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In a decrepit three-room house, two lovers, played by the filmmakers, fall out of each other?s graces and turn bitter enemies without exchanging words. In the theatrical dream world of their sleep, they endeavour to harm each other though a series of childish games which inevitably go too far. Growing increasingly distrustful of one another, these somnambulists become skilled at the unmaking of love.

Sheila Pye was born near Hamilton, Ontario in 1978. She studied painting, photography, and video at the Ontario College of Art and Design, from which she graduated, winning the top scholarship for graduate studies. She completed her MFA in film production at Concordia University in Montreal. Currently, she lives and works in Toronto, where she is a resident at the Canadian Film Centre in the Director?s Lab. She has written, directed, and produced 8 short films and is currently developing her first feature film "The Young Arsonists". Her work has been exhibited internationally in art galleries, museums, and film festivals. She has been the recipient of numerous awards for her filmmaking and visual art. Sheila also maintains an active art practice which integrates her interest in performance, cinema, and large format still photography. She has upcoming solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Naples. Sheila was invited to be a participant at Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin and was recently short listed to attend the Cannes Festival de Résidence in 2006. Born in Torquay, England in 1976, Nicholas Pye now lives and works in Toronto. He recently completed his Master of Fine Arts degree at Concordia University's Mel Hoppenheim school of cinema, and received his Fine Art undergraduate degree at the Ontario College of Art and Design in spring 2002. His work as yet has been primarily of a photographic nature but he often collaborates on short films and video work with his wife, Sheila Pye. Nicholas has had numerous solo gallery exhibitions in Toronto, Montreal, Miami, New York and Chicago. While a student at OCAD and Concordia, Nicholas received several awards for contemporary photography and cinema. Nicholas currently teaches image arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

A young man and woman?s (played by the filmmakers) isolated life is interrupted when a young girl burrows her way into the back room of their dilapidated shack. Like the wail of a banshee, she begins to play a haunting song to them on her violin, warning them of death. Unable to get into the mysterious room, they become increasingly perplexed and frustrated by her presence. When the woman begins to become unaffected by the forces of gravity, he must decide to heed the banshee?s call and say goodbye to his lover.

