping adventure movie still kills on the big screen.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Turner & Constable

Dir. David Bickerstaff
93 min

Filmed as a supplement to a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Britain happening right now, this doc in the popular Exhibition on Screen series allows us to view these competitive, complementary English landscape artists side by side.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Adventures of Tintin

Dir. Steven Spielberg
107 min

Could this be Spielberg's most underrated film? It's his only stab at animation, and it moves like Raiders of the Lost Ark on caffeine. The plotting may be antiquarian but the action never lets up. It's delirious stuff, often laugh-out-loud funny.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Ghost Elephants

Dir. Werner Herzog
99 min

Everyone's favourite German adventurer, Werner Herzog goes on the hunt for the largest land mammal on the planet, the fabled "ghost elephant" of the Angolan highlands -- that may, or may not, exist.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema