This March, Labocine turns to scent. ODORAMA gathers films that explore odors, smells, and atmosphere as invisible portals—carriers of memory, chemistry, place, and emotion. How does one bring scent to the screen? From molecular traces to personal recollection, from decay to perfume, we’re seeking works that follow what lingers in the air and moves through the body.

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The Underground Astronaut

FILM Netherlands 2023
Marleine van der Werf

Beneath our feet lies a mystery. A complex underground network of fungi keeps our ecosystem alive by exchanging nutrients and carbon with plants and trees. Remarkably, no one quite knows how these advanced and age-old systems operate, and how they are affected by climate change. The Underground Astr

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Limbic (2021)

FILM Canada 2021
Jordan Findlay

Limbic is an experimental short film that examines the quantum physics phenomena of quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement occurs when particles become linked together in such a way so that a change in the physical state of one particle will be felt in another…regardless of the space betw

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Olfactory Forest

FILM Germany 2020
Stefan Stark Pujan Shakupa

Notes of dark green leaves, herbal and aromatic notes, spicy modifiers, floral transparent freshness. These are not field notes from a botanist's journal–they are scent recipes, reconstructed molecule by molecule in a laboratory. Olfactory Forest documents designer and artist Omer Polak's atte

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Gulnara (2020)

FILM India 2020
Yudhajit Basu

The film is set inside an aromatic therapy centre in a village in Kashmir where fragrance of flower petals is used to heal war victims. There, a conversation ensues between a senile ex-militant and a woman, who is the healer. The film explores the violence in present day Kashmir, a land ravaged by p

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Smell! Poetry of Perception

FILM United States 2016
Isaac Holland

A film commissioned by Harvard. Part four of an eight-part series on representations of perception and sensation. (https://vimeo.com/channels/972301) "A nose that can see is worth two that sniff." Eugène Ionesco Authentic sound recording of William Carlos Williams provided by the Estate of Wi

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SCENTSORY DESIGN®

FILM United States 2005
Jenny Tillotson

Scentsory Design® is a film that explores the fusion of "Emotional Fashion" with health and olfaction science, to create a new concept in perfumery. It is a multi-sensory journey describing the future of fashion and fragrance that goes beyond current microencapsulated techniques, through the inc

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Flores (Flowers)

FILM Ecuador, South Africa 2024
José Cardoso

Filmmaker José Cardoso's deeply personal Flowers is an exercise in sense-making, led by both his conscious and unconscious mind. Navigating the barrage of online news images produced each day, he transforms these into an unexpected web of connections that link an Amazonian community threatene

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Herbarium (2013)

FILM Netherlands 2013
Barbara Visser

'Herbarium' is a cinematographic observation based on the changes in the classification of plants. Going from classical taxonomy to genetic data-storage, Visser wonders what is left when the plant its separated from its physical features. What is a plant to us, without the sensation of smell, textur

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Stolen Bloom

FILM United States 2018
James Lawyer

An experimental direct animation film tracing the labyrinthine emotions of a bittersweet first love. Shot on Bolex 16mm film.

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Nose Hair (2017)

FILM United States 2017
Lou Morton

While playing a game with his friends, 10-year-old Nate starts to wonder if something is seriously wrong with his sense of smell. After a visit to a doctor, Nate learns that he has the rare condition Anosmia and that he will never be able to smell. Nate begins to lose all hope, but then an unlikely

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The Smell Test

FILM United States 2016
Sarah Crespi Nguyen Khoi Nguyen

Kate Prigge of the Monell Chemical Senses Center studies what things smell like—to us, to canines, and to machines. By using many different sensing technologies, from mass spectrometers to working dogs, she is honing in on the smells that signal health and disease. In her latest work, Prigge i

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exodus (2017)

FILM Germany 2017
Acci Baba

An experimental film to explore behaviors of an artificial system reaching the point of saturation. Central to the work is the aesthetic combination of geometry and life, expressed by collinear structure and living ants. The sugar water falls from the sky, artificially creating an ecosystem for ants

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Jan Bart (2024)

FILM Austria 2024
Josephine Ahnelt

Impressions of Vienna: a young man with blond hair and painted fingernails that stroke plants. A cinematic portrait that is also a little big-city symphony, about how the view through the camera changes the world: gently, not brutally. A film about cinema. Because photochemistry does something to th

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Sensing the Superject

FILM United States 2026
Kaeti Leila MacNeil

Sensing the Superject is an in-development animated short that follows one moment of consciousness as it begins, transforms, and becomes memory. The story unfolds through shifting wavelengths of color based on models of neural oscillation. Gold, blue, violet, and magenta colors shift with her moveme

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Parfums (Perfumes)

FILM France 2025
Loïc Mabily

A sensory journey through time, Parfums is a quest to better understand Italian Baroque music through the commercial roads of incents and spices, travelling from the middle east to Europe in the 17th century. Passionate baroque musician François Cardey traveled to Oman, the cradle of the rose

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Spore Print Film #16

FILM United States 2016
Anna Scime

This film experiment begins its life-cycle with the production and collection of edible North American forest and field dwelling mushrooms. Bellas (Agaricus bisporus); chanterelles (Cantharellus cibarius); shaggy manes (Coprinus comatus); lions manes (Hericium erinaceus); and oyster spores (Pleurotu

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A Million Dollar Nose?