NICHOLAS PYE was born in Torquay, England in 1976. He lives and works in Toronto, Canada where he teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design. As a musician, Nicholas relased and toured with 4 almbums in the mid 90?s. Moving from music to art Nicholas completed a Master of Fine Art degree at Concordia Universitiey in 2005, and received his undergraduate degree at the Ontario College of Art and Design in spring 2002. He maintains an active art pratice, collaborating with his partner Sheila, which integrates their collective intersets in performance, cinema, and large format still photography. Their work has been widely exhibited internationally in art galleries, museums, film festivals and was recently acquired by the Smithsonian?s Institute?s Hirshhorn Museum. In 2008 the Pye?s will participate in a 6 month residency in Austria, along with many upcoming exhibitions. Filmography ?Loudly, Death Unties? HD, 11:00, co-director/writer ?A Life of Errors? Super16mm, 12:00, 2006, co-director/writer Toronto International Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival ?Untitled? 16mm, 7 installation loop Locarno International Film Festival ?The Paper Wall? Super16mm, 11:00, 2004, co-director/writer Winner: Best Experimental Film, Worldwide Short Film Festival Winner: European Media Arts Festival, Best of Selection SHEILA PYE was born near Hamilton, Ontario in 1978. She studied painting, photography, and video at the Ontario College of Art & Design, where she won the top scholarship for graduate studies. She completed her MFA in film production at Concordia Univeristy in Montreal and a residency at the Canadian Film Centre in the Director?s Lab. She has written, directed, produced, 7 short films and is currently delveloping her first feature film ?The Young Arsonists?. Sheila also maintains an active art pratice, collaborating with her husband Nicholas, which integrates their collective intersets in performance, cinema, and large format still photography. Their work has been widely exhibited internationally in art galleries, museums, film festivals and was recently acquired by the Smithsonian?s Institute?s Hirshhorn Museum. Sheila has been the reciepient of numerous grants and awards for her filmmaking, and visual art. Her work is characterized by a unique visual style and darly poetic treatment of narrative forms. Sheila was recently short listed for the prestigous Cannes Festival du Residence in Paris, for the feature projecy she is working on. Currently she teaches at the Ontario College of Art & Design. In 2007 the Pyes will participate in a 6 month residency in Austria, along with many upcoming exhibitions FILMOGRAPHY ?Loudly, Death Unties? HD, 11:00 2007 co director/writer/producer Toronto International Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival ?A Life of Errors? 16mm, 12:00 2006 co director/writer Toronto International Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival ?Empty Room? 35mm, 18:26, 2006 director, Universal Studios, CFC Montreal World Film Festival, Atlantic Film Festival, Whistler Film Festival ?The Arsonist? 16mm, 14:00, 2005 director/writer/editor European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck, Germany, Kasseler Dokumentarfilm & Videofest, Germany Toronto International Film Festival Student Showcase, Imapkt Festival, The Netherlands ?Untitled? 16mm, 7:00, 2005 director 59th Locarno International Film Festival ?The Paper Wall? 16mm, 11:00, 2004 co director/writer/editor Winner, Best experimental film, Worldwide Short Film Festival; European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck, Germany ?Best of Selection? , Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Paris France; Kasseler Dokumentarfilm & Videofest, Germany, Slamdance, Park City, , Imapkt Festival, The Netherlands "Untitled" 16mm, 8:00, 2002, director/writer Festival des Film du Monde, Montreal World Film Festival; Worldwide Short Film Festival ?The Lesson? 16mm, 8:00, 2001, director/writer Winner, best short ?TVO Telefest Canada ?He?s Showing Me his Shadows? 16mm, 11:00 min, 1999 director/writer

Boxed into twin rooms yet separated by a thin wall, a brother and sister communicate their desires. Stunning, provocative and perplexing, the pair is irresistible to watch as they become increasingly dependent on one another. Needing each other to perform basic bodily functions, such as breathing, ?Sheila and Nicholas Pye explore collisions of a different sort in their edgy (and often hilarious) film exposing the vulnerabilities of emotional interdependence.? Sarah Milroy, The Globe and Mail, This Week, Saturday, June 5, 2004, page M8

SHEILA PYE was born near Hamilton, Ontario in 1978. She studied painting, photography, and video at the Ontario College of Art and Design, where she graduated winning the top scholarship for graduate studies. She completed her MFA in film production at Concordia Univeristy in Montreal. Currently, she lives and works in Toronto, where she is a resident at the Canadian Film Centre in the Director?s Lab. She has written, directed, produced, edited and starred in 5 short films and is currently delveloping her first feature film. Her work has been exhibited internationally in art galleries, museums and film festivals. She has been the reciepient of numerous awards for her academic work, filmmaking, and visual art. Sheila also maintains an active art pratice, often collaborating with her husband Nicholas, which integrates their collective intersets in performance, cinema, and large format still photography. NICHOLAS PYE was born in Torquay, England in 1976. He lives and works in Toronto. Nicholas recently completed his Master of Fine Art degree at Concordia Universities Mel Hoppenheim school of cinema, and received his Fine Art undergraduate degree at the Ontario College of art and Design in spring 2002. His work so far has been primarily of a photographic nature but he often collaborates on short films and video work with his wife, Sheila Pye. Nicholas has had numerous solo gallery exhibitions in Toronto, Montreal, Miami, New York and Chicago. While a student at OCAD and Concordia Nicholas received several awards for contemporary photography and cinema. Nicholas currently teaches image arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

In a nameless Chinese city, a mother with her daughter missing, refuses to go gently into this good night.

