Issue

Shuttles and Migrations

September 2017

Shuttles and Migrations focuses on films that depict the movement of people or animals between areas or frontiers. It also delves into the microscopic world of molecular beings depicting capable of shuttling molecules or ions from one location to another.

Nesma's Birds

FILM Iraq 2013
Najwan Ali Medoo Ali Mohammad Jaafarn Fatima Sah

Nesma is at odds with the world around her since her father's death. She escapes to the rooftops where she secretly cares for her late father's birds against the knowledge of her mother and competing against the boy on the opposite rooftop. Now Nesma must face even bigger challenges as she enters wo

Stardust

FILM Netherlands 2014
Mischa Rozema

PostPanic director Mischa Rozema's new short film, Stardust, is a story about Voyager 1 (the unmanned spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer solar system). The probe is the furthest man-made object from the sun and witnesses unimaginable beauty and destruction. The film was triggered by th

Squirrel Island

FILM United Kingdom 2016
Astrid Goldsmith

A stop-motion sci-fi action thriller about squirrel apartheid. When a lone renegade grey squirrel and a hunted acorn find themselves trapped on a hostile and mysterious red squirrel island, they uncover a horrifying plot that threatens their future…can they survive Squirrel Island? http://moc

We Began by Measuring Distance

FILM Palestine 2009
Basma Alsharif

Long still frames, text, language, and sound are weaved together to unfold the narrative of an anonymous group who fill their time by measuring distance. Innocent measurements transition into political ones, examining how image and sound communicate history. We Began by Measuring Distance explores a

The Art of Flying

FILM Netherlands 2015
Jan Van Ijken

Short film about "murmurations": the mysterious flights of the Common Starling. It is still unknown how the thousands of birds are able to fly in such dense swarms without colliding. Every night the starlings gather at dusk to perform their stunning air show. Because of the relatively warm winter of

First Pole on Mars

FILM Poland 2016
Agnieszka Elbanowska

In the Milky Way, on the Solar System's third planet from the Sun, Kazimierz, aged 68 is mounting a device for communication with the Cosmos. At the same space-time, the fight for participation in the historic Mars One project begins. Kazimierz has a chance of becoming one of the first colonisers of

Slingshots of the Oceanic

FILM United States 2016
Flora Lichtman

There are many ways of moving through the Universe – of travelling from one point to another over great, even extraordinary distances. There is also a way of using the world for your own ends: taking advantage of slopes, winds, currents or gravitational fields, as fuel-efficient resources for

Higher Ground

FILM United States 2015
Mary Magsamen Stephen Hillerbrand

Higher Ground is an interdisciplinary work consisting of video, sculpture and photography commissioned by the Houston Airport System, City of Houston Civic Art Program. In the spirit of George Méliès landmark illusionistic film, "A Trip to the Moon," the artists Hillerband+Magsamen wit

Gondwana

FILM Italy 2017
Riccardo Giacconi

A primal scream; is it that of the blue men, that of a monstrous creature, or perhaps that of a changing territory? An hour away from Venice, in the province of Pordenone, lives the only Tuareg community in Italy. Although they are no longer nomadic, they maintain a singular relationship with their

Movement + Location

FILM United States 2014
Alexis Boling

A woman is sent back from 400 years in the future to live an easier life. When she finds two people from her future, a 15-year-old girl and her long-lost husband, Kim has to fight to keep her old life from destroying her new one.

Crumbs

FILM Spain, Ethiopia 2015
Miguel Llansó

Our figurine-sized superman hero embarks on an epic surreal journey that will take him across the Ethiopian post apocalyptic landscape in search of a way to get on the hovering spacecraft that for years has become a landmark in the skies. Birdy and Candy live in complete isolation, in an abandoned b

Il Silenzio (The Silence)

FILM Italy, France 2016
Ali Asgari Farnoosh Samadi

Fatma and her mother are Kurdish refugees in Italy. On their visit to the doctor, Fatma has to translate what the doctor tells to her mother but she keeps silent. Credits Actors: Fatma Alakus (daughter), Cahide Ozel (mother), Valentina Carnelutti (doctor) Cinematographer: Alberto Marchiori MARCHIORI

To Fly or Not to Fly

FILM Poland 2013
Aniela Gabryel

The singular beauty of wild nature is hard to understand. Working in thickets on a thin strip of land between the sea and the lake, bird researchers try to at least describe it setting off on their expeditions regardless of bad weather and difficult conditions. PRODUCTION CREDITS Script: Aniela Gabr

Voyagers

FILM Canada 2015
Santiago Menghini

Travel along with the Voyager spacecraft as they traverse the solar system on their planetary expedition spanning over three decades.

Birds (2014)

FILM Germany 2014
Ulu Braun

Quo vadis, bird? Ulu Braun`s film BIRDS looks at the life of birds in urban habitats. They apply their instinctive behaviour to the developed environment. What role do humans play therein? Bags and umbrellas become bushes, buildings become monoliths and people become organisms. The birds are forced

The Digger

FILM United Arab Emirates 2015
Ali Cherri

Shot in the Sharjah desert, The Digger follows the everyday life of Sultan Zeib Khan, the Pakistani caretaker who has been guarding the ruins of a Neolithic necropolis for twenty years. A witness to the nation's founding mythologies, Sultan preserves archeological ruins, keeping them from falling in

The Wind

FILM Syria 2015
Lina Ghaibeh May Ghaibeh

What does it mean to be abandoned by everything? Abandoned by your people, your country? Abandoning your home, your street, your city, your country? Abandoned by the world?

A Space Exodus

FILM Palestine 2009
Larissa Sansour

Courtesy of mec film A Space Exodus quirkily sets up an adapted stretch of Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey in a Middle Eastern political context. The recognisable music scores of the 1968 science fiction film are changed to arabesque chords matching the surreal visuals of Sansour's film. The film fo

Survival Visa

FILM Tunisia, Qatar 2014
Nadia Rais

When disaster strikes, the NASA (National, Arabic Survival Agency) publishes a call for applicants for a limited number of Survival Visas.

No Exit

FILM Palestine 2014
Mohanad Yaqubi

Like many people of his generation, Ali has decided to run away from the hardships of war, but finds himself caught at a bus-stop between worlds.