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From one day to the next, Meriem takes care of everything and everyone. Meriem, she's my mother

Ynès Yaza-Zerrouk (b. 2005) is a young French documentary filmmaker. She is currently studying at Ateliers Varan.

Nécrose is an essay film that explores the post-apocalyptic remnants of Beirut and the remote landscapes of Lebanon. Blending elements of documentary and surrealism, it narrates the other side of the story of the Genesis by following a man and a woman who awaken in an underground purgatory, trapped in a decayed post-human world where time stands still. Their journey through desolate cityscapes, abandoned ruins, and murky nature blurs the line between reality and nightmare, taking viewers on a cosmic odyssey of consciousness. As the film delves into personal introspection, it ventures into darkness and insanity, immersing audiences in a visceral and disorienting experience. Nécrose is a haunting visual and sensory exploration, inviting viewers to question the nature of existence and to embrace the enigmatic beauty of a world on the brink of collapse. Within the interminable darkness of this temporal landscape, the film becomes an elegy for a displaced spirit, embodied by the director. Like a wandering soul, the camera guides us through a fragmented pilgrimage navigating the shadows of a post-human realm, blurring the boundaries between reality and the director’s own subjective experiences.

François Yazbeck is a Lebanese sound designer, filmmaker, and Doctoral Researcher based in Helsinki. He studied film directing at IESAV, Saint Joseph University of Beirut, and later specialized in sound design and mixing at Aalto University in Helsinki. His debut feature film, Nécrose, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2024. Currently, he is working on his second feature film. François’s films explore themes of oppression, alienation, and fragmented identity shaped by social and political pressures. As a sound designer, he has contributed to Lebanese, Arab, European, and international films.

The film depicts a world in constant motion that opens up when we slumber. Cavernous darkness is a habitat of transit, between worlds and the axis of time . In the heart of this motion, memories, knowledge, sadness and joy will leave their residues without completely disappearing: perhaps they have fallen into another place, another turning of time.

NGUYEN Hai Yen (Red) is a Vietnamese video artist and independent dance producer whose practice focuses on the multidisciplinary approaches which contribute to rethinking about ‘dance’ in Vietnam, creating (safe) spaces for performance practices that don’t fit in any existing system, encouraging artists to explore other possibilities of performance thinking and making. She has been producing various projects supported by the British Council, Goethe Institut, Japan Foundation, Asia Cultural Council, Yayasan Kelola, Dance Nucleus Studio, Mekong Cultural Hub, Prince Claus Fund,... including "X-Project" (2020); "A self self shall" (2021); "1936" (2021); "Human Learning" (2021); "Vinabiennale" (2022 - 2024);... Since 2020, together with choreographer Ngo Thanh Phuong, she co-directed MORUA, an active member of the Southeast Asia Choreographer Network, a dance collective and [performance-maker] in residence program aiming to encourage the next-generation of dance practitioners to research, exchange and experiment with new frameworks of performance, to broaden the dialogue about performance-making in Vietnam. Alongside with MORUA, she’s working as a seasonal producer of H2Q Art - an emerging independent dance company focusing on creating international co-production performances. Red was participating in Asia Connection: Producer’s Camp 2021, under the mentorship of Farooq Chaudhry (co-founder & producer of Akram Khan Dance Company), organized by Taiwan’s National Theater & Concert Hall. Recently, she participated in the Producers' Academy 2023 organized by Cifas and Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Belgium. Her latest producing project - multimedia performance “Vinabiennale” was supported by and will have its work-in-progress presented at Taiwan’s National Theater & Concert Hall in 9/2023. As an artist, Red aims to use choreography/theatrical thinking to visualize personal landscapes and archive spiritual memories. Her dance films and video works were featured at White Chapell Gallery, SeaShorts Film Festival, OFF. Focus, TANZAHOi International Festival for Dance, Fifth Wall Fest,... Red was a Prince Claus Seed Awardee in 2022.

"I Was There" is a trilogy of experimental documentary films that explores the problem of radiation, our society's fading collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the unresolved debate between ethics and science. These series concern the immediate effects of weaponized nuclear technology, as invisible poison, on the human body.