QIU Yang was born and raised in Changzhou, China. He studied film directing at the Victorian College of the Arts, Australia. His last short film A Gentle Night was selected for the 70th Festival de Cannes Short Film Competition in 2017. And in 2015, his short Under the Sun was selected for the 68th Festival de Cannes Cinéfondation competition and is now selected for more than 80 international film festivals, including the AFI Fest, New Directors/New Films, Clermont-Ferrand, Palm Springs and nominated for the 52nd Taipei Golden Horse Award. He has been chosen to participate the Taipei Golden Horse Film Academy, mentored by the legendary film master Hou Hsiao Hsien, as well as the Swatch Art Peace Hotel residency in Shanghai. He is currently developing his first feature project Under the Sun (same title as the short), which was selected for the CineMart 2016 and Cinéfondation Residence 2017.

Combining low resolution footage, 16mm film and satellite imagery, Efforts of Nature considers the passage of time, processes of change and dissolution from two distant perspectives: the existential level of the body and the planetary level of shifting geological conditions.

Morgan Quaintance is a London-based artist and writer. His moving image work has been shown and exhibited widely at festivals and institutions including: MOMA, New York; Mcevoy Foundaton for the Arts, San Francisco; Konsthall C, Sweden; David Dale, Glasgow; European Media Art Festival, Germany; Alchemy Film and Arts Festival, Scotland; Images Festival, Toronto; International Film Festival Rotterdam; and Third Horizon Film Festival, Miami. His practice remains open and responsive to contemporary experience and so largely eschews the rehearsal of set themes. However, interests in the human condition, the cultic milieu, counterculture, ethnography, Afro-Caribbean, East Asian and British histories, and the built environment are all mainstays. He is a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. He was the 2023 IFFR Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards; the recipient of the 2022 ARTE Award at Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg; in 2021, the Best Documentary Short Film Award at Tacoma Film Festival, USA; the Explora Award at Curtocircuito International Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela; the UK Short Film Award at Open City Documentary Film Festival, London, the Jean Vigo Prize for Best Director at Punto de Vista, Spain, and the Best Experimental Film Award at Curtas Vila do Conde, Portugal; in 2020, the New Vision Award at CPH:DOX, Denmark and the Best Experimental Film award at Curtas Vila Do Conde, Portugal . Over the past fourteen years, his critically incisive writings on contemporary art, aesthetics and their socio-political contexts have featured in publications including Art Monthly, the Wire, and the Guardian, and helped shape and influence the UK’s new landscape of progressive cultural discourse and debate. A key reference here is his 2017 text The New Conservatism: Complicity and the UK Art World’s Performance of Progression, available here. From 2012 – 2023 he was the producer and presenter of Studio Visit, an interview-based, broadcast radio programme for London’s Resonance 104.4FM. The post-broadcast archive of over 100 interviews can be found here, and includes in depth conversations with Carolee Schneemann, Kevin Jerome Everson, Jimmie Durham, Susan Hiller, Jean Fisher, Andrea Fraser, Kathleen Daniel and Billy Woodberry.

"Black Sun" is a Vietnamese rock?n?roll song from the ?70s. The song expresses the pessimistic view of young South Vietnamese before the impending unification of the nation in 1975. In 2012, the youths here are still wandering, singing this song. "Black Sun? attempts to capture the image of a young couple, strolling around the cityscape of Saigon, the most exciting city of Vietnam.

Truong Que Chi was born in 1987 in Hanoi, Vietnam. She is graduated from the University of Lyon 2 with a degree in film studies and is currently studying a Master at the University of Paris Nouvelle Sorbonne (France). Focus on using moving image as an art material, experiment with fiction, documentaries or video installations; Chi projects explore from the urban landscape to the landscape of the mind as a theatrical stage, where show any assignment of fiction and reality, of memories and present, the cruelty and the poetic of the ephemeral.

