Kinodot International Competition 2020

The 8th experimental film festival Kinodot will take place online. The show will start on 22nd of May at 00:00 Moscow time (5pm May 21 NYC time), and will run for 5 days. Each day at 00:00 Moscow time we will publish a new program and it will be available for 24 hours on our website.

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We selected 24 movies from around the world, and by the end of the festival the best film will be awarded by our professional jury.

Program 1

The Lake and The Lake

by Sindhu Thirumalaisamy, India/USA, 2019, 38’

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The Lake and The Lake dwells in the peripheries of Bellandur lake in Bangalore, "India's Silicon Valley", where the act of observation is interrupted by flying foam,  noxious gases, daydreams, and questions from passers-by. Despite its spectacular toxicity, the lake remains a valuable resource and refuge for counterpublics. Standing alongside fishing communities, migrant waste workers, private security guards, street dogs, and children, it is evident that there is no nature that doesn't also include all of us.

Communal

by Marina Smorodinova, France, 2019, 15’

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A kommunalka in a city center of Saint-Petersburg : seven rooms, a shared kitchen, long corridors. Between yesterday and today: a few hours of the life of its inhabitants.

Serial Parallels

by Max Hattler, Hong Kong, 2019, 9’

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This experimental animation approaches Hong Kong’s built environment from the conceptual perspective of celluloid film, by applying the technique of film animation to the photographic image. The city’s signature architecture of horizon-eclipsing housing estates is reimagined as parallel rows of film strips: Serial Parallels.

Bab Sebta

by Randa Maroufi, Morocco, Spain, 2019, 19’

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Bab Sebta is a series of reconstructions of situations observed in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on Moroccan soil.
This place is the scene of a traffic of manufactured goods and sold at a discount.
Thousands of people work there every day.

Medusa and The Abyss

by Felicity Palma, USA, 2019, 11’

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Notions of belonging and the ethics of travel are questioned through female rite and ritual, pointing at the pervasive and contradictory presence of history and myth in present-day Sicily.

Program 2

The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland

by Karrabing Film Collective, Australia, 2018, 27’.

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Aiden is one of the stolen generation, now he has come back, in order to wander the land, and find the future in his past. When he is forcibly expelled from “the institution,” he wanders a country in ruins. He finds state workers in hazmat suits hunting down Indigenous youth in order to return them to “the mud,” a bubbling inferno of tubes and pain. 

California on Fire

by Jeff Frost, USA, 2018, 25’

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California on Fire utilizes time, sound, and the catastrophic effects of climate change as a backdrop to examine loss. Each of the film's five chapters are based on the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance. To create California on Fire, artist Jeff Frost trained as a firefighter, gained full access to more than 70 wildfires, and shot over 350,000 photos from 2014 to 2019. It has been featured in PBS Newshour, TIME Magazine, National Geographic, and Artnet.

Engagement Rate Formula 

by Adrián Melis, Spain, 2019, 10’

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Engagement Rate Formula is a video in which Melis proposes a serial production of social media’s Like icons made out of plaster material. Once the 500 likes has been reached, those are packed in boxes in order to be sent by postal mail to the Moira refugee camp, in Lesbos island, Greece. 

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* The engagement rate is used to measure the level of interaction by followers from content created by a user. It is calculated as total engagement divided by total followers, multiplied by 100.

Laika

by Julius Continental, Germany, 2020, 13’

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Laika is in a state of inner turmoil and her perspective on nature, surrounding her both physically and medially, is shifted.
A vision of intimacy lets her calm down.

Drop City

by Peter Burr, USA, 2019, 7’

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Drop City is a portrait of a computer desktop community. It takes its name from the first rural hippy commune in America, a settlement in southern Colorado that formed in 1965 constructed of discarded junk, salvaged car tops, and other detritus fashioned into inventive living structures. A decade later Drop City was completely abandoned. Nothing is left of it today.

Program 3

People on Sunday

by Tulapop Saenjaroen, Thailand, 2020, 20’

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Episodic stories of moving-image-related workers who are employed in the same performance-art-video project about free time.

Blue 

by Ann Oren, Germany, 2019, 5’

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How to overcome the locked-in syndrome of the computer screen? A meditative reflection on the urban jungle with the color blue as the main protagonist. It is the third installment in an ongoing series of Ann Oren's Video Journals.

Ink in Milk 

by Gernot Wieland, Germany, Austria, 2018, 12’

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Twelve minutes unfold a whole life: in sketches, metaphor-rich picture sequences, drawings and sculptures, Wieland resurrects the disturbing world of a child, tells of darkness in the light; of the illness schizophrenia. Mixing different materials is a central motif of Wieland's painting, both as a visual artist and filmmaker.

An Apple, Three Toasts, a Yoghurt 

by Anita Čeko, Croatia, 2019, 8’

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An apple, three slices of dry toast, a yoghurt, and an athletic track from the director's very old diary entries evoke in her memories of important moments in her life.

Clean with Me (After Dark) 

by Gabrielle Stemmer, France, 2019, 21’

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On YouTube, hundreds of women film themselves doing housework in their homes.

Do It Again 

by Curtis Miller, USA 2018 9’

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A meditation on anticipation and falling, Do It Again combines three moments of shared looking at Chicago's Marina City; the climactic scene from Buzz Kulik's The Hunter, a re-enactment for an All-State commercial, and a tight-rope walk of Nik Wallenda.

Tell me

by Azar Saiyar, Finland, 2019, 7’

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A narrator asks: “Do you know this bird?”. The video quotes both public and private archival images in which birds are in the centre – birds as individual living beings but also as creatures habiting the world and stories created by humans. 

Program 4

They Parlaient Idéale

by Laure Prouvost, France, Belgium, Italy, 2019, 29’

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They Parlaient Idéale reflects on what it means to be a citizen of a nation, especially when one's identity is rather ambiguous. A cross-generational and interracial cast of performers embark on a road trip from Grigny, a suburb of Paris, to the French pavilion at the Venice Biennial. Edited in Prouvost's signature feverish style, she seizes the viewer's attention by her singular use of wordplay and cheeky political commentary.

The Tortoise and the Hare

by Pikkov Ülo, Estonia, 2020, 9’

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A story of a mother and son and the race against a turtle where you always lose.

Spontaneous 

by Lori Felker, USA, 2019, 14’

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You never know when someone is miscarrying; it could be happening right next to you.

My Galactic Twin Galaction

by Sasha Svirsky, Russia, 2020, 7’

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Good and evil, utopia and dystopia, narrative and post narrative collide in a mortal battle for fun to the audience.

Blue Honda Civic

by Jussi Eerola, Finland, 2020 11’

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The romantic landscape paintings often portrayed weather condition, topography of national landscape, religious themes, spirituality of nature and hunting scenes.
Blue Honda Civic is a minimalistic road movie mirroring the emotions of the driver through the landscapes (s)he has chosen to look at.

Rise 

by Bárbara Wagner, Benjamin De Burca, Canada, 2019, 20’

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In the underground spaces of the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) new subway extension, a group of poets, rappers, singers, and musicians negotiate their status as both first- and second-generation Torontonians as well as settlers living on borrowed Indigenous land. Featuring participants from R.I.S.E. (Reaching Intelligent Souls Everywhere) EDUTAINMENT—an event that takes place weekly in Toronto’s suburban community centres—RISE adopts the concept of Edutainment as a tool for the film’s structure and script.