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The Awards of the Short Film and Cinema in Transgression Sections |
AWARD CEREMONY
Sunday 14 December 14th, 2014 / 10 pm
Maison de la Norvège / Cité universitaire / Paris
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THE MAIN AWARD
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Simon Gillard
Belgium
2013 | 0:20:00
Yaar, in the heart of the bush where the gravel is hollowed, a stubborn civilisation hunts out its future below the earth's surface. Blind, or perhaps all too seeing, they dig away, night and day, spurred on by the madness that drives man to his death.
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Jury Declaration:
For its enormous artistic imagery that flowed in a very strong yet subtle structure to give us a deep and intimate insight on the mining industry by showing the everyday danger these families and children are exposed to in their struggle for a living.
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Director's Comment:
Un immense merci au jury de SIGNES DE NUIT, merci d'avoir vu YAAR avec les sens grands ouverts, je suis très heureux que le film vous ai touché. Cette nomination me pousse très fort dans le projet que j'ai aujourd'hui de développer ce type de cinéma sensoriel et de réaliser mon troisième film, le troisième opus du triptyque entamé l'année passée avec ANIMA puis YAAR. Ce projet s'appelle 'VOIR' j'espère qu'il aura la chance d'être vu dans votre beau festival. VIVE SIGNES DE NUIT, VIVE PARIS, VIVE LE CINEMA. |
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MENTION FOR THE MAIN AWARD
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Halla Kim
South Korea
2013 | 0:23:08
While feeling sympathy for him, a man feels burdened by his old and lonely uncle. He decides to find another place for his uncle to live. The man’s plan is to have his uncle fake senility, so that the uncle will be accepted into a facility, reserved for the elderly who have no friends or family
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Jury Declaration:
Through humor and irony together with a sober treatment, this short fiction points out the increasing and preoccupying issue of inter-generational fracture -- showing how the elderly are treated as burdens.
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THE SIGNS AWARD
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The Signs Award is attributed to films treating an important subject in an original, convincing and surprising way.
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Lukasz Konopa
Great Britain
2013 | 0:25:00
In the middle of the Mojave Desert, a city of neon shimmers like a mirage. But the closer you get, the more you see through the false image. The glitz, glamour and gambling are all just smoke and mirrors. At the peak of the economic crisis, three Las Vegas residents find their luck has run dry and struggle just to get by.
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Jury Declaration:
By pointing out the US American neoliberal disaster embodied at home in an artificial urban construction where the inhabitants' basic human needs are economically, psychologically and/or emotionally devastated, this film finds the right and delicate balance between distance and intimacy resulting in a very affective and effective portrait of this city and its state of disease.
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MENTION FO THE SIGNS AWARD
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The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterised by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving.
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Tom Kirkman
Great Britain
2014 | 0:09:20
Process is a documentary that intentionally blurs the line between fact and fiction, investigating the emotions involved in the art of creating, exposing the process of its own production. The film highlights and compares the arguable fragility of the craft of making within the contemporary landscape, with that of the film onto which that craft has been photographically rendered. It explores the relationship between these two endangered mediums, the processes that relate to them, their materiality. the redundancy they may face due to the rise of new media and planned obsolescence, and questions what this means to us as makers.
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Jury Declaration:
for its uplifting depiction of a young idealistic non-conformist resembling the positive drive of youthful rebellion from the Beats to the Punk generation, actively transformed to contemporary days by the playful construction of a world according to his own needs.
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Director's Comment:
It is a great pleasure to have been part of the 12th International Festival Signes de Nuit. And to have our film recognised for the importance of its subject and the way in which we chose to portray that subject is a huge honour! |
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THE NIGHT AWARD
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The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterised by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving.
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Jimmy Hendrickx
Belgium, Malaysia
2013 | 0:15:00
Semalu, which means sensitive plant in Malay, is a cinematic portrait of the abandoned children of Cheras, a suburb in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A place in a process of modernization. Between a noisy landscape of construction works we see the next generation grow up. The ancestors of these children came here to build a new future. 30 years ago this territory was still jungle and swamp. Far away from the jungle this will be be the kids’ new urban residence. Semalu is a dark, yet magical journey along their concrete playground.