An award-winning experimental filmmaker with expertise in media and cinema studies, Chi Jang Yin's work investigates the gaps in history that are invisible to others. Yin’s expertise in Experimental Cinema, VR Documentary, Cinéma Vérité, and media literacy informs a diverse body of award-winning work that has been recognized internationally in galleries, exhibitions, and film festivals. Yin’s films have been shown at International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany; European Media Arts Festival in Osnabrouck, Germany; Kasseler Dokumentarfilm-und Videofest, Germany; Uppsala International Short Film Festival, Sweden; Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Czech Republic; Toronto International Film Festival, Canada; Manchester Arts Centre, United Kingdom; The Lazniz Centre for Contemporary Art, Poland; Festival Film Dokumenter, Indonesia; The Pacific Film Archive, The University of California-Berkeley; Los Angeles Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, and Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, IDFA, The Netherlands.

?Lighthouse? is about Chinese workers working and living at a factory town in southern China. The viewer is led to actively compose narratives through the ironic and the sublime images. It aims to open borders that separate cultural, linguistic and historical differences in the global labor systems.

Chinese-born media artist Chi Jang Yin is known for her conceptual, documentary work, which comments upon the state of Chinese culture, past and present. She often imbues her work with elements from her background in photography and performance art. She received her BA and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000. Her videos were recently awarded: Honorable Mention at the In-Out Festival, Poland; Best Film on Architecture at the Asolo Art Film Festival, Italy; and Second Grand Prize at the Athens International Film Festival, Ohio. Her work has screened at the 2008 Asian Art Biennial at the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, the Los Angeles Film Festival, and the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

This work is composed of video, real-time data, and light. The voice-over recounts a legend about how the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan came to this island. In the work, I respond to this narrative through data and light installations, using “wind” as the core element of connection. For me, wind resembles those overlooked memories and histories embedded in a place—barely perceptible like air, yet continuously present. By linking real-time wind data from the site of the legend through programming, I allow the changing wind to directly influence the video. Through an invisible real-time connection that continuously crosses distance, messages carried by the wind from afar can be perceived in the present moment, forming a dialogue that spans both geography and perception. In addition, the light installation is a composite figure: its form derives from the imagery of the betel nut—an instantly recognizable visual sign in everyday life in Taiwan—and is combined with my imagination of the monster from the legend. Its green light may induce visual illusions, allowing viewers to briefly see a non-existent magenta, further reinforcing the sense of a state “between the visible and the invisible.

Mao Yo-Wen is a visual artist and filmmaker from Taiwan whose practice spans video, installation, sculpture, and writing, navigating between memory, history, belief, and text—focusing on phenomena that drift beyond established categories and those in a state of dislocation.

The birds of Arabia On the eve of the Second World War, thousands of Spanish refugees crossed the Pyrenees as they fled from Franco?s advance. Antonio Atarès was one of these. Upon his arrival in France, he was interned in a camp in the Vernet in Ariège. In March 1941, he received a letter from someone he did not know, the philosopher Simone Weil. A correspondence started up between them. On the one hand, a Jewish thinker, engaged in a political and mystical struggle in Marseille, and on the other hand, an anarchist peasant exiled in France, then at the doors of the Sahara, in Djelfa in Algeria.

David Yon was born in 1979 in Provins (France). He works and lives in Lyon. In 2005, he obtained a master degree in documentary film making. In 2007 he founded "Dérives", a movie review & dvd, and website. The birds of Arabia, achieved in 2009, is his first film.

The film draws a portrait of Marseilles through a meeting with three inhabitants: Ouahib, Pierre and Rosalie, who have a unique relationship with the city. Their meeting opens up possibilities, such as bringing up the wounds of the city and those of their personal histories.

He is the founder of the cinema review "Dérives" (www.derives.tv). His first two movies, "Birds of Arabia" (2009) and "The night and the kid" (2015), were filmed in Djelfa, Algeria, and have been screened at numerous festivals (Berlinale Forum section, Doclisboa, Viennale, FIDMarseille, etc.). His third movie, "I Will Never Heal" (2023), was filmed in Marseille. In February 2024, he supporteds a thesis on the practice and theory of creation based on the filmmaker Robert Kramer.

Cow takes experimental psychotherapy with Mary, assumably the psychiatrist, who gave a prescription to cow the virtual reality treatment. During the session, the cow goes through her memory trip and illusive experience, which at the end, blur the identity of the cow herself, whether she is an animal or human, subject or object in the treatment.

Hana Yoo works with experimental video and film that investigates the nature of artificiality and its political entanglement, along with the altered mental states derived from technical apparatus. She engages with the allegory of nature and interrelation of bodies, which she then weaves through storytelling.

