Based on the found-footage anonymous five-hour documentary, To Watch the War (2018), this film is thus a second-degree artistic appropriation of amateur footage shot during the war in the Donbass region of Ukraine, recombined into a surreal anti-war film-poem — authored by Kavelina herself. The war videos are interspersed with the director’s own animated segments, staged mise-en-scènes, and archival footage of the Donbass from the 1930s (when the region became a hotspot for Stalinist industrialization of the Soviet Union, and of heated class warfare) onwards.
March 14, 2022, the 2,944th day of the Russian-Ukrainian War. In the last few weeks, intense warfare has surreally mixed places and people and created a post-apocalyptic dimension revealing new qualities and roles. Thousands of Kyivans have moved to live in subway stations. The capital city’s previously calm suburbs have been transformed into battle zones of destruction and looting by Russian occupiers.
Ukrainian reality is divided into two periods — before and after the war. In the nationwide resistance, every citizen tries to be helpful. Ukrainians change professions and adapt to wartime needs. Sculptors fabricate anti-tank obstacles in their art workshops. Just like the Terracotta Army, silent figures of Ukrainian personalities, angels, Cossacks, and multiple copies of Jesus Christ are frozen in anticipation of new creations. Craftsmen weld metal defense items for the Armed Forces of Ukraine
In 2022, Mantas Kvedaravičius went back to Ukraine, Mariupol, at the heart of the war, to be with the people he had met and filmed in 2015. Following his death, his producers and collaborators have put all their strength into continuing transmitting his work, his vision and his films. With huge force and sensitivity, the film depicts life as it continues amidst the bombing and reveals images that convey both tragedy and hope.
While doing his job as a street sweeper, Juanjo Navas went through the street named after the poet Blas de Otero, one of the great XX Century lyric authors and an emblem of the fight against the Francoist Dictatorship. By chance he discovered his verses and, with the assistance of the Blas de Otero Foundation, he decided to turn them into flamenco. This documentary follows the steps of that encounter between poetry and flamenco in a city, Bilbao, which is scene and catalyst.
Written two weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This drama conjures up playwright Andrii Bondarenko’s life in Ukraine: the peace and tranquillity of his boyhood — bookended by historical traumas, revolutions and war.
A compendium of short films that highlight the full tragedy that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It charts the course of the Russian progression across the country through the lives and communities of those affected by the wide-scale aggression, alongside those fighting for their land. It also details the force of the assault, but its primary focus lies with the strength of the communities that have had to endure unimaginable hardships but who remain resilient in the face of such oppression. It joins an increasing number of ground-level films documenting the reality of this modern tragedy.
Mid-crisis, the employees of MEGESA (Sevilla), Battenfeld, Fisam, Eursotil, Roselson (Barcelona) and Babcock & Wilcox (Bizkaia) give their testimony. The economic crisis leads to redundancies, closure of factories, and layoffs. The trade unions emerge, but the agreements they reach with the Spanish government do not satisfy the workers. Assemblies, marches, traffic-stops and calls for solidarity assail the country, and the first general strike since the death of France is organised in the Basque Country.
A film essay on race and civil disorder in 1980s Britain and the inner city riots of 1985, as point of departure the civil disturbances of September and October 1985 in the Birmingham district of Handsworth and in the urban centres of London. Running throughout the film is the idea that the riots were the outcome of a protracted suppression by British society of black presence. The film portrays civil disorder as an opening onto a secret history of dissatisfaction that is connected to the national drama of industrial decline.
A new critical look at the militant cinema of the 1960s in Europe, that focusses on the disruptive potential of women in the film genre. The structure of the film is based on a reassessment of the story “Klara eta biok” (Klara and Me, 1985) by the Basque writer Itxaro Borda. Confronting the author with her words from the past, it aims to provide an updated critical perspective on the Basque militant identity.
An experiment in working together and a film about the future. The collaboration began with the discovery of a sunken slave ship, and an artist asking a philosopher — how do we get to the post-human without technology? And the philosopher replying — maybe we can make a film without time. The result is a video that speaks from inside the cut between slavery and resource extraction, between Black Lives Matter and the matter of life, between the state changes of elements, timelessness and tarot. Together we ask: what becomes of the human if expressed by the elements?
The film uses experimental forms to look at life in Britain in 1984, focusing on the experience of the Black British. It recognises that the different power dynamics that determine this experience are difficult to reduce to straightforward explanations and instead uses the term “territories” to reflect the multiple agendas and experiences at work. These agendas — or territories — involve race, class and sexuality.
