Three experimental short films: A luxury hotel room dreams of idyllic holiday destinations; an airplane feels the weight of time, starts to panic, and hijacks itself for an unmanned flight into an existential crisis; as it slowly dies, a data centre hallucinates the Internet before finally fizzling out forever.
Through a mediumistic channelling of sound, image, and text, filmmaker Michael Bucuzzo interweaves a performative lecture with these films compiled from American commercials, archive footage, and movies. He suggests that many of our fears, dreams, and desires are shaped by mass media—film and television—to such an extent that we can only live our lives filtered through it. The risk is that we will be overwhelmed by visual pollution and overdose on auditory stimulation.
It’s no coincidence that in Bucuzzo’s films, humanity is notable for its complete absence. The media need only each other and are only concerned with the media. People are no longer necessary to bring new images into the world.
IDFA X De Balie
During the rehearsals of a theatre adaptation of Émile Zola’s book L’Assommoir, the real and fictional lives of actress and artistic director Anne and her stage character Gervaise appear to intertwine. Experimental and intimately filmed scenes provide insights into the constantly shifting parallel worlds between which Anne and Gervaise are navigating. The fascinating play between
Argentinian wedding videographer Leandro Koch has absolutely no interest in his Jewish background until he falls in love with clarinetist Paloma Schachmann. She specializes in klezmer music, the traditional Yiddish wedding music of Eastern Europe. They decide to make a documentary together, visiting the last European practitioners of this genre. Their wanderings through Ukraine, Romania,
Gerlach van Beinum is one of the last old-school crop farmers in the Netherlands. Surrounded by the advancing exponents of modernity—distribution centers, highways, multinationals – he moves through the seasons at his own pace. We follow him for several years in his fields on the outskirts of Amsterdam. With the help of his best friend