The musical piece nowadays known as "Goldberg Variations" was published in 1742 with the title "Keyboard practice". As its original name states, they are musical scores to be practiced. In this solo performance, several spatial and movement scores have been intentionally created to be practiced with a specific soundtrack. The sound score proposed consist of outtakes of a recording from Glenn Gould?s "Goldberg Variations" in 1955. The music is presented and as is the performer. They take a parallel journey through the piece, having constant and discontinuous dialogues, shifting the approach to what perception is. These different approaches are fed by the sound score, which consists not only of music but also of dialogue. Text, words, spoken aloud by a human body can be as rich in its complexity as a musical score. The sound informs and directs the dance vocabulary in a particular way. Glenn Gould, as a performer in his early days, chose to play Bach in a very personal way. Here the dancer, the performer, chooses to present himself in a certain outfit that isn?t quite normal at first sight. This solo is a solo performance practice. Bach and Glenn Gould direct.

Albert Queseda was born in Barcelona in 1982, and now lives in Brussels. He studied theatre and philosophy and is currently a performer and choreographer. He performed his dance training in Barcelona, Amsterdam and Brussels, in various schools and seminars. His background includes modern dance techniques and other movement and body awareness methods, focusing on one?s own way of dealing with the world through improvisation in its different forms: free improvisation, contact improvisation, etc. The freedom of improvisation in a specific set forms the core of his creations. Very influenced by Deborah Hay?s approach to performance ("Your perception is your dance"), he develops practices in order to survive and experience the dance. In his most recent works he concentrates on the movement outside of the functionality of its action, where it becomes necessary and pure. The mind drops into the body to accomplish a specific task. Quesada is currently organizing the CI-Jams and Set-Improvisation Jams. He performs improvisation pieces/event in Amsterdam, Brussels and Barcelona.

Institute of Contemporary Arts: As home to some of the best new art and culture in Britain and from around the world, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is the meeting point for artistic exploration and audience engagement, examining the questions that shape culture, society, and individual lives. As such, it is one of the world's most innovative and historically influential contemporary art institutions. Located on The Mall, London, it houses three galleries, two cinemas, a theatre for live music and performance events, an extensive talks program, and a late night bar and café with free WIFI. The ICA believes in creative adventure, in exploration and discovery, and in art as inspiration. Ultimately the ICA is not so much a place as a principle, a belief in the new with an enduring faith in the power of creativity. Live and Media Arts: The ICA's program of Live arts (performance, theatre) and Media Arts (computer generated, mechanical, installation, sci-art) has led the way in supporting these art forms since the ICA was first formed in 1947. The ICA supports artists who utilize the ubiquitous technologies, both high and low end, that surround us. These artists let us experience the world in ways we never dreamed and allow us to experience our society from a new perspective. Engagement with issues that have a bearing on our daily lives and thought provoking discussions around the work shown are central to the ethos of the Live and Media Arts program.

Emma Quinn is the Director of Live and Media Arts at the ICA. Before working at the ICA she worked at the Millennium Dome as Content Manager for the Mind Zone and co-curated independent exhibitions including "White Noise" in Brick Lane, and "sQuawl" at the Oxo Tower. She also gained commercial experience working for new media companies including the art group Soda Creative Ltd. She is a member of the art group Spore. She earned a MA in 1997 in Digital Arts from Middlesex University, where the focus was hands on programming for the computer.

Camels are whispering I & II is a 2-channel video installation by Ibrahim Quraishi, exploring change in human relations. Heart of the work are 2 videos of the artist with his mother, questioning that impactful relation of self-identification. Around it we hear voices of artists, activists & thinkers; people who dare to go against the grain. People who take an exceptional position & don’t vote with the majority in times of trauma, conflict or change. In a cross cultural, transgender, cross historical mix of pre-recorded statements, these outsiders are talking about why they felt change is needed. The public will be learning, sometimes laughing or crying from accounts of the participants who tell short stories no longer than 3 minutes. The selected voices of artists, philosophers, activists are: Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Marina Abramovic, Serge Latouche, Nawal Al Saadawi, Noam Chomsky, Yuval Noah Harari, Assia Djebar, Hanna Schygulla, Jessica Ekomane, Komi Togbonou, Seyran Ate?, Yara Mekawei a.o. This video installation was conceived together with the ecological architectural collective, RaumlaborBerlin, winners of 2021Golden Lion Venice Biennale for Architecture. Sound compositions are by Eunice Martins, Heidrun Schramm, Mike Ladd and mixed by composer Norscq. Videographer & animation by Alex Weiss.

