New Perspectives
The essay films in this block represent new directions within contemporary essay filmmaking. Both emerging and established filmmakers engage in an essayistic exploration of urgent themes such as environmental collapse, copyright law, and the housing crisis.
These films speak from situated perspectives, often both personal and political, and find their expression in the fragmentary, poetic, and hybrid possibilities of the essay film. Desktop recordings, negative film, archival footage, field recordings, voice-over: these are not merely techniques, but ways of thinking through a subject from within.
- 16 September
- 10:15
- Kijkhuis, Cinema 2
A poetic reflection on artificial light and the disappearance of night. In this imagined future, nature flickers in pink and black – disrupted, studied, and slowly fading.
“The enduring material bond between soil and soul”; entanglement of the earth’s materiality and the inner world, poetically reflected upon by a young Czechian artist.
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Mariam Jafri vs. Maryam Jafri explores identity and authorship through a sculptural work that shifts from object to photo to video, each stage marked by superimposed watermarks. Jafri's self-reflection questions the commodification of art and the fluidity of value in a global context.
Exploring industrial decline’s lingering impact through past trauma – Haunted, the Hollow reflects on memory, community, and the uncertainty of the future.
How can one travel the world by still staying put? The journey of discovering the story behind a poster hanging at an African barbershop’s window.
The Southern Thruway weaves a personal story about housing precarity with the political idea of belonging, exploring themes of uncertainty, forced collectivity, transcience, and unconventional love.
