Darkroom ‘24 features a carefully curated selection of experimental and documentary short films.
FLICKERING LIGHT (Jahnavi Misra, Apoorva Mundoor) Flickering Light / Peeli Batti is a poem that encapsulates the experience of a neurodivergent woman, whose loneliness and dissociation takes her to the brink of non-existence, disappearance and ghostliness.
COCOON (Holli Xue) The narrative-led experimental documentary weaves together video recordings spanning five years, merging documented events from pre-pandemic and pandemic-era state control. It incorporates a performance piece responding to the filmmaker's traumatic memories of that period. The performance, a passive counteraction to the hostile environment, expresses fear and non-cooperation toward the state apparatus.
FRAGMENTS OF A FAMILY (Freda D'Souza) is an audio-visual work that explores interplay between mediums as a generative process, as well as the experience of living with a family member who struggles with addiction. In the intra-medial mosaic (a technique developed through this practise research project), layers of inspiration and modes of creation expand non-linearly outwards, between and back on themselves, through medium and time.
BLUE SALAMANDER (Ruxandra Mitache) Imagine an ivory-white shell visualize the echo, its diffuse light inside this fragile form. A delirious dream - mind open to inner worlds of shy vibrational fields. An ephemeral labyrinth, like a suspended movement.
BRIXTON BUSTLE (Shaun Clark) A journey through the energy, rhythm and culture of life in Brixton, a district of South London with an African-Caribbean soul.
GARDEN PATH (Peter Sandmark, Trace Nelson) is an experimental film with images of gardens and plants shot on black and white 16 mm film, hand processed in Cafenol film developer, and then colonized, transformed and layered in the editing. The soundtrack features the voices of the BIG TOP collective member artists, Trace Nelson and Peter Sandmark in overlapping vocal harmony.
GHOST THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS (Rui Shi) Ghost Through the Looking Glass traverses various forms from gaming archives to philosophy, queer ecology to geopolitics, exploring a series of imaginings regarding the liminal space between reality and fiction, the digital and physical worlds, and the real and dream realms.
CLOSET WITCH - My Words Are Sacred (Autojektor //) A film made from - hands - lips - trans porn - Closet Witch.
MECHAMISM (Eva Grant) Shot on Super8 and featuring a single character transforming into 4 comedic archetypes, randomly generated from over 150 terms derived from genre film, fashion, queer camp, web culture, and pop psychology. Mechanism explores the ways in which laughter can be divorced from humour, particularly for those for whom laughter is both the only escape and the damning symptom of hysteria, malaise, and malevolence.
PICTURE AT AN EXHIBITION (Alessandro Amaducci) Human beings frozen as if they were statues are visiting the "Electric Self Contemporary Art Museum," a large video installation where autonomously generated analog images are transmitted by machines, the "feedbacks" of the tradition of video art history. Energy is the common thread of the exhibition.
SIREN (Scott Fowler) is a short experimental dance film, utilising contemporary dance to explore the non-binary/trans experience. SIREN is a short story of a curse. In every gaze met, the cursed sees the onlookers most private secrets. The pupil transforms into a darkened well, burgeoning from the subconscious.
SO COME THE STORMS OF WINTER (Alexis Parinas) is a mixed media ode to cycles, communal making, communal play, and nurture. The film comprises of self-portraits and collages collected over three years, a game of mahjong, and the creation of two dyed fabrics made by many hands from plants, flowers, food waste and other natural and sustainable materials.
HIDE (Soraya Amini) The experimental black and white video “Hide” shows the perspectives of two women in their anonymity. A dancer dancing alone in a dark room and a veiled woman walking through a city and thinking about her veiling. The thematic plot tells of two different people who hide themselves or something from society. Whether forced or voluntary remains an open question.
SUPERPOSITION (Allen Myers) is the result of three visionary artists coming together to craft an immersive cinematic experience that challenges the boundaries of perception and reality. Set against a backdrop of boundless creativity the film unfolds as a series of interconnected vignettes, each one a mesmerizing tableau of light, sound, and form.
WHAT I'M HIDING FROM YOU... ( Conor Devlin-Powell) A short semi-animated experimental horror film about masking neurodivergence.