The art of Ibrahim Quraishi focuses on change, inter-cultural resistance of our socio-political realities. The ”2017 List of 50 most exciting artists in Europe right now/ART NET Survey” stated: "Quraishi is a visual artist whose work encompasses various media such as video, film, analog photography, painting & performance installations. Quraishi is characterised by a nomadic existence & divides his time between several cities across Europe & the Middle East. He consciously explores the dynamics of migration and he engages in research, teaching & creative work simultaneously in various cities & spaces”. Quraishi recently launched a research group on integrated ecology & artistic practice in Lahore called “Electric Rickshaw” with The School of Moving Images in Teheran. He is currently a member of the Fine Arts Department at Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam. He was guest professor at Netherlands Film Academy Amsterdam 2014-2017 & he thought at Art University of Amsterdam between 2007-2014. He is in the midst of finishing his first feature film “Holy Mama.”. He is a regular cultural columnist for taz, die Tageszeitung DE & counterpunch US. In 2021-22 he was fellow of Stiftung Kunstfonds Germany. Most recently, Kino Arsenal Berlin screened the rough cut of his film “Baumchen Wechsel Dich”about multiple notions on migration, children & identity.

Technology?s physical past is fading. It is carefully covering its trails, leaving only behind negative connotations of its former, inner self; boards, circuitry and cables ? in essence its vital organs. These are present only in niche-fiction and reports on devious activities. Simultaneously, we are pouring ourselves into a collective stream of information, be it in the form of text, video, images, symbols and game avatars. We look to escape our shortcomings, to live vicariously through fictional characters ? we maneuver a space in which we are the compressed versions of each other. It is the convergence of our self- created fictional worlds with the external collective one, in the form of our preferred ways of communication. Material drawn from the different sources of our ?collective stream of information? is the basis of short films. It?s a collage of established narrative techniques, collected personal data and taped conversations. I reach out to an intimate social environment and retrieve a subjective visual record. Any documentation will be inherently flawed, extracting only some parts of a whole. The films organize diverse and dissonant elements in a cinematic dynamic that contracts. We see a small group conspiring together, concerned about shaping an object that is not yet present. It is the absence of a device or an idea. There is a strong dramaturgy to their rituals, like believers playing out a strict, scripted set of actions. By devotion and affection they seem to be wafted on into a world of enclosed private experience. It is where the mundane hobbyist encounters the darker parts of his domain. The tactile ? the construction and assembling of objects ? becomes the backdrop for a continuous deciphering of messages. The viewer is torn between a media-constructed paranoia and the comfort of the fictitious adventure ? the presence of technology is lost in science-fiction. It dissolves into an external image-space, one that exists both as a contemporary and as a distant memory. It represents a contemplative comfort-zone, turning to the realm of the private dream. This is the forensic scene. This is the place to investigate. The recurring narratives are reaching for this space, through the alienation of the familiar, by the means of forgotten devices.

Oscar Qvale (b. 1985) lives and works in Oslo. He earned his BFA degree from the Bergen National Academy of the Arts and Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (HGB), specializing in photography. In 2012 he received his masters degree from the Oslo National Academy of Fine Art.

