Summer 2025 Award Winners

Audience Award (program BEHIND THE STRAIGHT LINE OF EVERYDAY)

COUNTRY : Singapore
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 9 m.
DIRECTOR / WRITER : Ezzam Rahman

Dedication : This video artwork is dedicated to my mum, Madam Rosnah Ibrahim.

CONTACTS, LINKS : Ezzam Rahman (facebook)   @ezzam_rahman  When the World Stops Turning: Notes on Grief, Loss, and What Remains 

On 9 January 2016, Ezzam engaged in a private performance with his mother, Madam Rosnah, to mark his 35th birthday. In a heartfelt gesture, he handed her a pair of scissors and permitted her to snip off his ponytail - a hairstyle she had often chided him for keeping. The remnants of this act are framed and preserved as a tangible reminder of their bond. Several years later, Madam Rosnah faced a significant health crisis that would profoundly impact both their lives. After cancer cells were discovered around her lymph nodes, she underwent major surgery and spent two months in the hospital, resulting in a substantial loss of mobility. Bounded by blood and circumstance, Ezzam took on the role of her primary caregiver, navigating the challenges of providing support while grappling with the emotional weight of witnessing his mother’s struggle. no matter what, i want to be next to you (2024) creates a dialogue on the complexities of love, sacrifice, and the fears of losing a loved one. This video documentary chronicling Ezzam’s daily caregiving activity - offers a raw and unfiltered glimpse into the often overlooked realities of caregiving. It illuminates the daily routines and emotional labour involved as their bodies gradually yield to the march of time.

Director statement : When I embarked into this project, I sought her permission and consent to allow me to document our daily lives. I told it is important for me to create this work and share our narratives. Aging, deteriorating health and giving care to another body is inevitable. I will never forget the words that mum uttered out once this artwork was completed, I played it on my computer and she said – “now, you have a piece of me for you to remember by once I am gone.”

Bio : Ezzam Rahman (b.1981, Singapore) is a multi-disciplinary artist known for his interest in the body and the use of common, easily accessible, yet unconventional media in his art practice. 

Working across sculpture, installation, digital media, and performance, he creates works that are often autobiographical, time-based, and ephemeral, aiming to pique viewers’ thoughts on the themes of body politics, identity, impermanence, traces, and abjection. Ezzam Rahman’s artistic practice exemplifies an embodied aesthetics that is deeply political, affective, and phenomenological. Using ephemeral and bodily materials, he reclaims the abject as a site of agency, while destabilizing the fixity of identity, materiality, and memory. By working at the intersection of personal loss, cultural belonging, and queer embodiment, his oeuvre became a vital archive of what it means to live and decay within the body.

Special Mention (program BEHIND THE STRAIGHT LINE OF EVERYDAY)

COUNTRIES: Costa Rica, Scotland, Palestine
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 7 m.
DIRECTOR / PRODUCER : Samer Abdelnour
CONTACTS, LINKS : @samer_abdelnour 

Walking with Gaza compiles a set of unintended pocket recordings, recorded December 2023 while walking on a beach. The phone had been unlocked due to the constant checking of social media for news from and about the genocide in Gaza. 

Director statement : To me, these recordings symbolize how, for Palestinians and our supporters over the world, the genocide pervades every moment and aspect of our lives. It is always with us, and we with those struggling to survive and fight against it. At times they give the impression of struggling to keep one’s head above water. The inclusion of the sound of an Israeli drone, recorded in Gaza and shared on social media by Muhammad Smiry, who like thousands of other Palestinians in Gaza, have been sharing real-time information about the horrors of the genocide and their efforts to survive it, is both a reminder of and also seeks to challenge Israel's pervasive surveillance apparatus and war machine. Without disregarding the violence it represents, I wish to reinterpret the sound of the drone as a metaphor of our unending connection to our people in Gaza, to Palestinians everywhere, and to our steadfastness to our goal of collective liberation.

