Braziers 2025

<p>Familiar Phantoms is an experimental documentary short film about memory, history and trauma. Familiar Phantoms is inspired by anecdotes from Sansour&rsquo;s own family history and her old childhood in Bethlehem, making it her most personal film to date. Combining live action scenes, Super 8 footage and private photos, the editing mimics the workings of memory, constantly revisiting the same imagery alongside new fragments in search of meaning. The live action scenes are shot in a derelict mansion, serving as the seat of memory. In the rooms, vignettes are played out, adding a theatrical dimension, enlarging and exaggerating the narrative components, just as memory perpetually reworks, reinforces, adds and subtracts.</p>

<p>Referencing the 1980 cult classic The Shining by Stanley Kubrick, Sbara explores the castigation of Arabs in contemporary Western dialogue. By adding an audio montage combining historical and current quotes on the Middle East to footage paraphrasing scenes from the original film, Sbara seeks to expose the cyclical nature of Middle Eastern rhetoric and policies and emphasize the psychological terror inflicted upon those at the receiving end of this repetitively stagnant political discourse.</p>

<p>When a Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wild flowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. This tender essay film questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and land.</p>

<p>The Earth Weavers by Rima Kaddissi celebrates rural Lebanese women as they reclaim traditional knowledge and reconnect with the land. Through weaving, language, and resistance, they remind us that biodiversity is a cultural practice as much as an ecological one.</p>

<p>Bodies of water are intervened upon, moved, disrupted and exploited. Labouring bodies experience similar pressures from the same forces of power and extraction. Distant communities &ndash; Northern England and Jamaica &ndash; share similar histories of manipulation and oppression whose record is kept in the living memory of its waterways. But water, like people, can find a way to exert its own will.</p>

<p>Apitherapy, or the use of honey bee products as medicine, can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Greece, and China. The use of honey dates back 4,000 years, it is documented in cave paintings, ancient Egyptian pottery and in numerous religious texts including the Vedas and the Bible. The Greek physician Hippocrates, known as the &ldquo;father of medicine,&rdquo; used bee venom to treat joint pain and arthritis. Several years ago I began experiencing chronic health issues that led me down a winding road of healing modalities from allopathic to holistic to straight up fringe. When these healing modalities failed, I began experimenting with live bee venom therapy (BVT) which, to my surprise, was instrumental in restoring my health.</p>

<p>Thousand Thrashing Arms juxtaposes scenes of human and non-human figures in movement, from statues and animals to bodies wrapped in cloth, depicted in states of captivity, traversing tunnels, or resisting from underground.</p>

<p>Along the Water is a poetic and reflective journey tracing a stream of water in reverse&mdash;from the Mediterranean Sea to the summit of Qornet el Sawda, the highest peak in the Middle East. Through the eyes of four individuals&mdash;activists, scientists, and storytellers&mdash;the film reveals the profound connections between people and the natural world.</p>

<p>The film explores the interplay between aging bodies and eros, reflecting Bliss&rsquo;s ongoing interest in how older psyches engage desire and embodiment.</p>

<p>An experimental and poetic exploration of soils as living, atmospheric entities&mdash;revealing how soil ecologies are intertwined with air, architecture, science, feminist perspective, and political ecology. The film visualizes the often-invisible material and affective relationships that bind humans, earth, and atmosphere. It responds directly to ongoing research by Calvillo and Bellacasa into more-than-human entanglements within urban and ecological contexts</p>

<p>A playful fusion of the Meisner acting technique and birdsong mimicry, Bird Bird explores themes of emotional connection and intimacy, using an experimental, anthropological lens toward human&ndash;bird interaction</p>

<p>BOOKANIMA is an experimental animation project that breathes cinematic life into books. The term &quot;BOOKANIMA&quot; is a portmanteau of &quot;Book&quot; and &quot;Anima&quot; (Latin for &quot;soul&quot; or &quot;motion&quot;), encapsulating the project&rsquo;s vision of exploring the intersection between literature and film through animated motion.</p>

<p>On the periphery, the city&#39;s waste accumulates to form illegal dumps. In these, a new kind of life has emerged. It hides from the lights of humans, but the city reclaims what is its own. It advances and changes everything in its path. In its flight, the shadows remain in time. The thresholds persist. Gentrification, the death of one city and the rebirth of another.</p>

<p>Vakıf, a 60-year-old Kurdish man who grew up in a nomadic tribe in the mountains of southeast Turkey, recalls moments from his youth that have shaped his life. He takes us back to his idyllic childhood with his mother, his first love found in a cotton field and lost in the woods, and the mistreatment suffered at the hands of the police, in a cold and dark place.</p>

<p>Crafted during the Apichatpong Creators Lab 2023 in Yucat&aacute;n, Mexico, this 11 min 22 sec documentary‑experimental short navigates a sleepy coastal town through a series of doors and portals. Made without scripts or shot lists, it captures intimate, improvisational moments that reveal beauty in everyday brokenness and cultural non‑conventions</p>