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Alyscamps revisits the pre-Christian practice known as drue de mourtilage in non-narrative terms. Filmed in Arles, and St-Gervais in France, and Cape Town and Robben Island in South Africa, this 8 minute long video projection explores the myth of the Phantom Ship (sailors doomed to beat into the wind forever), through a series of hypnotic scenes of devastation, flood, fire and death. In ancient times corpses from all over southern Europe were lain in shallow rafts and floated down the Rhône to Arles? famous necropolis at Les Alyscamps. Here the corpses were placed in enormous stone sarcophagi. However the people of Arles, aided and abetted by their Bishops, looted Les Alyscamps and sold off this treasure trove of carved stone coffins. According to legend, the Archbishop of Arles was confronted one night by an apparition of the Phantom Ship that appeared out of the mists of the Camargue. Remarkably, a thousand years later the future king of England was confronted by a similar apparition whilst sailing off Cape Town in 1881.

Gavin Younge works internationally as an artist, author, and filmmaker. His video installation, Curating the Waves featured on the 2003 Rencontres Paris/Berlin and was purchased by the Göppingen Museum in Germany. His most recent international exhibitions include `Prosthesis` with La Noire Galerie in Paris in May 2007, participation in the `Champs de la Sculpture 2000` exhibition in Paris, and two solo exhibitions in France: `Gilets du Sauvetage` in Nimes and `Collection Privé` in Paris. He attained an MA in Fine Arts in 1988 and holds a professorship at the University of Cape Town. He is the immediate past Director of the Michaelis School of Fine Art and lectures Sculpture, and Videography. In 2007 he will present two works on the inaugural SpierContemporary exhibition. He lives and works in South Africa and France.

A group of figurines from the Musée de l'Armée in Paris join Napoleon during his expedition in Egypt. The film explores political issues related to militarism and colonization, challenging traditional historical narratives.

Amir is an artist and filmmaker from Egypt, currently living and working between Paris and Alexandria. He earned a bachelor’s degree in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Alexandria in 2015, where he also served as a Teaching Assistant. He later completed a master’s degree (DNSEP) at the École d’art d’Aix-en-Provence in France, followed by a diploma at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains. Amir challenges the stillness of colonial history as it is traditionally displayed in museum vitrines. His work unfolds along two main trajectories: one examines the absurdity of war and the historical narratives shaped by post-colonialism; the other engages with religious themes, reimagining sacred texts as poetic and transcendent experiences. His research is rooted in the study of early visual culture and media history, focusing on how movement and narrative evolve across different formats such as sculpture, installation, film, and video. A sustained interest in transforming the function and significance of objects continues to guide his creative process. This ongoing inquiry has developed into a body of work he refers to as Kinemania—a personal term used to explore society’s deep fascination with visual motion. Through this lens, he creates kinetic and mobile objects that embody his investigations into movement, media, and interpretation. His film Apoleon premiered at Visions du Réel in Switzerland. His work has also been presented in exhibitions and screenings at international venues including Ars Electronica (Linz), Fondation Vasarely (Aix-en-Provence), Le Fresnoy – Studio National (Tourcoing), the BJCM Biennale (Milan), the Textile Industry Museum (Augsburg), the Youth Salon at the Cairo Opera House, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandria). His works are included in the collections of the CNAP (Centre national des arts plastiques) and the FMAC (Fonds municipal d’art contemporain).

a video that attempts to portray an eerie study of seclusion, alienation in and through the image of the fugitive. the main character occupying the images is an anti-hero recluse who resides in a state of self-inflicted introspection. the character is transcended through a narrative thread of non-fiction moments and segments, into a cluster of morose stagnation and insistent malaise. *secrecy molds the morbid drifting of hatem, a man who works in privacy and lives his life accordingly. hatem hides more than he tells, clouding himself in a reclusive state of introspection.

Born in 1989, I am an artist-filmmaker from beirut. I finished my bachelors in audiovisual studies, with a specialization in cinema, from saint joseph university, beirut in 2013 with my film “ transmission ”. afterwards, I went on to collaborate with ashkal alwan, which led to my 2014 ongoing film project titled “ a thin soft layer of ”. I graduated from the film masters program at the netherlands film academy in 2017 with a thesis exploring the self-alienation and seclusion that deviant members of society may inflict on themselves as an act of escapism. I’ve worked in different fields related to film, including cinematography, editing, sound, development, production as well as assembling my own process, first and foremost as a filmmaker, but also as a researcher.