RECODE is A video written in a string of dna code. VIDEO: LASSE RAA AUDIO: LASSE MARHAUG DNA-SEQUENCING: TOM KRISTENSEN, PROFESSOR IN BIOCHEMISTRY FINANCE: THE NORWEGIAN ARTS COUNCIL, ART AND NEW TECHNOLOGY LENGTH: 06.50 MIN. DNA & COPYRIGHT 2004: LASSE RAA

BIOGRAPHY OF LASSE RAA Contemporary artist, live and work in Norway. Work in a free flow of mediums and communicative devices and use video as a final outcome. Teach in timebased mediums at Robert Meyer Art College in Oslo.

SUNSTROKES is a method-driven and improvisation based film project produced and directed by Julian Rabus. Twenty-year-old Rachel moves from New York to Los Angeles in order to reinvent herself. Still attached to classical role models at first, she increasingly comes into conflict with them in her new environment and, in conversations with her new friends, begins to redefine her expectations of life and discover other sides to herself. This film was created in close collaboration between the director and the actors over a period of two years and a total of 32 days of shooting in Los Angeles and the surrounding area. The work consists of several chapters, of which this one focuses on the relationship between Rachel and Kevin.

Julian Rabus, born and raised in Berlin, Germany, was an assistant cameraman and assistant director in film and television before beginning a degree in fine arts / media art under Prof. Julian Rosefeldt at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, which he received with honours in 2021. Since then he has been studying at the Berlin University of the Arts in Prof. Thomas Arslan’s class on narrative film. In between, he also attended the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design under Prof. Serpil Turhan and the California Institute of Arts under Prof. James Benning.

MAGMA is a method driven and improvisation based film project produced and directed by Julian Rabus. The shoot consists of long situations that last up to several hours and are filmed with up to four cameras. Actors are given space to behave without dramatic functions. Following intuitions opens a way to engage with certain psychological patterns and find narrative structures, which then manifest themselves in the editing and the viewer’s perception. In the film couples and peer groups try to find their way in everyday situations: they perform, reveal themselves, make themselves vulnerable, are insecure, fall in love or pretend to the others.

Julian Rabus works as a director and producer in the field of media art and narrative film since 2016. After he graduates from Academy of Fine Arts Munich in the class of Julian Rosefeldt he studied Film Directing at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles and moved back to his hometown Berlin to finish his studies at the University of Arts in the Narrative Film class of Thomas Arslan.

"Civilians. Invasion", created in 2023. The film documents the experiences of Ukrainians during the Russian aggression against Ukraine. This invasion led to extensive documentation by civilians, soldiers, and journalists, resulting in a wealth of photo and video materials that made their way onto social media platforms. While some of this content went viral through Telegram channels and other social networks, many photos and videos remained relatively unknown with minimal views. The film is structured around a specific storyline, starting from the initial days of the invasion and unfolding the events related to how people navigate a new reality: how to live and survive, the risks faced by civilians during the conflict, episodes of housing destruction, and stories of those who have lost their loved ones. In 2024 "Civilians. Invasion" represents Ukraine at the 60th Venice Biennale.

Andrii Rachynskyi and Daniil Revkovskyi are the Kharkiv (Ukraine) artists who are fusing different formats of artistic practices (installations, reenactment, video, archives), researching the contexts and landscapes of the industrial regions of Ukraine. They graduated from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Art with a degree in graphic design. Nominated for the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022, the winners of the 2020 PinchukArtCentre Prize Audience Award for the project “Hooligans.” Allegro Prize 2022 winners. In 2024, Andrii Rachinskyi and Daniil Revkovskyi represent Ukraine at the 60th Venice Biennale. https://revkovskyirachynskyi.com

Scene from the beach, at the first look can be connected with famous Manet?s painting ?Dejeuner sur l?herbe?, but what makes this version of the famous composition provocative is inversed gender relation. Projecting of this video in the public space would pick voajeristic attitude on unexpected consummating territories. This time gaze isn?t faced to female body, instead, it is inversed to the male body. Contextualizing of this kind of complete change could be queered.