<p>A woman dreams of a future economic crisis affecting the cryptocurrency market. Thousands have been cryogenized, awaiting better times. Are they suspended, or are they falling into the void?</p>

<p>Moving through various farms in the southeast of Ireland, hole in the stone captures the collective voice of a community in flux. Suspended between the rhythms of the past and an uncertain future, the film delves into the psychological landscape of independent farmers as they navigate a path that grows increasingly difficult to sustain</p>

<p>A poetic, non-linear short film where the artist reflects on identity, desire, memory, and grief. Merging diaristic narration with haunting imagery, the film examines queer embodiment, intimacy, and the fragility of self through acts of performance and ritual. It is as much an emotional essay as it is a visual meditation</p>

<p>I found a little bird on the sidewalk, just around the corner from my house. We became roommates and close friends, connected by our shared otherness, confined within the four walls of my bedroom. Setting up the camera became a ritual, a way for us to interact and explore our relationship. As I scroll back through the memories on my iPhone, Icarus gradually transcends his avian nature. Slowly, he transforms into an image himself, inviting reflection on the nature of the human-pet relationship that we carry in our back pocket</p>

<p>A frenetic performance of striped, coded beings enmeshed in a system that&rsquo;s of their own making, yet out of their control. Chanted and spoken words, physical performance, costumes, electronic and live music, projected video with stop-frame animations. A defiant, DIY lament to toxic automation. Ambiguities and interference patterns are embraced, as is the contradiction of the toxic and the sublime, the comic and apocalyptic.</p>

<p>In the Mexican jungle, the jaguar prowls and haunts the minds of the people. As different perspectives on this nocturnal predator intersect, a child who is gradually losing his sight grows closer to the animal.</p>

<p>Lizzy is the result of the days spent in the aftermath of the death of a neighbour, who passed in the house where she had lived out her whole life on the Hillsborough River in Tampa, Florida and who left behind an electric organ addressed to the filmmaker, without a note. To receive it was like a wild riddle.How might one story continue in the hands of another? What powers organize the telling?</p>

<p>A compact 7 min 45 sec Super 8 stop-motion short, shot in South London. The film weaves together tricks using cards, ropes, and &ldquo;sleights of camera,&rdquo; set against a playful, &ldquo;perky river&rdquo; backdrop, and delves into glimpses of a 1930s magician&ndash;ventriloquist from the neighbourhood</p>

<p>A 28‑minute experimental film exploring spectral echoes and abandoned rural sites. Set in Yorkshire, it follows a character named Tony who, with a sound scanner, seeks medieval ghosts in the deserted village of Wharram Percy&mdash;intertwining memory, landscape, and the uncanny through Smith&rsquo;s poetic, sound‑infused lens</p>

<p><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">On Hannah Fields is a short animated documentary</span>&nbsp;<span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">by Lewis Heriz,</span><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">&nbsp;responding to a community garden in Littleover - a suburb of Derby - in the middle of England.&nbsp;</span></p> <p>The film follows the trajectory of recovery, of both the land itself and the people who frequent it and tend to it. It is a representation of the cyclical and symbiotic approach to care, in contrast to the institutionalised system that the founder - an ex-NHS Psychiatric nurse - had experienced burnout within.<br />&nbsp;<br />Lewis&rsquo; film includes black and white celluloid film, hand-processed in nettles which were weeded from Hannah Fields, and phytograms &ndash; images made through a chemical reaction between plants, photographic emulsion and the sun &ndash; made as part of a workshop with the garden's users and collaborators. The soundtrack comprises voices from members of the Hannah Fields community and sounds from the environments within the space.</p> <p>Expanding on the drawn animation technique, Lewis says:&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;Much of the animation was created with just water, painted on 'magic paper' (originally used for Chinese calligraphy practice). You create a brief, dark line, which disappears quickly as it evaporates. I would photograph the image at different stages as I add to it, and as other elements naturally disappear... As well as being a metaphor for the transcience of life, it&rsquo;s a gesture towards leaving no trace, and of not contributing to the unnecessary accumulation of stuff in the world.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p>

<p>Once A Blue Always A Red&#39; features the artist&#39;s conversations with two taxi drivers in Liverpool. It is part of his long-term project &#39;Crossing the Park&#39; where he attempts to change which football team he supports from Everton to their local rivals Liverpool. There are strong negative social pressures against such a change of allegiance; the conversations examine this through the lens of family and friends, loyalty and identity.</p>

<p>After Samir&rsquo;s severe father flatly refuses to ask the parents of his beloved Leyla for her hand, the two young people agree to run away together. Leyla arrives at the appointed hour and waits all day; Samir never shows up. She revisits the places they used to meet &ndash; bleak mining quarries, perilous hillsides, wherever they wouldn&rsquo;t be seen &ndash; while hearing his voice telling her this pain will pass. It is an enigmatic, lyrical account of love, betrayal and the sad fate of people with no power over their own lives</p>

