CINECITY 2022: Open (Shorts)

CINECITY OPEN (SHORTS)

MATKA / POLKA [MOTHER / POLE]

Dir: Joanna Suchomska. 14.45 mins. 

A collection of stories – all verbatim – from waiting rooms, gynaecology chairs, abortion clinics, and bedrooms, a meditation on what it means to be a woman in today’s Polish society. The documentary breaks the taboo around the experiences, emotions and identity of Polish women who have faced the country’s strict reproductive policy to make decisions about their own life and body.

I am good at karate

Dir: Jess Dadds. 11.13 mins.

Follows a young teenager who is forced to battle a demon made of football shirts. For What We Are About To Receive Dir: Matt Page. 10.30 mins. When a hungry couple turn to crime to put food on the table, they soon find their relationship and morals put to the test.

Hornbeam

Dir: Mark Pluck. 16.50 mins.

Under cover of darkness, a man waits for a stranger and the prospect of casual sex; the meeting doesn’t go to plan when his date is overwhelmed by the seediness of the situation. As they meet again, fuelled by lust and curiosity, their encounters culminate in life-changing revelations.

Flux

Dir: Prerna Winter. 7.49 mins.

Three sisters – all wild hair and dirty nails – meander through a humid summer day as they push and pull against one another, testing patience and boundaries, when an unsettling moment brings something unexpected into their fold.

The Diver's Son

Dir: Nick Sneath. 3.40 mins.

A short film documenting the story of a man following in his father's footsteps. Sandy Rijgersberg shares some of the difficult events of his past and his quest to recover a lost keepsake. Cinegraffic Score Dir: Iloobia. 4.51 mins. Celluloid film is reconfigured into a graphic musical score, with obscure narratives emerging as the film is reanimated. The soundtrack is derived from magnetic tape loops, field recordings, archival fragments and a DIY visual synthesiser. Cinegraffic Score continues an ongoing interest in reconfiguring abandoned, decaying and orphaned celluloid material into complex collages with ambiguous fragmentary narratives.

YOU HAVE FAILED AS AN AUDIENCE

Dir: WIZ. 17.46 mins.

At the dawn of the digital age, dirt metal prophet, Noah Ray, delivers an incandescent sermon for a life without shackles and compromise. Through this recently rediscovered footage from fifteen years ago in Alabama and Georgia, and with a soundtrack of punishing beauty from Music Hates You, he preaches an impassioned and prescient testimony which couldn’t be more timely and undeniable.

Who's Counting?'

Dir: Ben Lankester. 5.15 mins.

1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, yet the total number of miscarriages in the UK is currently unrecorded. Unfolding in reverse, Who’s Counting? tells the story of a couple as they endure the physical and emotional trauma of successive losses before they can receive support.