16th 25 FPS Festival Awards

After four festival days and 29 films competing for the awards, the festival juries & audiences have decided on their favourites.

 

GRAND JURY GRAND PRIX

RANDA MAROUFI: How to Disappear by Total Refusal
"For a message of peace through an hyper-realistic body performance, for this act of rejection, for this act of not complying and dishonoring the rules of the game, for this position to appropriate this digital public space and this entertainment industry, for this resistance, for this poetic essay, the Grand Prix goes to Total Refusal for their film How to Disappear."

MARIA PALACIOS CRUZ: Apiyemiyekî? by Ana Vaz
"I would like to award the Grand Prix to a highly sensorial and audiovisually inventive film, which also responds to a situation of political urgency. A work that rethinks film language in order to find ways to provide representation to a haunted landscape, a largely unwritten history, a memory that has been repressed, a precarious archive. A work that demonstrates how asking questions is sometimes more necessary than giving answers and also that there are no possible answers to some questions. An important work that sheds light on the genocidal crimes committed against indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazonas. I’m very happy to announce that a 25 FPS Grand prix award goes to Apiyemiyekî? by Ana Vaz."

DAVOR SANVINCENTI: Sun Dog by Dorian Jespers
"Skilfully using cinematic language tools to blur the notions of aesthetics, narration and sound textures. An impressive and hallucinogenic work which with honest ease powerfully conveys human conditions to the audience. Precisely because of this rare light refraction we testified to, I give my Grand Prix to the film Sun Dog by Dorian Jespers."

CRITICS' JURY AWARD: From My Desert by Veneta Androva
"By using original technique and witty narration, the author draws us into a Faustian romance between a young investor and an art object in his possession. The action takes place in what is in fact a non-place within a system based on the abstract architecture of exchange value of commodity forms seemingly destined by the circular process of sale and acquisition. The obfuscated nature of market forms thus gets revealed as an instance of human encounter, and sexuality as a technology that obeys the fetish of power. The Critics' Award goes to Veneta Androva for the film From My Desert."

CRITICS' JURY SPECIAL MENTION: TESTFILM #1 by Telcosysems
We give our very special mention to TESTFILM #1, a film manifesto that deals with the very basis of experimental film: the critical deconstruction of technology that both enables and sets its limits. It does so in the most current way possible: tackling the DCP technology, a projection principle that presents itself as a major advancement with no possible alternatives. TESTFILM #1 clearly tells us that no machine in human hands is neutral. It is a call to arms against the uniform, profit-driven ideology behind the principle of DCP. Although it leaves us with a bitter taste of a futile attempt, we do hope it opens a path for a creative struggle that continues."

AUDIENCE AWARD:
Sun Dog by Dorian Jespers

GREEN DCP AWARD FOR THE CROATIAN FILM IN THE PROGRAMME: How to Talk to Mom by Dalija Dozet
"From its beginning, Green DCP Award was handed out to support new voices on the local experimental film scene. This year's laureate is an author, who uses her own voice as a means of addressing, expressing and exploring the topics of intimacy, closeness and communication."

Photos: Sun Dog, Apiyemiyekî?, How to Disappear, From My Desert, TESTFILM #1, How to Talk to Mom