SURVIVED FROM ILLUSIONS (Qi Zhuang) "Survived from Illusions" is accompanied by rhythmic music and traditional Chinese opera singing, and describes a state of mind that struggles with the world of dualism, as well as discussions and illusions about truth. In the work, elements of duality are recurring, such as life and death, individual and group, fire and water, etc. The protagonist appears in the scene in a dream or hallucination-like form. At the end, the author sets up a "hope" that all beings can escape from this dichotomy, or be liberated in their own way. Like all dualisms, "hope" corresponds to "despair", or "hopelessness", and the appearance of hope must be accompanied by a chaotic, complex journey.
TOUCH OF RECESSION (Lua Borges) A movement film comprised of three acts, where each dancer choreographs a piece dedicated to a part of their body that they’ve neglected or overlooked. The title 'Touch of Recession’ interprets the Portuguese translation of the word 'curfew' (toque de recolher). The text in the film studies the embodiment of restriction, regulation, and impediment. The visual language is crafted from hand-processed super-8 black & white film, and the score features a modular synth composition by Kari Watson, performed in a quadraphonic speaker array at the Bond Chapel in Chicago, Illinois.
TRANSMISSION (Nicole Blundell) Passing on a message is easy but making sure it is understood can be slightly more complicated.
WHY I NEVER BECAME A DRIVER (Yuula Benivolski) Dissociative states and memory loss unfold within three women following a mysterious traumatic event. Estranged from the world around them, the women engage with the medical system to confront an uncontrollable "other self" whose dreams and presence they cannot shake, resulting in the startling revelation that they are trapped within the very same dream.
RATTLE OF LULA (Simone Pellegrini ) it's a short experimental documentary of the most incredible and gruesome folk carnival that happens once a year in the village of Lula, located in the deepest and wildest core of Sardinia Island, Italy. The whole footage has been realised in just one day filming only the reality of the ritual ceremony. No chance of filming or repeat a second shot/act, no professional actors or artificial lights. What is shown it's exactly what happen, real people , real actions and true blood.
MY EYES HAD FADED TO GREY (Cali M. Banks)This short film is comprised of colour photograms on 35mm moving image film. The text is prose that I personally wrote about an assault. Photograms seen were made from personal hair, fingerprints, bodily fluids, indigenous-style beads and jewellery, and digital negatives of text. The colours represent the Lenape Tribe, and different meanings in indigenous folklore. Red represents happiness and beauty, but also violence and bloodshed. White is indicative of sharing and light. Green represents peace and healing. Yellow is indicative of heroism and fight, along with intellect.
BLACK KNIGHTS OF TUNIS (Julien Rubiloni) is a fast-paced dive into Tunisia's new underground techno scene. It's first and foremost the portrait of a character: Eddy, and through his story, that of a community.
I USED TO BE A CLONE UNTIL I WAS CLONED (João Pedro Fonseca) Humans personify machines which in turn personify humans, a scale chain that has been causing the decline of materiality transcending data towards a future recognizable species — transforming our own sense of reality.
TRIPLE LOADERS (Max Van Loan) An obsessive reverence for grime. Intimate closeups explore a laundromat in Johnson City, NY, finding beauty in the disrepair. Optically printed black & white images superimposed on their colour counterparts sparkle with processing errors, fetishizing the dust, the peeling paint.
ORIGINES - GENESIS (Amir RA) Once upon a time in a distant time there was a faraway land, a crossroads where men, women and children, moved by a deep sense of survival and rebellion, sought themselves and their destiny. One night, three confused and melancholy souls named Ori, Gin and Nes embarked on their journey in search of their origin, identity and there place in the world, awakening the innermost part of themselves. A mystical fairy tale that questions the need for human beings to come to understand who they are and where they come from. Through its protagonists emerge the almost primal emotions of every human being who, since ancient times, has always questioned how much control one can have over one's destiny.
WISHFULLWEED (Laura Iancu) A short film about the botanical lore of Wishfulweed.
METAMORPHOSE (Yoshihisa Kitamura) I focused on the metamorphosis of ice, including the movement, texture, bubbles and droplets that occur during the melting process. I expressed the beauty of melting ice that we do not usually notice.
ASMR DECONTRUCTION (Karolina Gliniewicz) Non-scripted performative ASMR piece, looking at the (non)sense of a regular self-exposure to overstimulation. Making sense is optional.
FRAGMENTS (Yewande Adeniran) is a living, breathing visual ethnographic study of hyper-realism in urban South East London. It began as a visual research book into Deptford High Street. The disjointed nature is the direct result of chaotic, at times nonsensical but hyperreal moments captured on film and conversations with a wide variety of people.