Catalogue 2024

"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.

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.

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.

Within the confines of a small south London flat, the filmmaker decides to finally say goodbye to her already lacking confidence and her friends come together to help her see this task through. Structured as a succession of informal conversations and exchanges between friends, 'Bye Bye Confidence' opens up a space for un-mastering and un-learning expected behaviours, letting free expectations of how one behaves in the world or even makes a film

M?d?lina Zaharia (b. 1985, Sighetu Marmatiei, Romania) is a Romanian artist and filmmaker who lives and works in London. Her film, TristxtOTL was screened at ICA London as part of the official selection for the 67th BFI London Film Festival and was the winner of the 'Best Experimental Award' at both Close:Up Reykjavik Film Festival 2024 and San Francisco Short Film Festival 2024. She was also a 2023 fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. Past films include, Public Figure – made in collaboration with poet and performer Ryan Ormonde, which subsequently won 'The best film in the national competition' prize at Bucharest International Dance Film Festival 2021 and was also part of the official selection for SQIFF 2021 (Scottish Queer International Film Festival) in Glasgow and GRRL HAUS CINEMA 2021 in Boston, MA.

WILD FRUITS recounts a series of episodes in the life of a fictional servant of French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, Jean Aurand, against the backdrop of the 16th century colonial expansion and religious wars. After Jean's return to France from Brazil, he meets Montaigne and develops an intimate relationship with him. One day while walking they stumble upon a group of time travellers from a distant future, on a mission that will change the life of these two men forever.

Bernardo Zanotta (1996, Brazil) is a filmmaker and visual artist based between Amsterdam. His work explores the fusion of the familiar and the fantastical, creating characters who often find themselves escaping daily life, venturing into parallel worlds, or confronting history by reshaping it to their desires. His work has been exhibited internationally at art venues, cinemas, and festivals, including the British Film Institute, EYE Filmmuseum, FID Marseille, BAFICI, Pesaro and Locarno, where he was awarded the Pardino d'Argento for his film Heart of Hunger (2018).

'Ruido ê (the film)' is a musical documentary with thriller overtones that is interrupted and shattered. The noise (ruido), beyond acoustic impact, becomes a difficulty of readability and narrative purity, a shock between languages, it is a synesthetic hum that hacks vision and makes it erotic. All the underwater sequences have been filmed in underwater urban areas where, paradoxically, the electric rays Torpedo torpedo live. These areas, which the artist calls 'postpunk', are in constant urban transformation. From the maritime works for the extension of the breakwater of San Sebastián beach in Barcelona, ??with a metal crane that launches concrete buckets, passing through the entire post-industrial area between the mouth of the Besós river, Sant Adrià, until reaching the Pont del Petroli in Badalona, ??whose pillars were knocked down by the storm Gloria. Waste and underwater architecture reappropriated by different beings. The film has been an alibi to weave networks of work and methodological research with scientists, divers and other artists around issues of somatic attention, perception, vulnerability and resistance.

SILVIA ZAYAS (León, Spain 1978). She is a luso-spanish artist. Her work is situated at the limits of live arts, video and choreography. She investigates the creation of homemade, rudimentary and low-tech devices for making live films. Her work questions ways of filming “from a distance.” For this she moves away from the usual “hand-eye” relationship and tries to legitimize the sensitive possibilities of an amateur, vulnerable, sick, thuggish, hidden, punk and also z-series body... Her most relevant works are: the live film São Tomé Revisitado (2012) in collaboration with her mother Isabel Serra; Parallax (2016), a stage piece for light and sound; the circular films The Boogie-Woogie Ghost (2018) and Puebla (2021) together with María Jerez; Talking pictures (2018) with Esperanza Collado; the "cinema without film" projects Brilliant Corners (2020) and Brillante (2020-2022), both within the Orquestina de Pigmeos collective; the solo exhibition ê (2021), or the recent film ruido ê (the film) (2023). She belongs to the collective office of research in live arts Dorothy Michaels. Recently finishes the doctoral thesis Counterdispositives between cinema and the performing arts: ghosts, diffractions, holes and other creatures (2023). UCLM, Cuenca (Spain). Her work has been shown in national and international biennials, festivals and institutions and also in non-institutional places, markets, squares, schools...

In the GDR Opposition Archive in Berlin, Anna Zett traces known and unknown fears of her childhood. The artist interweaves samizdat and archival footage with a stirring collage of underground music from the late GDR (composed by Matti Gajek). Video recordings by activists from the Environmental Library, the New Forum and the punk scene in East Berlin, fragments of the televised revolution, and highly condensed voices from a poetry cassette recorded in 1986 combine to create an associative and intimate narrative. In ceaseless escalation, the archive thriller leads to the second occupation of the Berlin Stasi headquarters with hunger strike in September 1990 – a political event that is barely known today despite its far-reaching consequences. There is fear. There is anger. There are people who, despite profound experiences of violence, insist on emotional connection and political self-determination. The short film ES GIBT KEINE ANGST opens up a pulsating resonance space that keeps vibrating long after.

