Curtocircuíto presents 46 films in the Official Section

[14.09.2018] Curtocircuíto will present 46 films that make up its Official Section for this 15th edition, with 19 in Radar (dedicated to films that capture new trends in international films) and 27 in Explora (which includes new film languages, pieces that dilute the usual ideas of the cinema). With this selection, the Festival delves deeper into its search for works guided by the risk, with an exploratory spirit that spans diverse approaches and genres, both within fiction films and documentaries, including animation and experimental films more like the Fine Arts. This diversity is also transferred to the place of origin of the films, bringing together artists from 21 different countries aged between 24 years with Frenchman Pablo Dury and 71 years with German-born Helga Fanderl. 18 of these films will be seen for the first time in Spain in the Curtocircuíto venues, which will also host the world premiere of Life After Love, by Zachary Epcar.

Cops Are Actors, Tova Mozard (2017)

Radar: Ethnography, youth and psychedelia

Radar is the showcase for current trends in the most alternative independent films, where new perspectives and unique conceptions in cinema emerge from the most risky proposals. This is the case of Tova Mozard, Director of Cops Are Actors, who approaches the Los Angeles police force from the brink between a documentary and fiction. Also on the edge, but based on real events, the psychedelic ethnography of Clément Cogitore in Braguino dials it up a notch to portray the problems of a Russian community with the increase of hunters in the area. New perspectives that question the established system, as in the case of the Oscar nominee Don Hertzfeldt in World of Tomorrow Episode Two; current sexuality and youth, such as the hedonistic viewpoint of adolescence by Leonardo Mouramateus and Andreia Pires in Vando Vulgo Vedita; or absolutely everything, like the nihilistic viewpoint of the purely aesthetic reality of Jeron Braxton in Glucose. However, Radar also has room for more positive views of reality, such as the work by Nicolas Boone in Las Cruces, where relying on the theory of the butterfly effect, the film unfolds a formal bid that reaches the essence of the inhabitants of a violent neighborhood in Bogotá, and the reflection on the intimacy of the family from the domestic images of Alexei Dmitriev in In Between Takes, and the apology of romantic love in the magical forests of Les Amoreux by Pablo Dury. Also along these lines is Alberto Martín Menacho, the only Spanish filmmaker in this competition, who films the vital rites of a community in a small village.

The films that can be seen in Radar are:

• Braguino | Clément Cogitore | Francia, Finlandia | 2017

• Caroline | Logan George, Celine Held | Estados Unidos | 2018

• Cops Are Actors | Tova Mozard | Suecia | 2017

• Das satanische Dickicht - DREI | Willy Hans | Alemaña | 2018

• Fauve | Jérémy Comte | Canadá | 2017

• Glucose | Jeron Braxton | Estados Unidos | 2017

• In Between Takes | Alexei Dmitriev | Rusia | 2017

• Las Cruces | Nicolas Boone | Francia | 2018

• Las fuerzas | Paola Buontempo | Arxentina | 2018

• Les amoureux | Pablo Dury | Francia | 2018

• Mi amado, las montañas | Alberto Martín Menacho | España, Suiza | 2017

• Miragem Meus Putos | Diogo Baldaia | Portugal | 2017

• Real Gods Require Blood | Moin Hussain | Reino Unido | 2017

• Saladdin Castique | Anssi Kasitonni | Finlandia | 2018

• Solar Walk | Réka Bucsi | Dinamarca | 2018

• Terremoto santo | Bárbara Wagner, Benjamin de Burca | Brasil | 2017

• Uuquchiing | Kevin Noguès | Francia | 2018

• Vando vulgo Vedita | Leonardo Mouramateus, Andreia Pires | Brasil | 2017

• World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts | Don Hertzfeldt | Estados Unidos | 2018

Wishing Well, Sylvia Schedelbauer (2018)

Explora: New roads to new places

If Radar contains the new trends in independent films, Explora represents that exploring spirit of Curtocircuíto, always in search of new roads. This section centres around works that break away from the usual ideas of the cinema, taking it to new places through 27 films that cover a diversity of resources almost impossible to comprehend. In this way, there are abstract films that work with light and shadows, but there are also filmed diaries or radical reappropriations that dialogue with other audiovisual works (including the mythical Dynasty series). Other films propose sensory experiments designed for the physical experience in the cinema (such as At the Horizon, by Takashi Makino and Manuel Knapp), and also included in Explora will be several examples of this growing trend to play with new image values ​such as videogames, closed circuit television and even images from Google Earth and Street View that are the basis for Via, by Maria Ferreira.

This zest for exploration design-wise is also replicated in time and place, taking these works on a journey through different natural places and historical moments, with Deborah Stratman filming one of the hubs of gold fever in the 19th century and Tinne Zenner dealing with Danish colonisation in Greenland. In the forefront among the names in the section, and also, bona fide outstanding figures in experimental films are Helga Fanderl and artists like Akosua Adoma Owusu, famous for his work focusing on racial identity; the American James N. Kienitz Wilkins, who already won the Curtocircuíto Explora Award in 2016; and British-born Ben Rivers, who is premiering in Spain Trees Down Here, focused on the architectural transformation of a historic building.

Films in Explora:

• 20160815 | Tina Frank | Austria | 2016

• At the Horizon | Manuel Knapp, Takashi Makino | Austria | 2018    

• Blink | Youjin Moon | Estados Unidos | 2017    

• Electro-Pythagorus: a Portrait of Martin Bartlett | Luke Fowler | Reino Unido, Canadá | 2017

• Konfiguration schwarz und weiss (Configuration in Black and White) | Helga Fanderl | Alemaña | 2017

• Life After Love | Zachary Epcar | Estados Unidos | 2018    

• Mahogany too | Akosua Adoma Owusu | Estados Unidos, Ghana | 2018

• Mediums | James N. Kienitz Wilkins | Estados Unidos | 2017

• Mixed Signals | Courtney Stephens | Estados Unidos | 2018

• Momentum 142310 | Manuel Knapp | Austria | 2018

• Monelle | Diego Marcon | Italia | 2017

• Mountain Plain Mountain | Araki Yu, Daniel Jacoby | España, Xapón, Países Baixos | 2018

• Nutsigassat | Tinne Zenner | Groenlandia, Canadá, Dinamarca | 2018

• Optimism | Deborah Stratman | Estados Unidos, Canadá | 2018

• Phantom Ride Phantom | Siegfried A. Fruhauf | Austria | 2017

• Screen | Christoph Girardet, Matthias Müller | Alemaña | 2018    

• Skoro nista: i dalje noc (Almost Nothing: So Continues the Night) | Davor Sanvincenti | Croacia | 2017

• Sky Room | Marianna Milhorat | Estados Unidos | 2017

• Sombra luminosa | Francisco Queimadela, Mariana Caló | Portugal | 2018

• Taking away | Eginhartz Kanter | Austria, Xapón | 2018

• The Garden of Delight | Michael Fleming | Países Baixos, Estados Unidos | 2017

• Three paths | Alexander Dupuis | Estados Unidos | 2017

• Trees Down Here | Ben Rivers | Reino Unido | 2018

• Uluru | Alberte Pagán | España | 2018

• Via | Maria Ferreira | Portugal | 2017

• Wishing Well | Sylvia Schedelbauer | Alemaña | 2018

• Word for Forest | Pia Rönicke | Dinamarca | 2018