FILM New Zealand 2016
Sarah Hight

In the quiet hum of New Zealand's beehives, a silent threat is spreading. This documentary follows Dunedin-based dog trainer Rene Gloor as he takes on an unlikely mission: training an American Staffordshire terrier named Georgie to detect American foulbrood — a highly destructive bacterium tha

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the air we breathe

FILM Canada 2023
Christina Battle

the air we breathe is an expanded, experimental documentary that thinks through the complexities of air pollution by weaving together themes of environmental catastrophe, environmental racism, cultural and political shifts, and conspiracy. Combining research into air pollution along with personal st

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Scent of an Ancestral Dream

FILM Finland 2026
Shamsil Balkis

When a person dies alone, they may not be discovered immediately. Dirt and odours seep into the apartment, which a death cleaner is called to remove. But where does the spirit of the deceased go? This question is explored in the experimental film Scent of an Ancestral Dream , a glimpse into the life

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Your Smell (2026)

FILM United States 2026
Sanahin Papazian

The piece frames scent as a bridge between past and present. While photographs freeze a single moment, smell refuses to stay fixed; it lingers, heightening and reanimating memory. I filmed this short in a single day, using myself and my two cats as subjects interacting with scent and the memories it

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The Razor's Edge (2015)

FILM USA 2015
Stefani Byrd

The breath is a constant reminder of our physicality and an anchor to our embodied experience. In these video portraits performers exhale slowly against an unseen piece of glass, fogging and obscuring their faces in fleeting moments between breaths. When shown, it creates the illusion that the perfo

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Cremita de coco (Coconut Cream)

FILM Spain, Mexico 2023
Martha Uc

As Zendy prepares for the day's sale, she shares her deepest dreams and desires, wrapped in the aroma of seasonal sweets. An honest portrait of how tenderness transforms the everyday, creating a loving atmosphere in the life of a family in Sudzal, a small Mayan community in central Yucatán.

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Breath (2015)

FILM Norway 2015
Eva Bakkeslett

Breath is a film about the poetic journey of air that surrounds us and flows through us continuously. We breathe the ethereal force of life through our bodies. Every creature inspire and transform the air and add some of their own entity in the mixture before it is passed on. We all share each other

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Sextant of the Rose (2019)

FILM USA 2019
Dakota Gearhart

Over hundreds of years, humans have cultivated roses to have more desirable patterns, better scents, more saturated colors, and even a more graceful death. By asking the Juliet rose what it experiences from its revered cultural position, I seek to further understand how roses are using human desire

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Nose (2021)

FILM France 2021
Clément Beauvais

For the first time in a documentary feature, the prestigious House of Dior opened its doors to show the wonders of perfume creation. Travelers at heart, Arthur de Kersauson and Clément Beauvais followed François Demachy for two years and over 14 countries, from Grasse to the other side

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The Scents That Carry Through Walls

FILM United States 2020
Erin Wilkerson

A quarantine meditation on the scent of exile, told through the stories of family roots in Los Angeles and living in the shadow of the US/Mexico Border. This film was made for the indigenous who are treated as migrants in their own land. In their generosity, friendship, and hard work, they are the b

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In Glorious Smell-O-Vision! The True Story of the Godfather of Scented Cinema

FILM AU, USA 2020
Tammy Burnstock John Anderson

In Glorious Smell-O-Vision! The True Story of the Godfather of Scented Cinema is a scented documentary about flamboyant Swiss scientist Hans Laube, and Scent of Mystery (1960), a star studded Hollywood whodunit which debuted the ill-fated "Smell-O-Vision" process - later dubbed one of Time's "100 Wo

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Olores (Smells)

FILM Spain 2022
Alba Esquinas

A series of old photographs awakens memories of childhood in post-war Spain, where a daughter and mother are struggling to find their place between grief and prejudice. Smells ambitiously attempts to stimulate our senses to help understand the protagonists' lives. With very few elements, the film su

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Odor Film 2

FILM United States 2006
Jennifer West

Jennifer West Odor Film 2 16mm film negative soaked in horsemanure, ink, patchouli incense, cumin - based on CDG Odeur 2 notes) 2006, 1 minute, 10 seconds 16mm film transferred to digital video

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iii Sensory Kit #2 - ArtScience Body

FILM United States 2021
Flora Reznik

Contact info@instrumentinventors.org to order. Instructions can be found HERE Lauren Jetty | Experimental Perfume 'ArtScience Body' is a perfume that bends notions of what is considered to be 'perfume' by fusing it with what people often attribute to DIY electronic music and media art: burnt electro

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Dream Soup (2019)

FILM United Arab Emirates 2019
Farah Al Qasimi

Commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation, Dream Soup is a short video on the perfume industry in the UAE. Al Qasimi documents various perfume retailers and the different stages of perfume manufacturing. Throughout the film, many of the labels' names that appear often to gendered aspirations like '

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Odor Film 71

FILM United States 2006
Jennifer West

Jennifer West Odor Film 71 16mm film negative soaked in lettuce juice, submerged in LA river, static electricity, dust on a hot lightbulb - based on notes from CdG Odeur 71 2006, 2 minutes, 41 seconds 16mm film transferred to digital video

What about the nose?

