 |
|
| |
 |
The 16th International Festival
Signes de Nuit
Bangkok
Thaïland
June 2 - 10, 2018
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
****** |
|
AWARD CELEBRATION
Short Film Competition
June 2 - 10, 2018
Thai Film Archive
Reading Room
Bangkok / Thailand
|
|
Short film Competition
Main Award
The Good Education
Gu Yu
|
ASIA PREMIERE
|
The Good Education
Gu Yu
Irland, China
2017 | 0:29:00
The school year is coming to an end for Peipei, an aspiring artist from Henan. Abandoned by her parents and treated as a scapegoat by her classmates and teachers, this wild flower has never conformed to the rules of an institution.
|
|
Jury Statement :
Screened as part of the short film competition section, the film adds
more confusions to the audiences’ already bafflement whether what they
are seeing is real incident or an immaculately staged, scripted
performance. Yet this blurring of real and fiction so effectively
works to the film’s benefit. The Good Education and its teenage
protagonist, Pei Pei, take us to the underseen world of art education
in China, the world that is so magical and surreal even more than any
artworks produced by its students. The contrast between the notion of
the supposedly unlimited creativity typically associated with artists
and the disciplinary constrain imposed on the disciples is keenly
observed and wonderfully captivating. With her perceptive eyes, Gu Yu
masterfully extracts the indescribable beauty out of the murky,
diffuse mess of reality. Definitely the filmmaker to watch.
|
Director Statement :
|
| |
Special Mention
Gaze
Negah
Farmoosh Samadi
|
|
THAILAND PREMIERE
|
Gaze
Negah
Farmoosh Samadi
Iran
2017 | 0:14:28
On her way back from work a woman witnesses something happening in the bus and she has to decide if she reveals it or not.
|
|
Jury Statement :
Sometimes people flee the banality of reality to the excitement of
cinema, but Gaze points to other possibility. Excitingly simple or
simply exciting but never banal, Farmoosh Samadi skillfully creates a
simple scene of going home yet with subtle, implicit suspense. Danger
is always around the corner, offscreen, outside the frame. Samadi’s
well-balanced treatment of ordinariness and thriller element is
fascinating to watch.
|
|
 |
Signs Award
Bonobo
Zoel Aeschbacher |
| The Signs Award honors films, which treat an important subject in an
original, convincing and surprising way. |
|
ASIA PREMIERE
|
Bonobo
Zoel Aeschbacher
Switzerland
2017 | 0:19:00
A mosaic of interrelated characters living in the same social housing project and all in search of happiness, forgiveness and meaning.
|
|
Jury Statement :
Intricate and accidental relations of residents of a neglected
suburban social housing reveals more and deeper social problems. A
clever plot is executed in such an effective manner that audience feel
for all the protagonists that are a victim of circumstance.
|
| |
| |
Special Mentions for The Signs Award
Salvation
Thóra Hilmarsdóttir
Sub Terrae
Nayra Sanz Fuentesn |
|
ASIA PREMIERE
|
Salvation
Thóra Hilmarsdóttir
Irland, Sweden
2017 | 0:20:00
Katrín wakes up in the hospital after a serious car accident to find
that she has received a life-saving blood transfusion. However, the
religious cult she belongs to forbids such things. As Katrín struggles
to reconcile this conflict with her church and family, she begins to
become obsessed with the stranger whose blood is now flowing through
her veins.
|
|
Jury Statement :
Breathtaking beautiful landscapes juxtaposed with a suffocating domestic scenery, « Salvation » offers the tragic struggle of a woman against social restraints imposed by her family and other social institutions. In spite of the calmness deliberately exuded by its cinematography, the film demonstrates in a touching way the great importance of individual protest in the contemporary world.
|
|
THAILAND PREMIERE
|
Sub Terrae
Nayra Sanz Fuentesn
Spain
2017 | 0:07:00
A picture of the future, taken in the present, offering a glimpse of our fate if we remain quagmired in this system. hot in Rumichaca Market in Bogotá, this film looks at plants from a different perspective: their relationship with the cosmos and the Colombian countryside.
|
|
Jury Statement :
Strikingly awesome camerawork evokes eery feeling,
anticipating an apocalypse.
|
|
 |
Night Award
Recover
Dirk de Bruyn
|
| The Night Award honors films, which are able to balance ambiguity and
complexity characterized by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness,
which keeps mind and consideration moving. |
|
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
|
Recover
Dirk de Bruyn
Australia
2017 | 0:08:29
“Recover” is one one side a fundamental testimony of experimental film
making, which traditionally follows non-narrative purposes, on the
other side an attempt to present a history of cinema, from the first
days up to now, to its predicted end and resurrection in another –
digital - form. De Bruyn collected and accumulated footages of
disposed or soon been extincted fragments of celluloid films. He
revived them without further transformations. The sound is preserved
in its actual state, and seems in this way even more sophisticated
than in its original forms.
|
|
Jury Statement :
|
Director Statement :
I am indebted to the festival for this encouragement. I extract my
pleasure from trying to talk about hidden and ambiguous issues in
subtle ways that somehow address this new technological situation we
find ourselves in. Now I can delude myself with the belief that I am
making headway in this. Again, this really helps keep me going.
|
| |
| |
Special Mention for The Night Award
From the Dark Dephts
Kiri Dalena
3 Dreams of Horses
Mike Hoolboom |
|
|
From the Dark Dephts
Kiri Dalena
Philippinnes
2017 | 0:27:00
A woman mourns the drowning of a young communist revolutionary that took place years ago. She sinks into herself and recreates a story that coalesces memory, delirium, and forgetting.
|
|
Jury Statement :
With a combination of stunningly beautiful
underwater performance scene and an amateur video footage of what
seems to be communist insurgents, it has successfully created an
aesthetic of political landscape.
|
Director Statement :
I write on behalf of my cast and crew to send our utmost gratitude for
being included in your short film section for 2018. And to the
International Jury, thank you for the Special Mention for the Night
Award that you have bestowed on our film. It is our first award
outside of the Philippines. Awards and citations in our home country
and abroad gives our often marginalized short form films the
opportunity to expand And diversify with regards to platforms and
audiences. For this we are truly grateful. |
ASIA PREMIERE
|
3 Dreams of Horses
Mike Hoolboom
Canada
2018 |0:05:30
Film is made out of gelatin that comes from horses. They’re waiting to be slaughtered, so that pictures can be made. Many years ago we learned the language of our masters. Though we couldn’t help wondering why so few of you bothered to learn ours. Three scenes featuring horses, remembering Jacinto. The first is a daytime forest haunting that winds up at a carousel, the second a rainy street in Portugal, the finale a nighttime vigil of fire and water. A triptych in which the figure of the horse becomes a medium for meditation on its various incarnations as symbol, domesticated animal for human domination, and its abstract power as spirit.
|
|
Jury Statement :
While sleep couldn’t give you a dream like this, Mike Hoolboom could.
The film itself is like an enigmatic dream, if only the real dream
could be this sublime!
|
|
|
