Programme 9

Soil (2017)
Director: Alican Durbaş
Turkey
Experimental | 18 min
No dialogue

Through the division of the screen into nine cinematic frames, the film Soil narrates the journey of a young man carrying a handful of soil into the grave of a deceased soldier who happens to be burying his own dead body. With form integrated into narrative, it is possible to watch every phase of his journey synchronically. Wherever he goes, the smell of the soil remains the same.

Saint Rise (2018)
Director: Bassem Saad
Lebanon
Experimental | 14 min
Arabic and English with English subtitles

In August 2017, Lebanon looks with mixed feelings at a giant statue of Saint Charbel as it is transported and erected on the highest mountaintop in Faraya. The project’s contracting company, Beirut International Marine Industry and Commerce S.A.R.L, is otherwise known for its techno-industrial feats in the field of marine engineering and for plans to build the ‘first floating island in the Middle East’.

Ifu Elimnyama: The Dark Cloud (2019)
Director: Ndumiso Mnguni
South Africa
Experimental | 7 min
isiZulu with Arabic and English subtitles

Set in the year 1220 at the ruins of Great Mapungubwe, the film takes Zulu cosmology and systems of transcendence and places them within a digital framework. An advanced black civilisation returns from the fourth dimension to deliver a message that would bring all black civilisations together against the digital empire of the devious Nqomqhayise, who has migrated the people’s history from the cloud to his company servers, thus disconnecting them from their past.

Towards the Sun (2019)
Director: Nour Ouayda
Lebanon
Experimental | 17 min
Arabic with English subtitles

You are now in the main hall of the National Museum in Beirut. A guard reminds you that you are encouraged to touch the archaeological objects. You are now facing a hole in the wall on the lower left corner of a mosaic. The voice in your headset indicates that it was made by a sniper. Out of curiosity, you dial 1-9-9-1 to listen to the rest of the story.

An erased filmic memory - a long way to nowhere (2019)
Director: Omnia Sabry
Egypt
Experimental | 7 min
Arabic with English subtitles


This film explores and questions the limitations of the materialities of light-sensitive surfaces and their ability to document our experiences and realities. Using the same surfaces that are being questioned, through analogue, digital and self-made sensors, An erased filmic memory - a long way to nowhere tries to reconstruct personal memories and events from a period of time that the artist herself cannot fully remember.

Traces of a Song (2010–2018)
Director: Sebastian Diaz Morales
Indonesia
Experimental | 25 min
Malay/Indonesian with English subtitles

A woman, History, enters the city of Jakarta by its port. She is looking for somebody—perhaps the city itself, an old friend. This personified place in time is elusive, and its transformation may have turned it into something different.