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Jury Declaration:
For its powerfully poetic depiction of a lost childhood in a huge, artificial and dehumanized structure of cement and mud. In this monstrous architecture that devours dreams, the director captures and constructs haunting images of a decayed future.
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Director's Comment:
I'm so honoured to get the Night Awards. It was a hard task to get the movie selected as it is balancing between a few genres, docu, fiction, experimental.
The film is actually complete improvised, and filmed in three days. with little directing of the children and a lot of coincidences and magic on the spot i created an essay like walk along the concrete playground of the children. Simon Wasem, the composer of the film witnessed the filming on the field and played the soundscore less than an hour after the recording of the sequences. The film is the first film of a trilogy, where in i try to deliver a magical experience from what is actually real life. The second film "Lamunan Oil! I'm currently finishing in Indonesia. A film on the infant street punks of Java/ Indonesia.
Such a pity i can't be there but like i said i'm now in Indonesia. I wish you good luck tonight and thank you so much for your appreciation of "Semalu".
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MENTION FOR THE NIGHT AWARD
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Seven Times a day we bemoan our lot and at night we get up to avoid dreaming
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Sieben Mal am Tag beklagen wir unser Los und Nachts stehen wir auf,
um nicht zu träumen
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Susann Maria Hempel
Germany
2014 | 0:18:00
A cinematic devotional book. Based on interviews with an unemployable sufferer (and his fellows), living in the East German countryside, who lost his memory in 1989 and woke up into several nightmares.
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Jury Declaration:
For its virtuosity in its presentation of a rich baroque stop-motion animation, edited at the hallucinated pace of a maniacal episode, to reenact the trauma of sexual abuse with echoes of surprising irony.
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Director's Comment:
Im Deutschen gibt es ein altes Wort für den Albtraum, da steckt noch die Tages- bzw. Nachtzeit drin, in der die bösen Träume ihren Auftritt haben: „Nachtmahr“, ganz nah am englischen „nightmare“. Wenn „Sieben Mal am Tag…“ so albtraumhaft daherkommt, dann ja leider nur deshalb, weil nichts davon geträumt ist - d.h., meine eigenen Albträume sind ein Witz im Vergleich zu der Verstümmelungsgeschichte eines Menschen, der ja kaum anders kann, als sich innerhalb seiner eigenen Normalität zu bewegen. Die Tage sind deshalb verheerender als die Nächte, weil sie uns vorführen, wie „daneben“ wir sind, der Welt ganz abhanden gekommen. Wenn es aber dunkel wird, hocken wir uns zusammen und fangen mit dem Sprechen an: damit es heller wird, mindestens! (... der Glühwürmchen-Code: drei mal kurz, drei mal lang, drei mal kurz = S.O.S.)
In the German language there is an old word for nightmare (Alptraum), evoking the day- and nighttimes, in which even dreams coming up, near to the English "nightmare". If "Sieben Mal am Tag…" seems to be like a nightmare, then only, because nothing in it is dreamed, this means, my own nightmares are just a joke in comparison to this history of concision of a human being, who can't do anything else as to act in his own normality. The days therefore are more devastating as the nights, because they show us, how far out we are, lost for the rest of the world. But when it gets dark, we squatting together and start to speak: that more lightness appears, at least! (the code of the glow-worm, three times short, three times long, three times short = S. O. S.) |
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Cinema in Transgression Section
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THE MAIN AWARD
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Miron: A Man Returned From Outside the World
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Simon Beaulieu
Canada
2014 | 1:15:00
A visual spectacle that pays tribute to the Quiet Revolution, which effectively secularised Quebec, and one of the province’s greatest poets, the late Gaston Miron, a key figure of the Revolution. Director Simon Beaulieu has created a pastiche of archival footage from the National Film Board of Canada, offering a glimpse into the political and social turmoil generated by the nationalist and independence movements of the sixties, and scenes of life and industry. Excerpts from Miron’s poetry and speeches place his voice at the centre of the film, as a rousing prophetic figure championing separatism, Quebec’s people, and hope for the continued survival of its culture and spirit.