Bio : Samer Abdelnour is a Toronto-born, Edinburgh-based Palestinian academic and artist. His artistic practice currently revolves around abstract figurative sculpture, but also includes two short films, prose and long-running engagement with community-based artists and activists. In 2024 he was selected for the Jhalak Art Residency, to create an artwork as the award for the annual Jhalak Prize. He sits on the board of Embassy Cultural House, the British Palestine Media Centre, and was a founding member of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

Jury Award (program BEHIND THE STRAIGHT LINE OF EVERYDAY)

COUNTRIES : Iran, UK
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 7 m.
DIRECTOR, EDITOR, WRITER, PERFORMER:  Parham Ghalamdar
SOUND AND MUSIC : Public domain archive  and manipulated field recordings
CAMERA AND DOCUMENTATION : Dean Brierly / Caustic Coastal
INSPIRATION : Harun Farocki, Jean-Luc Godard, Jalal Toufic, Edward Said, Reza Negarestani

The paintings burned in the film were exhibited at HOME, Castlefield Gallery, The Lowry, Workplace Foundation, Salford Art Gallery & Museum, Abingdon Studios & Gallery, The Whitworth, Rebbeca Hosack Gallery and Manchester Art Gallery (2020–2024)

CONTACTS, LINKS :  https://www.ghalamdar.com   @parham.ghalamdar   https://filmfreeway.com/THESIGHTISAWOUND 

THE SIGHT IS A WOUND is a six-minute experimental video-poem confronting the ethical crisis of image-making in the digital age, particularly in response to the unfolding genocide in Gaza. In an act of aesthetic refusal, artist Parham Ghalamdar burns over 50 of his own paintings—works previously exhibited in renowned institutions worldwide—as a personal and political gesture against the overwhelming flood of atrocities visualized through screens.

Rather than documenting protest, the film meditates on complicity, desensitization, and the ethical failure of seeing. The act of burning becomes a ritual of unmaking, where the image collapses not as erasure, but as testimony to the impossibility of visual representation in the face of untranslatable horror.

Director Statement : This film is not a protest. It is a ritual.

THE SIGHT IS A WOUND was made in response to a growing paralysis: the flood of digital images documenting mass suffering, particularly in Gaza, and the simultaneous impossibility of responding adequately as an artist. I felt the weight of my own practice—my oil paintings—becoming complicit, obsolete, silent. So I burned them.

Not to erase, but to mark an end. To create a gesture that carries no aesthetic claim except collapse.

The act of destruction is not nihilistic—it is mourning, it is ethical rupture. It asks: what does it mean to “make images” in an age where images no longer invoke action or truth? Where seeing becomes a form of forgetting?

This film does not offer resolution. It performs disappearance.
—Parham Ghalamdar

Bio : Parham Ghalamdar is an Iranian-born, UK-based artist working across painting, moving image, AI-generated imagery, ceramics, and writing. His practice interrogates historical and philosophical narratives through a decolonial and speculative lens. He has exhibited at institutions including HOME (Manchester), Leeds Art University, Whitworth Gallery, and the Millennium Film Workshop (NYC). His short films have been awarded and screened internationally, including Berlin Kiez Film Festival, Open Secret touring program, and Dhaka Mythos. His work often examines the failure of representation, theology of images, and visual collapse in the age of digital saturation. Ghalamdar is a researcher at The New Centre for Research & Practice and a graduate of Manchester School of Art.

Audience Award (program THROUGH THE FLUID OF MY BODY)

COUNTRY : Iceland, Netherlands
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 11m.
DIRECTOR / PRODUCER : Julius Hulshof
SOUND DESIGN : Sgarz
LOGISTICS : Jamie Henderson
CONTACTS, LINKS : www.juliushulshof.com   @ju1.15 

"Where the Stone Waits for Me" is an ambient film blending experimental dance, landscapes, and drone music. At its core is the simplicity of a rock—a still and tactile presence evoking connection and emptiness. Through evolving scenes depicted as daydreams, three dancers interact with the rugged terrain of the Icelandic highlands, their introverted movements revealing a quiet surrender and a yearning for the same quality embodied by the rock.

Director statement : Two years ago, I encountered and filmed a rock in the mountains of northern Taiwan. It had a uniquely still and undeniable physical presence, completely unaffected by the conditions surrounding it. That sensation became the departure point for this project. I wanted to focus on an elemental quality and to present a dreamlike world to escape to that reflects how I personally experience dance and these landscapes. 

Both these places and our movement have various layers, some more obvious and visible than others. There is an aesthetic beauty, but never without processes of struggle and tension underneath the surface. I want to film dance and landscapes through my eyes while hinting at these hidden complexities. 