Anna Zett is a Berlin-based artist and writer. Rooted in poetry, collage and improvisation, their transmedia practice seeks to host, witness and experience new connections at sites of loss and damage. This work results in films, books, radio plays, installations and live-formats, most recently f.ex. the participatory research ‚Postsocialist Group Improvisation‘. Since their first film release in 2014, Zetts work has been shown in international contexts of contemporary art, film, performance and discourse, such as Berlinale Forum Expanded, Serpentine Gallery London, Whitney Museum New York, Berlinische Galerie, Or Gallery Vancouver, HKW Berlin. Zetts publications include two experimental radio plays for the German public broadcast and the literary text collection ‚Artificial Gut Feeling‘ (Divided Publishing, 2019). Since 2024 Anna Zett co-teaches the class for Performative Arts at HGB Leipzig.

Qirat is loosely based around an oral family anecdote of a robbery that took place in the lush valley of Fez in northern Morocco during the 1980s. In the film, the events have been transposed to Ouarzazate, located on the edge of the Sahara Desert in central Morocco. Here the anecdote is reconstructed freely, over the course of a single Friday, shot solely during dawn, dusk and finally night.

Amin Zouiten (born 1994) is a Swedish-Moroccan filmmaker and artist educated at Malmö Art Academy and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His works and films have been shown at Malmö Art Gallery, Recontres Paris/Berlin, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, CPH:DOX, and Tempo Documentary Festival, Uppsala Short Film Festival. In 2024, he was the recipient of the Cultural Award of the City of Stockholm and the Bernadotte Scholarship, awarded with an upcoming solo presentation at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm. Beyond his own artistic practice, he has served as an assistant editor for filmmaker C.W. Winter and as a visiting tutor at Malmö Art Academy and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

A visual odyssey of Sun Ra concepts through their followers - Marshall Allen and Abshalom Ben Shlomo. The film follows Sun Ra Arkestra band members and their journey across the desert, a promised land where Sun Ra once created his identity. Navigating through an astro-galactic world of sound, they find a reason to fight racism, injustice and vanity of the modern world - all through inner wisdom of music and sound. It's a story of infinite peace in a troubled world. An utopian planet where Sun Ra and his prophets celebrate the divine wealth of their spirits.

Working between the documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulyt? makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political. Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize and the Ars Fennica Award 2023, Škarnulyt? represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. She most recently presented works at MORI Art Museum, Kiasma, Gwangju Biennale, Helsinki Biennale, Vilnius Biennale, Henie Onstad Triennale. She has had solo exhibitions at Canal Projects, New York (2024), Ferme-Asile, Sion (2023); Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne (2021); Den Frie, Copenhagen (2021); National Gallery of Vilnius (2021); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017); Contemporary Art Centre CAC of Vilnius (2015). In 2022, Škarnulyt? participated in the group exhibition Penumbra organized by Fondazione In Between Art Film on the occasion of the 59th Venice Biennale. She has films in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Kadist Foundation, HAM, IFA, and her works have been screened at the Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and numerous film festivals including Rotterdam, Busan, Hotdocs and Oberhausen.

A hyperreal exploration of conspiracy theories using the narratives of various hate groups in Trump's America. A detective plot telling one possible truth about the mysterious disappearance of a young girl in a hotel standing in a post-apocalyptic desert landscape. The anonymous hotel as a deus ex machina - a simulacrum of past, present and future through which the detective is led by clues ranging from the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to the ultra-orthodox Jewish organization Neturei Karta. The End is Here.

Marie and Petr Šprincl established their collaboration during their studies at Václav Stratil’s Intermedia Studio at FaVU in Brno, and they are currently a very distinctive creative duo with entirely recognisable handwriting. Their work is characterised by unsettling poetics, which are drawn from the dark parts of reality and from working with eight-millimetre film material and VHS technology, where the properties typical for this recording material and especially the image glitches usually caused by wear and tear and disruption to the structure of the material, are objectified, aestheticised and even fetishised. The audiovisual position of the work is usually completed by a rich iconography exceeding the moving image medium, which gains space for presentation within the Flesh&Brain creative platform. Their works balance between fiction, documentary and experiment, their common feature being the exploration of various social forms of evil, often hidden under the thin skin of everyday reality. They’re the authors of Moravia, Beautiful Land (2015–2019), Vienna Calling (2018), and their most recent film, Satan Kingdom Babylon (2024). Outside films, they work on music videos, theatre performances and gallery installations.