<p>&lsquo;Say Wuff!&rsquo; is Podeszwa&rsquo;s declaration of love to the beauty of simplicity to quirky oddities of life and to the one and only believable truth</p>

<p>Sinkholes is a dystopian vision of a future world in which humanity survives in an environment in which water has become scarce and the sea is slowly receding behind dunes of salt. It tells the story of the inhabitants of a desolate coastline, trapped between a desertified interior and an unnamed coast. Following, the first-person voiceover of its protagonist Lawrence, the story unfolds through a sequence of striking documentary scenes, shot in inland and coastal Israel and Palestine. While the landscapes and sites Russo has gathered are real &ndash; places of rusting industry, of abandoned habitation and the bizarre, almost extraterrestrial salt formations of the Dead Sea &ndash; the narration transforms these into the ruins of an entire society, doomed to a world in which it has ceased to rain.</p>

<p>An arrangement of found image sources from the 16th Century onward, the film looks at the changing representations of the giant star at the center of the solar system. From celestial maps to telescopic photos, the film traces the sun as a natural constant, a mirror of human curiosity, and a radiant symbol of mystery.</p>

<p>Under a burning sun, on an island on the border between Finland and Russia, two people rave. Tender wander or anxious waiting. What is there to fear on the horizon? The indolence of summer becomes stifling, while they seem to be the only ones foreseeing the upcoming disaster.</p>

<p>Tan/Vatan -Body/Homeland- is a collaborative experimental film. It is a conversation between two women and their intimate experiences of love and life. The film embodies a symbolic form borrowed from the origin cultures of the artists, in India and Iran. Tan and Vatan are mutual words in Hindi and Persian, sharing the same meaning and pronunciation. Artists utilize the language, the medium, and their bodies to connect and visualize their experiences while engaging with the mechanical and physical experience of 16mm and handmade film</p>

<p>A team of scientists explore the vanished island of Testerep off the Belgian coast. Traditional excavations are combined with advanced technologies, like computer simulations and sound wave analyses, to trace the coastal evolution over 5,000 years.<br /> As researchers decode the mysteries, they contemplate the symbiotic relationship between humans, technology, and our temporal landscape, offering glimpses into future virtual worlds and bridging the gaps between the past, present, and the ever-evolving role of technology in shaping our understanding of the world.</p>

<p>Astronomers look through telescopes and see that the universe has a structure &mdash; it&rsquo;s shaped like a web. Slime mold researchers look through microscopes and see that the tiny organisms form similar patterns. In their quest of discovering the nature of things, they both show the beauty of curiosity.</p>

<p>Previously unheard voices are manifest on recordings. Extinct flora/fauna provide raw materials for magnetic video/audio-tape. Media archaeology reveals deeper content.</p>

<p>In The Kittens&#39; Tea Party, domestic, wild and working animals in a quiet residential neighborhood live full of stress. Their tension is captured by video surveillance cameras, recorded through windows and recalled in old postcards.</p>

<p>&quot;The Sight is a Wound&quot; by Parham Ghalamdar is a haunting meditation on the collapse of imagery in the face of modern atrocities. The film begins with a simple question: What can the artist offer when the images of our time overwhelm the capacity of frames to contain them? In the wake of the ongoing genocide in Gaza&mdash;live-streamed by its perpetrators and rendered unbearable in its clarity&mdash;Ghalamdar burns over 50 of his own paintings, works exhibited in solo and group shows across renowned institutions worldwide.</p>

<p>Driven by a speculative question&mdash;Can we heal the sea?&mdash;the film combines myth, science, and sound: featuring a 12-year-old boy named Vanja harvesting plankton, the mystical voice of Amira Medunjanin, and a new musical composition by Alen &amp; Nenad Sinkauz, woven into a reimagined sea-myth rooted in Slavic tradition and ecological imagination</p>

<p>While walking in the High Peak, Derbyshire after a snow storm, I became mesmerised by the intricate patterns made by the layers of snow and rivulets of melting ice on the road. These small wintry scenes brought to mind the bigger picture relating to global warming and, in particular, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that I&#39;d recently read, which sets out the stark truths about the irreversibility of climate tipping points.</p>

<p>A woman&rsquo;s voice passionately addresses the enigmatic figure &ldquo;M&rdquo; in a narrative that initially portrays a positive shift as one colonial ruler replaces another. However, the story ultimately exposes the persistent and oppressive nature of the colonial enterprise within an enduring framework.</p>

<p>In a fable made by hyper-mechanisms of the future, a message in an algorithmic bottle relives a story of extinction from the past to a clay humanoid in the present.</p>

<p>Nassib returns to his Palestinian hometown for the first time in 50 years to revive an ancestral garden, and to search for a sense of belonging.</p>