The dance in my films is never choreographed but based on improvisation with the dancer's personal movement language. This makes for a particular site- and time-specific result, tied to the specific person performing it. By approaching dance and film in this way, I wish for my films to be both distinctive and universal at the same time. In my understanding, the most intuitive individual expressions can appeal to the most basic and universal human experiences.

Bio : Julius Hulshof (b. 1998, Enschede, the Netherlands) is a dancer and visual artist working across experimental dance, film, and ambient soundscapes. He has performed internationally and is the recipient of the VandenEnde Foundation cultural grant with which he completed his most recent short film, Where the Stone Waits for Me.

Additional info : The film score is created by Czech artist Sgarz and will later be adapted and released as a long-form EP on music platforms (it might be out by the time this information is released). The sound belongs to the genre of drone music that usually has long sustained tones and minimalist textures. This type of music, especially that of drone legend Kyle Bobby Dunn, has always given me a sense of comfort and permanence. It is one of the main inspirations for everything that I make.

About the filming process, I am inspired by slow cinema (mostly Cai Ming Liang's films) and believe in intuitive, unfiltered videography. To create a realistic texture and sensorial aesthetic, I used an older model professional video camera.

Finally, the production of this film was supported by the Dutch VandenEnde Foundation and Lloydscompany, and the filming took place in October of 2024.

Jury Award, Audience Award (program THROUGH THE FLUID OF MY BODY)

COUNTRY : Chile
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 7m.
DIRECTOR, PERFORMER : Lía Arenas Arce
CREATION : Lía Arenas y Santiago Del Valle
VIDEO : Santiago Del Valle Dávila
MONTAGE : Gonzalo Barceló
SOUND DESIGNER AND COMPOSER : Constantino Honorato Taborga
AUDIO MASTERING : Adán Fresard
PRODUCTION : Inciso Subterráneo
CONTACTS, LINKS : https://incisosubterraneo.cl/   @incisosubterraneo   @l.ia_ga

(an)danzas is an exploration of the possibilities of urban living through bodily experience in a playful and sensitive sense. “How to embody the city?” was the creative question that guided the actions in the city as a way to build a reciprocal relationship between body and city, to explore the performative dimensions, opening up to the sensitive and experimental layers of urban living.

(an)danzas is an invitation to question a possible city through the body and its journey through space, a mobile and experimental relationship between body and city. A rehearsal of walks, a constant drift. Observing the everyday and transforming it into an urban choreography. Tracing the city, embodying the city.

Director Statement : With the creative and research question "How to embody the city?", my interest in artistic creation delves into the exploration of materialities that generate alternatives to dance for extra-theatrical works. By exploring the experience of the body in the city through walking, I seek to generate creative methodologies that broaden my understanding of dance and enable collaborative work with artists from other disciplines.

Bio : Lía Arenas Arce is an artist and cultural producer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance from the University of Chile and a Master of Arts from Catholic University of Chile. She has developed her artistic work by researching and creating around the experience of the body in the city, creating a disciplinary intersection between dance and architecture. In 2020, she launched the Inciso Subterráneo art laboratory, serving as its director, researcher, and performer.

Lía Arenas is the artistic coordinator of the Center for Artistic and Cultural Extension at the University of Chile, and has been a producer for the Department of Music at the University of Chile and for various art projects. She has been a visiting professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Chile. She has participated in art research residencies in Brazil and France, and in art and cultural management conferences in Chile, Colombia, Brazil, and France.

Audience Award (program THE MOST SOPHISTICATED ANIMAL ON EARTH)

COUNTRY : Australia
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 10 m.
DIRECTOR / WRITER : Scratch My Nose
CONTACTS, LINKS : www.scratchmynose.net    @scratchmynose 

The Big Tissue dives into the new world of the remix - mimicking how people are communicating / appropriating / sharing information / + disinformation. It is part criticism. Part pitch. Part analysis. Scratch My Nose love letter of sorts to the alternate world of all the on-line platforms - with Scratch My Nose own unique humor.

Scratch My Nose is a multi-media group that has created over 40 projects including in film, performance, street art, radio and sound in the UK, US, Lebanon, Chile and Australia.