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Jury Declaration:
For its strong political and poetic approach in presenting the advocacy and struggle for independence over several decades of the French-Canadian people of Quebec represented by the activist-poet Gaston Miron. The director manages to depict Miron's life as an important public figure in a way that captures the spirit, the beat, and the poetry of those times. This film is inspiring and galvanizing -- a must-see as a reminder for the people about the importance and the power of art and activism going hand in hand.
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THE SIGNS AWARD
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The Signs Award is attributed to films treating an important subject in an original, convincing and surprising way.
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Suddenly my thoughts halt
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Pára-me de repente o pensamento |
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Jorge Pelicano
Portugal
2014 | 1:40:00
A cuf of coffee, a cigarette. Patients roam the halls. They walk alone. Waiting. Another smoke. Therapies that appeal to the senses. Routines that pull them back to reality. It’s life repeating itself in a psychiatric hospital. From the outside world comes an actor in search of his character for a theatre play, plunging into the inner world of schizophrenia.
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Jury Declaration:
For its quiet and humbling depiction of madness and the patients' struggle to integrate in a society that fails to understand them. At the same time, it does not romanticize the violence that comes with the illness but showcases the patients' search for redemption through the use of artistic imagery and candid confessions by those who have spent decades inside the asylum.
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THE NIGHT AWARD
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The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterised by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving.
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The Green serpent - of Vodka, Men and Distilled Dreams
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Benny Jaberg
Switzerlend, Russia
2013 | 0:20:33
The Green Serpent takes us on a journey into the depths of intoxication: drinking vodka as a transcendental experience. Bitten by the green snake, people enter a twilight zone. The beauty of life becomes indistinguishable from a devastating void where inspiration and destruction equally form. During this cinematic anti-postcard trip through the Russian winterland, we meet the actor Aleksandr Bashirov, the poet Mstislav Biserov and the physicist Nikolai Budnev. They reveal their relationship with vodka; the inner struggles and the pursuit of divine spirits awakened by drinking. This brusque Cinepoem explores the potential of vodka to extend the world beyond religion and materialism. THE GREEN SERPENT is a meditation on drinking, an ode to passion not only for inebriated barflies, but for everyone driven by a sense of wonder and a desire for ecstasy.
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Jury Declaration:
A dreamlike, transgressive ode to alcoholism in a society with a long history of inspirational intoxication. It is a hallucinative ride on the untamable nightmare which can likewise lead to personal destruction and artistic/intellectual inspiration. Yet it is strongly counterbalanced by its sober and cinematic mastery.*
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Director's Comment:
I feel very honored to receive 'The Night Award' for THE GREEN SERPENT – especially after having read the reasons why my film was awarded. It’s a great recognition that encourages me to continue my own artistic path without compromising my vision. The process of the creation of THE GREEN SERPENT was very demanding as a filmmaker, but also as a human being. The train voyage through Russia was frightening at times – not that I would have been scared of the people I had met, but much rather of myself. You can easily lose yourself while drinking loads of vodka... I’m not sure the person I was after after the trip was the same person that embarked on the journey. What an experience! Many thanks to everybody who took part in the making of the film, as well as to the Festival international Signes de Nuit and to the Jury. |
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MENTION SPECIALE POUR LE PRIX DE NUIT
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Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd
Belgium, France
2014 | 1:17:00
On the plateau of Mont Lozère, a sequence of strange images unfolds. Herds of sheep in winter are accompanied by a mysterious figure. Menhirs tower skywards. Savage nature imposes silence. The voices withdraw into themselves, becoming inaudible. A visionary and mystical film that evokes the compassion of the world.
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Jury Declaration:
It is a wandering meditation, an immersion in archaic words/sounds, archaic tradition, archaic suffering captured on archaic celluloid material. The whole film is a hypnotic pagan prayer for the lost that culminates with the final litany of the names to save them from oblivion.
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