MAIN AWARD FINALISTS
UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN
Mélissa Faivre
France, 2022, 10′
A dance of light and shadows, textured grayscale expanding across the landscape of an apocalyptic city. The sun is moon and light. It unveils itself by means of visual pulsating dynamics, unstable frequencies and vibrating rhythms; until it disintegrates into particles and pixels, and vanishes into darkness. This visual-musical piece is dark, worrying and calls to sensorial explorations into deeper energies.
ECO
Francesca Leoni, Davide Mastrangelo
Italy, 2023, 4′
A new species, aborigines of the future, guardians of a rebirth created by a post-pandemic and post-war period, who are once again trying to take care of an artificial garden. The cyclical nature and violence of nature require a last gesture of hope, which travels beyond the artificial barrier, dissolving in an “ECO” that will never end. Because “The earth will survive, but” perhaps “it will no longer be of the human species.”
TERRA’S TOMB
Mikey Peterson
USA, 2023, 6’
As we slowly move through organic textural fields, we experience the unlocking of a new place that lies somewhere between the physical, the virtual, the scientific, and the spiritual. Here we encounter what is both strange and familiar – a world where we entwine with nature’s fluid states – triggering surreal transformations that can mirror our minds’ narratives. These events might feel both close and far away, and as if they have happened before or soon will. The natural and figurative imagery solidifies not only their connection and effect on each other, but through the video medium, suggests technology’s role in capturing, storing, and revealing new truths from the reimagined footage. The soundtrack reinforces this bond through a combination of digitally manipulated ambient recordings and the artist’s recorded voice – forming a sonic landscape residing somewhere between diegetic sound and musical score. Through our relationship between memory, nature, and technology what is created, stored, and unearthed becomes the catalysts of change – releasing the invisible specters that define our present and alter our future.
I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO SEE A MARTIAN
Smaragda Nitsopoulou
Greece, 2022, 7’
An astronaut finds herself stranded on a foreign planet. Her initial fear gives way to an insatiable need to experience this new planet with all her senses. The astronaut tries to find her footing between the urge to conquer and surrender.
EXPANSION
Amanda VanValkenburg
USA, 2023, 5’
This is a visual investigation of proliferation, growth through repetition and accumulation. Continuous expansion and endless repetition seem to be permanent fixtures of contemporary life, and this video utilizes found footage and 3D software to play with loops, repetition, and nightmarish visions of replication. Inky digital blemishes bleed into the visual collages, and wash away the image as the expanding “carchitecture” inevitably collapses.
LAND OF SURVIVAL – ENCROACHMENT ON THE EARTH
Jaeik Kim
Korea, 2023, 5′
It is a story about ‘the struggle of humankind’ just for survival on the earth. The past struggle riddled with separations and conflicts has become ash at present and keeps strangling people. The earth of survival! Survival on this earth requires leading a life of repeated struggle. Hopelessly, people’s aspiration for the recovery of daily life is increasingly eroded below the precarious earth. Yet, we are waiting with bated breath… until the peace we all want comes.
THE STREAM XII-II
Hiroya Sakurai
Japan, 2022, 5’
Human beings act on nature in order to keep their lives. From their activities, several streams are generated and landscapes are transformed. I focus on the beauty of transformation created through the relation between human activities and nature, and want to express the beauty as a kind of visual ballet.
A DEEPWARD RISE – APOTROPIA
Antonella Mignone, Cristiano Panepuccia
Italy, 2023, 13′
A Deepward Rise takes viewers on a journey into the depths of the psyche. A symbolic ascending path that brings to the surface the fundamental opposition between the visible and the invisible, the conscious and the unconscious, the sky and the earth. A visual exploration and contemplation of finitude as the gateway towards the Infinite.
EXPANDED_MEMORY
Lorenzo Papanti
Italy, 2022, 6’
The architectures represent the solid memory of the mankind: their monumental forms express the culture, sensitivity and technique of the society that built them. They enclose spiritual and functional spaces and show us their mute facade through time. “Expanded_memory” is created using an algorithm that processes the images of architecture in a continuous flow, like memory, an uninterrupted process that is renewed through societies and men. Fragments of architectures are digitally expanded in an automatic attempt to complete their construction: the result is the dissolution of the volumes in a new abstract configuration, dematerialized in a continuous and limitless form. Space and time merge as in a faded memory, the memory of all humanity.
THE SHORTEST RELATIONSHIP IN THE WORLD
Xiaoxuan Han
China, 2023, 1’
This may be the shortest relationship in the world.
ROBERT CAHEN SPECIAL
ROBERT CAHEN
I PART WORKS
Friday 29 september h. 17.30 – Auditorium San Micheletto, Lucca
- 7 visions fugitives, 1995, 35 mn
- Arabie Felix – Yémen un goût d’éternité (sous titré en italien), 2022, 38mn
- Sanaa, passage en noir, 2007, 7mn
ROBERT CAHEN
AWARD TO ROBERT CAHEN (by Sandra Lischi) and II PART WORKS
Saturday 30 september h. 17.30 – Auditorium San Micheletto, Lucca
- Karine, 1976, 8mn
- Juste le temps, 1983, 13mn
- Voyage d’hiver, 1993, 18mn
- Kosmos:the uncertainty, 2018, 11mn di Cahen – Guzmàn – Hirsch
- Sign, 2021, 10mn
- Blind Song, 2008, 4mn
SPECIAL EVENTS
LAETITIA KY presents DISCO BOY
Monday 25 september h. 17.30 – Auditorium San Micheletto, Lucca
The artist Laetitia Ky presents the movie
DISCO BOY
Giacomo Abbruzzese, France, Italy, Poland, Belgium, 2023, 92’, col.
IL FUTURO È OBSOLETO: 31 ANNI DI CANECAPOVOLTO
Thursday 28 september h. 17.30 – Auditorium San Micheletto, Lucca
To follow OVER THE REAL OUT
MASTERCLASS
Friday 29 september h. 10 – Auditorium Banca Del Monte, Lucca
Fashion Film, nuove visioni della moda
By Alessandro Amaducci and Eleonora Manca
Saturday 30 september h. 10 – Auditorium San Micheletto, Lucca
Ascoltare l’atmosfera: un nuovo approccio alla musica elettronica
By Marco Ricci Del Mastro