Jury Award (program THE MOST SOPHISTICATED ANIMAL ON EARTH) 

COUNTRY : USA
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 8 m.
DIRECTOR / WRITER : Misael José Oquendo

Special Thanks to SUICIDE MOI (Who's song Jennifer 7 is featured in the film)

CONTACTS, LINKS : The Eerie Digital worlds of Misael José Oquendo   @agent_rowdy_banks_007
Email: studio.misaeljoseoquendo@gmail.com

 Ansel, a young city dweller, drifts through a city that feels familiar and unreal, its neon glow pulsing like a heartbeat he can’t quite sync with. The streets of this Caribbean-inspired metropolis—somewhere between San Juan and Miami—are alive with strange figures: a cat girl trading “miracle pills” for cryptic exchanges, a boisterous tourist offering empty warmth, fleeting faces that vanish as quickly as they appear. Each encounter pulls Ansel deeper into the city’s rhythms and further from himself. As the night unfolds, reality bends, conversations loop and his own reflection becomes something distant and distorted. Fan Cams & Laurels is a fever dream of alienation, indulgence, and the quiet ache of being untethered in a world that never stops moving.

Director statement : Fan Cams & Laurels emerged from a desire to capture the strange dissonance of feeling visible yet unseen—haunted by the brightness of a world moving too fast to hold you. The video began with a question: What does it mean to be disoriented not by loss, but by excess—of imagery, of connection, of simulation?

Ansel’s journey reflects a deeper personal and cultural anxiety I often feel navigating cities shaped by spectacle and alienation. Drawing from Caribbean textures, nightlife ecstasy, and the aesthetics of internet subcultures, I wanted to explore how urban space, identity, and desire blur under the glow of screens and synthetic intimacy. The characters Ansel encounters are both archetypes and avatars—echoes of personas we adopt or encounter in digital life.

The project uses CGI and AI-generated elements not as novelties, but as languages of contemporary alienation—tools that, like Ansel’s city, mirror and distort our perception. I’m interested in the ways these technologies amplify a kind of surreal banality: a city too vivid to feel real, too fast to feel human.

Fan Cams & Laurels is not a story with a resolution. It’s a loop, a feeling, a late-night walk with no destination—where every flicker of recognition is undercut by its own strangeness. It’s about the quiet panic of being awake in a world that seems to be dreaming.

Bio : Misael José Oquendo is a Los Angeles-based video artist, writer, and researcher whose work explores the emotional and cultural implications of technology in contemporary life. Rooted in a fascination with the absurd and the existential, Misael employs tools like video game engines, AI-generated imagery, and CGI to create surreal, fragmented narratives that confront themes of media saturation, fear, and the erosion of innocence. Their work seeks to reveal the quiet intrusions of digital culture on our collective psyche, blending humor, introspection, and poetic dissonance.

A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and CalArts (MA in Aesthetics & Politics), Misael’s projects frequently engage with parafictional storytelling, addressing sociopolitical themes with humor and poetic absurdity. Their work has been exhibited in galleries and screening programs that celebrate experimental and interdisciplinary approaches to video art.

Audience Award (program THROUGH YOU)

COUNTRY : USA
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 3 m.
DIRECTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER, PERFORMER : Cat Morris Jones
CONTACTS, LINKS : Cat Hartigan - YouTube   @cabloopt (instagram) 

A 16mm short film, developed by hand with an eco-caffenol process, edited using analog splicing methods. "stone picking, spiral negatives" is an experimental trudge into the past and how to carry it into the future. Within the creek lies memories, hundreds of thousands of remembrances- rocks, stones, pebbles- able to be grabbed and carried. They resurface amidst the gushing water, fragmented and inverted. The attempt to organize and understand them is a conflict of beauty and control, relentlessly cutting between the negative and the positive. In the attempt to treat them delicately, they risk destruction. And yet, to be human is to revisit the past. Trudge back through the currents rush of time, stand amidst the rocks, let go of control so nostalgia can take hold.

