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Vever (for Barbara)

Shot at the furthest point of a motorcycle trip Barbara Hammer took to Guatemala in 1975, and stitched through with Maya Deren’s reflections of failure, encounter and initiation in 1950s Haiti, Deborah Stratman’s Vever (For Barbara) is a cross-generational binding of three filmmakers seeking alternative possibilities to power structures they’re inherently part of. Grown out of abandoned film projects of Hammer and Deren, Stratman’s film acts as a vever—a symbolic drawing used in Haitian Voodoo to invoke a Loa, or god—in offering tribute to kindred spirits and radical women of different eras. —Deborah Stratman

Director

Countries

Year

2019

Premiere

Dialogue Language

English

Subtitle Language

Primary Contact

Deborah Stratman

Duration

12 mins

The Prince of Homburg

Patrick Staff’s new work reinterprets 19th century German writer Heinrich von Kleist’s play The Prince of Homburg. The film considers cycles of violence, desire and repression that are embedded in contemporary cultural and political crises. Staff explores dream-like transgressions of law and order and the fraught spaces where queer desires manifest using unconventional filmic structures and experimental techniques. The video cuts together a narration of Kleist’s play with interviews, conversation, found footage, hand-painted animation and song.

In a series of fragmented ‘daytime’ sequences—intercut with flashes of the sun and sky, city streets and text—a range of artists, writers and performers reflect on contemporary queer and trans identity and its proximity to desire and violence. Each of these segments is punctuated by ‘night-time’ diversions, narrated by genderqueer writer Johanna Hedva in the dual role of both narrator and Prince. — Spike Island

Director

Country

Year

2019

Premiere

Primary Contact

Patrick Staff

Duration

24 mins

I Got My Things and Left

Eric is no more. On the eve of his burial, his friends meet at his house to spend the night together—finding solace, sharing stories, and bringing to life memories of their dear friend: a once-singular being in a conformist world.

Director

Countries

Year

2018

Premiere

Dialogue Languages

English Kinyarwanda

Subtitle Language

Primary Contact

Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo

Duration

23 mins

Producer

Simone Späni

Subtitles or a love poem in plain language

Subtitles or a love poem in plain language is about creative acts and their origins, both subconscious and deliberate, from childhood and in what comes after. A silent, single-channel video, it operates on miscombinations of text and image. The text is a series of personal narrations, the images are b/w analog photographs taken over the last few years, and there is no audio to make space for the viewers’ own voices reading in their own heads. —Lesley-Anne Cao

Director

Country

Year

2017

Premiere

Subtitle Languages

Primary Contact

Lesley-Anne Cao

Duration

9 mins

The Golden Legend

Leyenda dorada

A summer day at the swimming pool of the village of Montánchez, Spain. From above, Our Lady of Consolation of the Castle keeps her watchful gaze. —Chema García Ibarra & Ion de Sosa

Director

Country

Year

2019

Premiere

Dialogue Language

Spanish

Subtitle Language

Primary Contact

Chema García Ibarra

Duration

11 mins

Producer

Ion de Sosa