A day in the life of a troubled man. He roams within spaces, drowning in depression and sorrow, trying to live through another day of his mediocre life.

Born in 1989 in Beirut, Lebanon. I studied cinema at the university of St. Joseph (USJ - IESAV) and graduated in 2013 with the film "Transmission" (first and only film). After gaining experience in Theatre as a light designer/operator, I left to focus on working as a freelance short film cinematographer & director. Currently working on a new short film with Lebanese art association Ashkal Alwan?s Video works program.

The queens Amber la Garce and Moon are getting ready for another big night out. They put on their make-up and clothes while chatting and gossiping. On the way to the club they argue a lot and almost clash with a bunch of boys.

Born in 1989 in Cairo (Egypt). Swiss nationality. Grows up in Geneva and spends his adolescence in Egypt. He obtained a bachelor's degree in HEC at the University of Geneva. Then did a Masters in Socio-economics at the University of Geneva. He did a second Masters in fashion at Central Saint Martins in London, where he spent 3 years and worked in the fashion industry. Since 2018 he studies filmmaking at HEAD-Geneva (Haute École d'Art et Design).

The sound work is a record of a student protest movement in Taiwan, but it is a mourning of the movement that no longer exists. The sounds in this work were recorded during the 2014 student movement demonstration in Taiwan. The overlap of sounds from near and far creates a state of physical closeness and alienation. I am talking about the body without remorse, immersed in this humid field full of body flakes flying around, to crash into the invisible system. We are in a state where we are in this dilemma of life, in this island, where we are not allowed to face our existence democratically and freely, where we are hidden in this darkness, where we are not seen and not known, where we actually have a will and a mind.

Born in 1978 Video Artist, Director, Photographer, Curator

We seem to be overlapping. Sometimes wondering how it feels for my mother seeing her shadow in me. In the video, the impression of mother is described from a third person, the grandmother. The mother and daughter of the previous generation and that of the modern reflect each other. Based on vague impression, grandma measures the difference between the two, mistaking the appearance of the daughter and the grandson. The face in that photo didn't exist in a particular place in the timeline, it was the mother’s ,grandmother's, family's, prior to her own soul. The relationship between mother and child not only shares the bloodline, but also reflects historical context, growth experiences and family backgrounds. The youthful appearance of the mother is reinterpreted with the identification of the child, using the photos as a medium to reenact the past. The child plays the role of inheritance, imitating, internalizing, reconstructing.Using 3D modeling digital technology to reconstruct the past scenes, giving the viewer an additional illusory guidance toward time awareness.

Yu Ting Tsai (b.1999, Taipei, Taiwan) is an artist who lives and works in Taipei, with a major in Mechanical Engineering during undergraduate studies, currently pursuing a master's degree in New Media Art at Taipei National University of the Arts. Tsai will hold solo exhibitions at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts(TW) and Changhua County Art Museum(TW) recently. His major awards include the Taoyuan International Art Award(TW), Taiwan Emerging Art Awards(TW), Festival PROYECTOR 2024(ES), Da Dun Fine Arts Awards(TW), etc.

Under certain influences, we develop a framework but is there anything that goes beyond this framework? Is it the body or the spirit influenced and shaped by cultures and beliefs? This video presents the process of thinking, a dialogue with self-spirit and friends.On inclusion within the country, the border, the body, and the spirit, are things that exist for a purpose free from their limitations in spirit? Do it for yourself and experience the truth. There are three parts in this work narrated from three locations, Taipei Island, Thailand, and Golden Triangle. Here we see a temporary place built in Taipei Island, molded with local materials, and later it will disappear over time. However, we don't know what will be happening to them in the end, just like those election flags buried in the ground and weathered for 20 years. They were created and dug up for a purpose but later disposed over time to become a part of the landscape. Taipei Island is quite like a dumping ground of things, in which their purposes were forgotten and got lost. For the people displaced around the island, their body is the house of the spirit but belongs to their countries. This video also describes about Golden Triangle in which the things are experienced same in Taipei Island. The place is located in the middle, but in the middle that can not be identified. Where does our self-identity come from? Is it shaped by the country, or is it indoctrinated by our own body? Finally, I let go of my thoughts and let my spirit wander freely because this may be a good way of experiencing the truth of things- a real exchange.