Bio : Cat Hartigan (she/her), is a film and fine arts student. Currently attending the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), she's finding her voice through analog film and video editing as well as majoring in humanistic studies to do research and writing on the phenomena of nostalgia. Throughout her practice as an artist she focuses on experimenting with new mediums and methods of conveying themes of sadness, grief, joy, and most often, dissecting emotion. She ties in her research and writing about nostalgia into her art, trying to describe this unique human phenomena through abstract visuals and narrative. Cat creates a cohesive voice throughout all the mediums she works in, pouring intention and meaning into the process behind a final piece and highlighting the journey of creativity. A few recurring characteristics make Cat's work distinctively her own: muted color palettes, strange but recognizable  characters, a nurturing of analog techniques, and stark contrasts between high intensity and simplicity. Cat finds it necessary to create art; it is her way of perceiving and interacting with the world. Through exploring materials, she becomes more attuned to her own feelings. Through research and exploration, she forms a deeper understanding of her own experiences. And in her finalized pieces, she hopes to create that same moment of shared relief and nostalgia with someone else.

Special Mention (program THROUGH YOU)

COUNTRY : Canada
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 4 m.
IMAGES, TEXT, SOUNDTRACK, EDITING : Mathieu Samaille
CONTACTS, LINKS : https://www.mathieusamaille.com   Mathieu Samaille (facebook)  @samaille_visualpoetry 

 ArcadiA, whose title evokes the ancestral search for the ideal place to live, is a poetic video tale about the relationship with the territory and the quest for a peaceful and harmonious world, an updated quest, which distinguishes the point of view of the Human from that of the Earth.

ArcadiA was produced at the invitation of the Festival Acadien de la Poésie, during a creative residency in Caraquet (New Brunswick).

Director statement : I use video-poetry as an art form capable of delicately showing the complex nuances of reality.

Bio : Mathieu Samaille majored in literature and studied drama and digital arts. He is a Canadian and French Citizen.  In 2018, his experience in interdisciplinary arts, including writing, directing and editing, led to an interest in video-poetry, an immersive and ontological art form that explores the sensorial bonds between text, sound and image, transposing literary processes in media arts.

He was awarded the Grand-Prix de Vidéo-Poésie at the Festival de la Poésie de Montréal 2019. Since then, his videos have toured in a lot of countries (Canada, USA, Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Sweden, England, Poland, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico...). A copy of his video-poem, Madame Jarrar, was acquired for classroom use by the Department of “Art, Film, and Visual Studies” of Harvard University. With the support of The Canada Council for the Arts, a solo installation of his work premiered in Montreal in October 2022. As a single channel, Mort un Moment (Momently Gone) toured internationally in 2023. ArcadiA premiered at Festival International du Film sur l'Art (FIFA) 2025 in National Competition (short films).

Jury Award (program THROUGH YOU)

COUNTRY : Portugal
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 15 m.
DIRECTOR, EDITOR : Sara N. Santos
MUSIC : Helder Luís
VOICE-OVER : Rui Spranger
SOUND RECORDING : Sérgio Silva and Raquel Gonçalves
SOURCES OF REUSED FOOTAGE : Centro Portugês de Fotografia, Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Arquivo Histórico Municipal de Cascais 

CONTACTS, LINKS : https://vimeo.com/saransantos 

A man recalls his mother. She used to tell him about a mythical place, the beach. In Soft Sea, the bathman would immerse the children in the waves amid screams and laughter, lace and swimsuits were in fashion, and people asked the sea to make them live forever. Meanwhile, the photographer walked along the sand, attempting to capture a society on the brink of decay.

Director statement : The way performances and rituals were established on the Beach gave people a sense of harmony in customs that persists to this day. Photography is an inseparable practice of this behavior or ritualistic performance. Representations of this place are omnipresent, endlessly repeated in family albums over time. But these images, while preserving precious moments, also reveal our eternal search for what escapes us. Therefore, I decided to explore the narrative possibilities of the archive, questioning the nature of reality and expanding the boundaries that separate documentary from fiction. Thus, Soft Sea presents itself as an allegory that explores the ephemerality of life, the search for meaning in the void of memories, and the inevitability of the end.

Bio : Sara N. Santos is a Portuguese filmmaker. She has a degree in Documentary Cinema and a Master's degree in Audiovisual Communication. Her films intertwine Memory and Archive with Fiction. In 2014, 'SABA' was awarded an honorable mention at LEFFEST and in 2015 it won the PrimeirOlhar award at Encontos de Cinema de Viana. 'Just Like the Films' (2020) won the award for best student experimental short film at Porto Femme 2021. She directed the experimental short Suave Mar (2025) with the support of Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian for artistic creation. Alongside directing, she works on editing and teaching.

