25 FPS Closing Day: Award Ceremony, Pioneers of Computer Animation and Storm de Hirsch

Along with the official award ceremony, the last day of the 25 FPS Festival will be marked by the pioneering works of computer animation selected by Ivan Marušić Klif, the best Croatian experimental titles and the fiction film by the leading figure of the American avant-garde, Storm de Hirsch.

At 8pm, the festival jury and organisers will present awards to the best festival films. The Grand Jury consisting of Pia Borg, Katrin Mundt and Ivan Marušić Klif will award three equal Grand Prix, the Critics’ Jury (Patrick Gamble, Michelle Koch, Ana Kovačić) will also award their prize, as well as the audience that voted for their favourites during the festival. The Festival organisers, the 25 FPS Association, will award the Green DCP Award to the Croatian experimental film in the programme. The award ceremony will be followed by a screening of the award-winning works.

Before the awards ceremony, the festival day will begin at 4pm with films selected by the new media artist and director of the Vector Hack festival Ivan Marušić Klif as part of the Jury’s Choice section. The programme is called X Is Left-Right, Y Is Up-Down brings together a number of significant historical and contemporary titles from the field of computer art that have had a significant impact on the author.

At 6 pm, Reflexes are scheduled – a section dedicated to the best recent experimental films in Croatian production. The programme will screen six films by Croatian authors of different generations and inclinations, who use innovative film procedures to evoke different phenomena of personal and social frictions. After the screening, the authors will present their films in person.

At 10pm, the festival programme closes with the rarely screened feature film Goodbye in the Mirror (1964), by the key figure on New York’s 1960s avant-garde scene Storm de Hirsch. Half-scripted, half-improvised, this is the author’s debut and only feature film, with which she laid the aesthetic and thematic foundations for her later short films, which are significantly preoccupied with the consideration of female subjectivity. Inspired by the author’s personal experiences, the film is set in Rome, focusing on three roommates – American Maria (Rosa Pradell), Englishwoman Berenice (Diane Stainton) and Swedish Ingrid (Barbara Apostal) – or their fleeting and whimsical adventures with other partners. The film will be screened from a rare 16mm print.

Photo: Matrix III (programme X Is Left-Right, Y Is Up-Down)