FILM USA 2019
Anna Lindemann Albana Kodra

What happens when you smell something? This whimsical look at olfaction follows the journey of a smell through the nose. A film by Anna Lindemann and Albana Kodra as part of the Imagine Science Symbiosis Competition Animation by Anna Lindemann. Illustration by Ziael Ponte. Microscopy by Albana Kodra

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Mater inerta (2022)

FILM Spain 2022
Adrià Expòsit Goy

Teresa works on a farm in the heart of the Catalan mountains, an environment threatened by the intensive exploitation of resources. The departure of her dog underscores the gradual disappearance of the links that the inhabitants maintain with this peaceful territory. Adrià Expòsit Goy

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Scent of Time (2022)

FILM Netherlands 2022
Emilia Tapprest

Raised by her protective mother by the Black Sea, the outbreak of war has forced 12-year-old Vlada to leave home and move in with a mysterious family friend in a peripheral city in Europe. Typically, her lifeworld, immersed in the metaverse as an upcoming XR talent, and that of her caregiver 'A' rar

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Days That Smell Like Fresh Sago

FILM India 2026
Shaheen Ahmed

A young man from Malabar walks along the Portuguese coast, contemplating the imminent loss of his ancestral garden. While his mother catalogs the plants in their garden, two Portuguese spirits roam the tropical night in search of black pepper, misled by the herbalist Garcia de Orta. / (work-in-progr

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The Sweet Stench of Sulfur

FILM Israel/USA 2017
Michelle Gevint

'The Sweet Stench of Sulfur' blends documentary, historical, and fictional elements by merging mythical and apocalyptic components into what seems like fragments of a dream. It examines human interaction with nature and how nature reclaims itself through natural disasters. The film was shot at the D

Larvae – Population Assays

FILM USA 2016
Justin Blau

Odor attraction (left, odor-only assay) and light avoidance (right, light-only) behavior of Drosophila larvae. 15 larvae per plate are filmed (1 frame/second) using infra-red illumination for 5min. The larvae on the left are attracted to a point source of isoamyl acetate located on the upper part of

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[sniff] (2024)

FILM Austria 2024
Anton Paievski

My tic—constant sniffing—appears in almost every video and audio recording I've ever made. As a filmmaker, I used to cut these sounds out, striving for clean recordings. But what if they're the most important part of my media archive? [sniff] is an exploration of self-acceptance, persona

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Olfaction (2025)

FILM Norway 2025
Tom Warner

This short film follows Norwegian artist and musician Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel as he explores scent as an artistic medium. Working with olfaction, Simon creates scent-based compositions that connect memory, place and personal experience. From childhood associations triggered by everyday smells,

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Odor Film 53

FILM United States 2006
Jennifer West

Jennifer West Odor Film 53 16mm film negative dripped with nailpolish, burnt rubber, xerox light, skim boarded over - based on notes from CdG Odeur 53 2006, 2 minutes, 15 seconds 16mm film transferred to digital video

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Olfactory (2018)

FILM USA 2018
Christopher Piazza

Olfactory is a dramatic sci-fi short film about memories and how they never leave us. In the film, "Olfactory" is a system that allows users to re-experience memories. Brian, an app programmer, hacks the system so he can alter his memories, but in doing so, he loses his grip on his current reality.

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Stink! (2015)

FILM United States 2015
Jon Whelan

"Stink!" opens with a foul smell and a pair of kids pajamas. And a single father trying to find out what that smell could possibly be. But instead of getting a straight answer, director Jon Whelan stumbles on an even bigger issue in America, which is that some products on our store shelves are not s

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Volver A Recorrer Las Mismas Calles (Retracing The Same Streets)

FILM Chile 2024
Beatriz Arias González

Gabriela has lost her dog Porro and is looking for him, helped by a childhood friend. The plot is as simple as pie, a beautiful pretext for setting off to meet a working-class neighborhood in Chile, of which Beatriz Arias paints a vivid portrait in colors, in a few sensitive, lively and precise stro

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Sniff (2015)

FILM Spain 2015
Fernando Cucchietti Guillermo Marin

How do we breathe? How do we smell? Using supercomputer simulations, scientists can recreate a rapid and short inhalation, a 'sniff'. Using pure data visualizations, this short documentary allows us to see the stunning beauty of this process. Credits: Directors: Guillermo Marin & Fernando Cucchietti

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The Nose (2016)

FILM United Kingdom 2016
Seán Vicary

'The Nose' is the result of a collaboration with composer Llywelyn ap Myrddin, folk singer Sam Lee and research scientist Dr Darren Logan. Produced for the Body of Songs project and supported by Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England. The aim was to create an audio-visual version of that all-consum