Audience Award (program DISTANT CLOCKS)

COUNTRY : Greece
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 19 m.
DIRECTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER : Konstantinos Merentitis
CAST : Sofia Andronikos, Nektarios Athanasopoulos
CONTACTS, LINKS :  @sa_ricco   Konstantinos Merentitis (youtube) 

Two humans, previously unknown to each other, meet randomly during a common springtime.

Attached to some mysterious standby mode, they're naturally led to a constant improvisation, through exhausting playing and delusional speech.

With a gaze now fixed on their mutual transparent time, the precious force that binds them, they're steadily grabbed by the unfulfilled and the elements of the absurd. Thus, under blurry expectations, they choreograph their moments with anticipation, in a new context of lightness and deep humanness.

What does utopia actually mean, if not scratching the time to feel it upside down? For them it is certainly a promise for unconventional actions and ways of survival.

Director Statement : I, Konstantinos Merentitis, in my capacity as Director, Writer, and Producer of the feature film titled "Bound By Nothingness" (Το τίποτα που μας ενώνει), hereby take full responsibility for the design, overall supervision, and execution of this project.

This film is an independent Greek production for the year 2025, with filming and manufacturing taking place in Greece. It addresses an existential and poetic encounter between two individuals who traverse the realms of time, play, and human absurdity.

Jury Award (program DISTANT CLOCKS)

COUNTRY : Hungary
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 5 m.
DIRECTOR : Róbert Bordás
STARRING : Kristóf Horváth
SOUND : Roland Heidrich
ORIGINAL MUSIC : Péter Bordás
CONTACTS, LINKS : https://vimeo.com/375390358 

In the film, a man drags three children uphill in a creaking shopping cart—a desperate yet inevitable movement. Where are they going? Is there a way out? Both the poem and the film ask the same question: how long will history keep repeating itself, and is there still hope on the brink of collapse?

Director statement : In my film, Sándor Weöres’ poem “20th-Century Fresco” (orig. title XX. Századi Freskó) comes to life—an apocalyptic vision evoking the eternal cycle of history, the painful dialectic of destruction and rebirth. The imagery of the poem remains eerily relevant today: Europe is once again teetering on the edge of uncertainty, the shadow of war looms over us, and we do not know where the road leads.

In the film, a man drags three children uphill in a creaking shopping cart—a desperate yet inevitable movement. Where are they going? Is there a way out? Both the poem and the film ask the same question: how long will history keep repeating itself, and is there still hope on the brink of collapse?

Poetry and cinema intertwine here to hold a mirror to our present—a world where uncertainty has become a part of everyday life. This film does not provide answers; it merely raises the questions that live within us all.

Bio : Róbert Bordás is a Hungarian cinematographer and photographer responsible for the cinematography of numerous documentaries and feature films. His work includes films such as “Land of Warm Waters” (2021), “Ghetto Balboa” (2018), “Tales from Teleki Square” (2018), “The 11th Life” (2007), “Escape into Love” (2006), “Like the Bees” (2004), and “Crooked Necrology” (2004). (port.hu)

His accolades include the László Kovács–Vilmos Zsigmond Award and the Hungarian Film Award, both of which he received for his cinematography in the documentary “Ghetto Balboa”. https://cinematographerawards.hu 

Róbert Bordás’ work has had a significant impact on the Hungarian documentary film scene, and he is a recognized figure in the country’s cinematography community.

Jury Award, Audience Award (program JUGGLE THE PEARLS)

COUNTRY : Canada
YEAR : ongoing
DURATION : 9 m.
DIRECTOR, PERFORMER : Christian Nicolay
CONTACTS, LINKS : christiannicolay.com   @nicolaychristian

The Day Job, an ongoing work that started in 2003, incorporates hiding art within the hidden recesses of other artworks and in places not meant to be found. I call this process Silent Graffiti ~ recording repetitive moments of preservation only to forget them.

The Day Job isn't merely a treasure hunt; it embodies a philosophy of life. The art of scraping the surface invites a metamorphic approach to observation, encouraging shifts in perspective to notice the unnoticed and seek out what is often overlooked. The work lingers in a liminal space, confronting us with the paradox of contemporary existence, a reality in constant flux where traces of the past and potential futures converge.

