ZINEBI Txiki is the place for younger audiences to discover short films: their variety of forms and ways of narrating, and with a beauty and complexity for which there is not always a place on mainstream screens.
The films in this selection are very different from each other and that is where their meaning lies. Each one takes the audience on a journey, though not necessarily to far-flung places: they may go to unknown or seldom visited spots of the viewer’s imagination.
There is a conviction underpinning this section: a taste for cinema is cultivated and that learning process being early. Introducing new generations to others ways of making and telling stories is also helping to ensure those films will have an audience tomorrow.
The session will also be an opportunity for many of them to discover a space as steeped in history as the Arriaga Theatre. The screen, the venue and the shared audience experience are also part of that shaping of the viewer.
A Day in the West is an anthological 3D animated short film that narrates the daily lives of different cacti through funny situations that anyone can relate to.
Death’s patience is tested as his sweet and gentle apprentice appears incapable of the task, leading him to seek professional help from the most unlikely of places.
In the middle of nowhere, Rufi, an elderly woman who lives with a taxidermied dog and spends her days gambling online, has made indifference to the outside world her way of life. But her routine is disrupted by Bob, a hippie neighbour who has turned his motorhome into a private jungle. Amidst invasive plants, strange incense and fruit thrown with dubious intent, Rufi’s insular world begins to transform in a way that is as fascinating as it is unsettling.
In a quiet stop-motion studio, a small monkey awakens. Everything is frozen. A glowing jungle flickers on-screen, almost alive. With two friends, it builds its own from scraps: an imagined forest, their only escape.
When I was a child, I often heard that "man can conquer nature." Today, I know that nature as a whole can never be conquered. Fortunately!
A yellow and blue day in the life of a little child.
