A mother confronts her child’s first encounter with death by retreating into the impossible logic of old cartoons.
My uncle Doug died in 1997 from AIDS. His death led directly to my birth. In that way, I sort of owe everything to him. This is the story of the uncle who I have never met but whose ripples of legacy live on in every breath I take.
Electric Birds exposes the anthropocentric filters through which we perceive our environment. The film contrasts nature and civilization, capturing landscapes in transition, where forests become timber and power lines cut through the sky. Shifting between the perspectives of bird, camera, and human, the film pulls the viewer into a parallel world of archaic existence. Through a condensation of the senses, familiar visual orders dissolve, moving closer to the birds' frequency.
Hegemonic shouting booms from an old radio. Propaganda plays the march of war and the people applaud. Regardless, an old woman does what she has always done in autumn: she heats the stove, prepares herbs and spices, boils water, and sets out preserving jars. With her powerful lungs, she blows discipline and order out of sync. Without further ado, the old woman preserves the source of evil between tarragon and dill. Winter can come.
Bilbao, August 1983. Torrential rain causes the estuary to burst its banks and plunges the city into chaos, but the High club keeps its doors open. Although power failures and instability outside intermittently disrupt its activities, some men continue to meet, sustained by this temporary refuge and haven of desire. Little by little, the boundary between inside and outside becomes blurred: water begins to seep in, puddles form and the constant sound of rain invades the club, revealing a reality that can no longer be kept at bay.
A foreigner comes to a Moldovan village looking for a meteorite that fell nearby, as life there flows at its own pace.
After the Los Angeles wildfires, thousands of homes remain standing, yet contaminated with toxic ash. Many insurers tell residents their homes are habitable, leaving them with an impossible choice: Should they risk their health to return home? Shot from the inside of toxic homes on 16mm film, Still Standing considers what it means to survive one disaster only to face another.