Director statement : Since The Day Job began in 2003, I have documented hundreds of hours of hidden moments. This is the second glimpse into that ongoing archive, with more to be released in the years to come, each revealing new layers as the work continues to evolve.

Bio : Christian Nicolay is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist working between Vancouver and Kelowna BC. His diverse body of work employs a wide range of media and techniques often seeking pathways that intercept traditional ways of working with materials. Part of his artistic strategy is to examine and play in liminal areas that are hard to define, often challenging common perceptions of borders and boundaries in relation to process, materiality and function.

He graduated with a BFA from the University of British Columbia (UBC Okanagan) receiving the Helen Pitt Award in 2000. He has exhibited, screened and lectured widely in both Canada and abroad and has been the recipient of several awards, grants, honours and residencies.

Special Mention (program JUGGLE THE PEARLS)

COUNTRY : USA
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 17 m.
DIRECTOR / WRITER : John Strelec
STARRING : Jeni Reed (Peg), John Strelec (Jessup)
CAMERA, SOUND, EDITING, MUSIC : John Strelec

Thanks : Mom’s camcorder, weird neighbors, VHS tapes, and everyone who ever pointed a camera at something just to see what would happen

CONTACTS, LINKS : I Got Them Pegged (Teaser)   I Got Them Pegged (YouTube)   @igotthempegged

Peg fixes her mom’s old VHS camcorder and becomes obsessed. Then she loses her job. Instead of looking for a new one, she starts noticing something strange about her roommate, Barbara — blood in the trash, late-night walks, unsettling hobbies. She enlists her brother Jessup to help investigate, and I Got Them Pegged is born.

In Episode 1: Something Strange on the Lease, the siblings suspect they may be living with a serial killer. Or maybe they’re just catastrophically bored. Either way, the camera’s rolling.

I Got Them Pegged is a DIY found-footage mystery series built like a stack of cursed VHS tapes. Each episode is its own lo-fi genre riff — sometimes spooky, sometimes ridiculous, always heartfelt. This is the one that started it all.

Director Statement : I made this series because I missed the kind of creative freedom we had as kids: when you’d grab your mom’s camcorder, make up a movie on the spot, and somehow end up with something magic.

I Got Them Pegged is a DIY found-footage comedy with real emotional roots. Every episode is filmed on VHS, edited in-camera, and performed with total commitment to the bit. It’s about mystery, memory, and making something with what you’ve got — and believing in it completely.

Bio : John Strelec is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Originally from small-town Colorado, his work blends grounded character storytelling with playful genre twists. He writes, directs, and stars in I Got Them Pegged, a no-budget web series shot on VHS that recently received praise from Lunchmeat VHS and other analog media communities.

Jury Award, Audience Award (program REIMAGINE AND PLAY)

COUNTRY : Italy
YEAR : 2023
DURATION : 16 m.
DIRECTOR, WRITER, EDITOR : Jacopo Torriti
PRODUCTION : i LICAONI DIGITAL STUDIO
VOICE OVER : Carlotta Bianconi
VOICE OF GIULIETTA MASINA : Caterina Gramaglia
VOICE OF FEDERICO FELLINI : Renzo Guddemi
TITLES : Paolo Signorini
AUDIO MIX : Alessandro Izzo
GENERAL SUPERVISOR : Francesca Detti

“Il vento” the song was written and performed by Camilla Furetta

CONTACTS, LINKS : Jacopo Torriti - vimeo    @jack_regy_torr

I have decided to pay tribute to one of my favorite directors, Federico Fellini, by analyzing one of the most underrated movies of the Maestro: Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the spirits). Dismissed by the critics since its release in 1965 as “a lackluster parody of 8 ½” (Goffredo Fofi), this new cinematic immersion in the world of psychoanalysis – despite the omnipresence of typical Fellini images and visions – is above all a project conceived for Fellini's muse Giulietta Masina. However the actress didn't just play a role written in a script; she also went a step further, deviating from the director's intentions, and so bringing them to new semantic horizons. Horizons that we are going to explore in audiovisual format.

Director Statement : I have been always fascinated by the polymorphic world of montage video and/or the re-use of someone else's rushes or films in order to create new meanings to them. My attempts in the domain of mashup videos have to be considered as a sort of experimental artistic proofs that allow me to express myself through an innovative language; a language which also brings myself back to the cinema studies (never completely abandoned by me) to get an audiovisual combination between practice and theory. Between video and essay. That's why the exploration of the world of video essay was just an obligatory passage in my artistic path.