( b.1999, Taipei, Taiwan ) is an artist who lives and works in Taipei. The vocabulary words used in the work consists of various fields of knowledge, such as nature, technology, and history to construct a multi-perspective viewing. The mediums include installations, videos, and photographs. The core of the work stems from life experiences, exploring and identifying self, spirits, places, and histories. The individual is viewed from a topological perspective, and the ideas are generated by navigating through different systems and coordinates to interweave a common location in points. Through different processes, the purposes are to view how these experiences have impacts on the individual and shape multiple subjectivities.

The collision and fusion between civilizations, the transformation of the geological landscape, the conflicts between human beings and natural forces – after thousands of years, they have been molded into specimens of human ambition in different times and displayed on the timeless wilderness. However, the heavy significance of their conflicts in their own time has been dissolved by the endless wilderness and become a simple landscape beaming their messages to the timeless vast. When the shadow of modern the signal tower passes over the beacon tower built two thousand years ago, the significance of conflicts in different times collapses at the same time. Indigenous ecological knowledge and modern civilization representing advanced productive forces coexist in the gaps of collapse. The sublime will to strive for arete blocked by giant building fortifications echoes over the desert as permanently and incoherently as the signal sent by the towers. The passion and ambition for conflict have not diminished but have become more and more intense. The exploration of the deep sea and space, obsession and fear of artificial intelligence, everyone’s determination to fight against everyone, trade war, economic war, energy war, technology war, information war, cold war thinking, clash of civilization, identity politic. Human society seems to be in an eternal state of conflict, a stasis. This series of images are three longitudinal slices of this stasis.

Bian Yunxiang, creative designer/media artist who does visuals in digital space, self-taught in visual communication, trained in postdigital storytelling, specialising in the vast in-between, working as a design technologist in luxury, practicing media art and critical design around the topic of digital geopolitics, lecturing at the Royal College of Art and China Academy of Art, exhibited works in London, Eindhoven, Athens, Dublin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Bejing, Kaohsiung, completed commercial art commissions from Burberry, Harrods, Nike, BMW, and Arcteryx through the years. Currently based in Shanghai, previously in Hong Kong and London. In my practice, I use media technology to express concern about geopolitical-related topics and create poetic moving images in the context of post-colonialism and global civil war through the construction of digital geo-landscapes. This allows me to document and depict the diverse and complex ways in which people engage with extreme environments from a political philosophy perspective.

REVOLVER is an archive of pareidolia (a situation in which someone sees a pattern or image of something that does not exist) narrated by a descendent of Exodusters. Nicodemus (Kansas, USA) was deemed a refuge for Exodusters––Black people from the southern United States who fled violence and inequities following the Civil War. Two contradicting narratives about Nicodemus are difficult to hold at once: the lure of a potential utopia while also being exiled in one’s own land. Guided by memory, history, and rumor of a fabled Black utopia, REVOLVER pairs abstraction and perceptual inquiry with psychic conjuring. Sonic transitions forge this experimental documentary, a perpetual chronicle of witnessing and wayfinding.

Crystal Z Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descent. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets — fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken. Campbell’s works use underloved archival material to consider historical gaps and the optics of historical transmission –– questions of immortality and medical ethics with Henrietta Lacks' “immortal” cell line to gentrification and cultural preservation via a 35mm film relic salvaged from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn. Campbell’s creative practice spans painting, sculpture, performance, film, writing, and installations that are often site-responsive. Campbell was the recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and a a 2022 Creative Capital award. Other honors include a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Award, MAP Fund, MacDowell, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, and Franklin Furnace Award. Exhibitions and screenings include MOMA, Artists Space, Bemis, SFMOMA, Drawing Center, ICA-Philadelphia, REDCAT, MAG Rochester, SculptureCenter, MIT List Center, Block Museum, Walker Art Center, EMPAC, BAM, and DocLisboa. Campbell was a featured filmmaker at the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar. Their latest film, REVOLVER, received the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and was featured in the 2023 Berlinale Expanded Film Forum. Campbell’s artwork and films are held by MIT List Center, Duke University, MAG Rochester, Harvard Film Archive, and other collections in the U.S. and abroad. Campbell’s writing is featured in two artist books published by Visual Studies Workshop Press, World Literature Today, Monday Journal, GARAGE, and Hyperallergic. Campbell is a Visiting Associate Professor of Art and Media Study at the University at Buffalo and lives between New York and Oklahoma. Campbell will be in residence at Washington University in St. Louis this Fall as the 2023-2024 Freund Fellow and the fellowship will conclude with a solo exhibition at St. Louis Art Museum in 2024.