New Reflexes, the origins of digital film and cinemagoers without cinemas
This year, Croatian competition program Reflexes showcases five films by established as well as new authors, and in collaboration with the European Short Film Network, we offer a side program with a selection of films bringing us back to the sources of digital film and a panel titled Cinemagoers without cinemas.
Reflexes – Croatian Competition offers a place for experimental and other filmmakers who create outside of mainstream tendencies to present their works, and this year's selection consists of five films by both new and established filmmakers. They deal with various, current and visual motifs and themes, delving into the topics of humanity and light, ecology and apocalypse. Our Critics Jury decides on the award.
Young filmmaker Maja Ležaić opens the program with her disorientingly tender film Alice in Wonder, which builds a layered story about a childhood and the Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Another young filmmaker Karla Mesek arrives with Interference, a film that captures the coexistence of nature and industry along the Zrmanja River on the brink of an ecological disaster. Filmmaker and screenwriter Marija Georgiev brings us Streetside Balcony, a film about the limits of vision, both real and imagined, and about what we want and don’t want to see. Vladislav Knežević, a doyen of the experimental scene, creates a new pervasive experience of light, disintegration, and the dissolution of language in Exterminata. Tin Žanić transforms dreamlike structures into a real nightmare, with a video collage of the end of a broken world, in his Blackmuck.
In collaboration with the European Short Film Network, we present a special program as a part of the festival. A selection of experimental audiovisual works titled Raw Data: The Origins of Digital Film, selected by Martijn van Boven, will be screened on Thursday, September 25th at 2 pm, at the Kinoteka cinema, providing insight into the sustainable development of digital image processing techniques and how artists have explored them over the past decades. Some of the featured artists are computer art pioneers Bart Vegter and Aldo Tambellini, and explorers of machine capabilities Joost Rekveld and Semiconductor.
On Saturday, September 27th at 12 pm, at Klet, we will host a panel titled Film Festivals and Their New Realities: Cinemagoers Without Cinemas. The panel brings together film professionals, curators, and cultural strategists to discuss what the future of audience development looks like in cities losing cinemas, with a special focus on Zagreb. We will explore how festivals and producers are adapting to the loss of space, passively or proactively, how they are redefining their social impact, and what it means to be a responsible cultural agent in the context of an increasingly stark infrastructural gap. The panel will be held in Croatian.