Bio : Jacopo Torriti was born in 1987 in Livorno (Italy). His constant interest in the world of cinema leads him to the path of Cinema and audiovisual studies at the universities in Pisa and Gorizia, plus an Erasmus experience in Paris. During this time, he gains video editing skills, thanks to an internship in an international company specialized in videos.

After that, he works with several Italian videomakers/videographers (such as I Licaoni, Luca Bardi, Drosera videoproduzioni, Giulio Zannol) with professional roles such as: video editor, vfx artist, cameraman, animator, storyboard artist... and sometimes even director.

Film sources : Cabiria (1914) Giovanni Pastrone; Follow the Fleet (1936) Mark Sandrich; Modern Times (1936) Charlie Chaplin; La Strada (1954) Federico Fellini; Il Bidone (1955) Federico Fellini; Nights of Cabiria (1956) Federico Fellini; The Seventh Seal (1957) Ingmar Bergman; La Notte (1961) Michelangelo Antonioni, 8 1/2 (1963) Federico Fellini; Juliet of the spirits (1965) Federico Fellini; Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) Laura Mulvey, Peter Wollen; City of Women (1980) Federico Fellini; Ginger and Fred (1986) Federico Fellini; Zoom su Fellini (1964) Sergio Zavoli; Ciao, Federico! (1970) Gideon Bachmann; Appunti su “La città delle donne” (1980) Ferruccio Castronuovo; In morte di Federico Fellini (1993) Sergio Zavoli; Fellini: je suis un grand menteur (2002) Damien Pettigrew; Giulietta Masina: La forza di un sorriso (2004) Sandro Lai; Wonderland – Federico e gli spiriti (2020) Leopoldo Santovincenzo

Special Mention (program REIMAGINE AND PLAY)

COUNTRIES : Norway, Netherlands
YEAR : 2024-2025
DURATION : 4 m.
ARTIST, PERFORMER : Toni Rodero

CONTACTS, LINKS : PROJECT TEST123 

TEST123 is an audiovisual project by Dutch multidisciplinary artist Toni Rodero. In this experimental music video, all drum / vocal parts and visible instruments are played in real time. Rodero transforms everyday environments into a living piece of music, merging field recordings, performance art and visual poetry in a hypnotic journey through sound and image.

With a bold interdisciplinary approach, TEST123 blurs the boundaries between music and film, challenging how we perceive and document the world around us. Rodero reveals the hidden rhythms embedded in ordinary spaces - from the resonance of industrial halls to the ambient noise of urban streets - and turns reality into a spontaneous, living composition.

In this sonic and visual experiment, Rodero captures the invisible harmonies of life and translates them into a living score that unfolds like a music video. Every step, every surface, every subtle vibration becomes part of the performance. TEST123 pushes the boundaries of what defines a music video, blending found sound, improvised composition, experimental cinematography, and performance art into a cohesive, sensory-driven experience. The project is a love letter to the hidden sounds of the world, a poetic reminder that music is everywhere—if we choose to listen. The work reflects Rodero’s deep fascination with the dialogue between sound and space, an obsession shaped by his background in visual art and music composition. TEST123 doesn’t just document these fleeting moments—it performs them in real time, inviting the audience into Rodero’s creative process, where film becomes music and music becomes film.

Director statement : For me, sound and image are never separate. They are different frequencies of the same experience. In TEST123, I wanted to challenge the idea of a music video — instead of creating a soundtrack to match the visuals, I wanted the visuals to perform the music. Every environment already holds its own sound. It’s all there, waiting to be played. My job as an artist is simply to listen closely, to capture and compose the world around me — and in that act of listening, I become part of the performance itself.

Bio : Toni Rodero is the creative alias of Richard Korteland, a Dutch multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of film, sound art, and performance. Born in Gorinchem, Netherlands in 1973, Rodero’s artistic practice spans over three decades of experimentation across visual art exhibitions, site-specific performances, and audiovisual installations.

With a strong foundation in electronic music composition and experimental filmmaking, Rodero’s work dissolves traditional boundaries between sound and image. His process is intensely hands-on, composing music from field recordings, filming and editing his own footage, and often physically performing within the work itself.