Matter testifies: Film, light and objects, though inanimate, carry the marks of life. Gestures fix themselves in machines, memory lingers in archives, voices flicker in pixels. These films explore how cinema turns material into a witness, where human presence leaves traces that outlive the living. Industrial rhythms, transfeminist reflections, collapsing buildings and even a leopard on set remind us that matter not only holds but speaks, inscribing history, labor and memory into the world. (Boris Hadžija)
The author explores the bond between workers‘ bodies and an aluminum plant, honoring the value of labor. MERGING BODIES traces gestures and materials where human and machine blur, offering a hypnotic gaze that transcends context and resists singular interpretation.
… >>>CN: Flashing Lights A woman, once trapped inside a 35mm frame, is waiting to be seen. Light shapes the image, reproducing a new form of life in this dance of pixels on analogue skin. By working through multiple facets of the cinematic apparatus, ANALOGY OF LIGHT is a transfeminist dissection of a single film frame.
… >>>The filmmaker uncovers her mother’s rebellious youth in conservative postwar Japan and her later emigration to Germany. Filming becomes both a gesture of shared defiance against patriarchal norms and a work of intergenerational remembrance.
… >>>A Mumbai building collapses, tenants film the ruins of their homes. Cinema shifts from celluloid to digital, veterans mourn the loss of their craft. A sweetshop causes gridlock and is demolished. On a soap set, 200 crew members watch a leopard enter and kill a stray dog.
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