The Chornobyl Zone - the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history - had been occupied by the Russian troops on February 24, 2022, in the very first hours of their all-out invasion of Ukraine. The Russians had turned the territory of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant into a military base for their troops in an attempt to occupy the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, located just a hundred miles away. They had captured the personnel of the nuclear plant who were forced to perform their duties without proper rest or sleep. The Russian plan was to stay in Chornobyl for just three days: this was their imagined time span for Ukraine’s downfall. Instead, the Russians were stuck at the radioactive site for five weeks, only to see their army collapse in the battle for Kyiv. Most of their illegal activities during these five weeks had been captured by the nuclear plant’s CCTV system, which the Russians had failed to prevent from filming. Special Operation is entirely based on these recordings. This film offers a unique perspective into the inner workings of the Russian military machine in Ukraine - and into one of its most grandiose failures. The CCTV cameras have recorded every aspect of Russian criminal presence at the contaminated Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant - from the gross violations of nuclear safety to the staged visits by the Russian TV propagandists. We have obtained these unique materials - which had never been disclosed to the public before - from the Ukrainian law enforcement as part of our team’s long-term effort to document Russian war crimes in Chornobyl, and to help bring their perpetrators to justice. Each shot of this film is a piece of evidence representing a war crime of nuclear terror. With this film, we wish to make this evidence visible - and by doing so, to expose the profound, and frightening, incompetence of the Russian army.

Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv. His films experiment with documentary forms and practices of political cinema. They have been screened at film festivals and exhibitions worldwide including Berlinale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Doclisboa, Thessaloniki IFF, Dokufest, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), e-flux (New York), Taipei Biennial, Docudays (Kyiv), Sheffield Doc Fest, Krakow IFF, DOK Leipzig etc. His films received multiple awards, including the Grand Prix at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival for Chornobyl 22. Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he has collaborated with The Reckoning Project.

A car travels through a desolate industrial area at night. It stops near an overturned truck that was carrying pigs. Dead animals lie scattered across the road; a fatal incident, a huge loss of animal life. A premature death ironically, since the pigs had been on their way to the slaughterhouse. The subtle camera movement switches from the subjective view of the handheld camera to the objective and contemplative view of the rising camera that is mounted on a crane and surveys the scene from a great height. Finally, a big firework is set off, seemingly dedicated to the dead animals, as though it was a requiem. The scene is a recreation from news coverage.

Lives and works between Amsterdam and Athens. She completed her education in Fine Art (BA, MA, PhD) at the University of Leeds in Britain with scholarship by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. Her body of work spans from experimental-documentary practices, to video-essays, archival footage and most recently cinematic narratives and medium length films. She has recently completed the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten residency (2013-2014) in Amsterdam, with a scholarship by Onassis Foundation (GR). Her first solo exhibition was presented at Martin van Zomeren Gallery, Amsterdam, 2014. Currently her work will be presented at EYE Film Institute, Close-Up: A New Generation of Film and Video Artists in the Netherlands (Jan-May 2015). She has participated in group exhibitions: VISIO European Program on Artists’ Moving Images 2015; 1st Research Pavilion, Venice Biennial, 2015; Art Rotterdam Projections, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, 2015; Ce que raconte la solitude, ART-O-RAMA, 2014; Rijksakademie OPEN, 2013 – 2014, Manifesta 8, 2010; No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern, 2010. Her films and video works were screened at: Netherlands Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, BFI London, Cinema de la Nouvelle Lune, Curtas Vila do Conde, Gulf Film Festival Dubai, Capalbio Cinema, Project Space Leeds, and as part of Rencontres Internationales, 2010, at Centre National d’Art Moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, Reina Sofia National Museum and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Her work is part of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam collection. Her films and videos balance between an empirical perception of landscapes and events and an authentic representation of them. Her narratives are located at the margins of the urban, haunted by stray dogs, roadkills, fatal accidents and dissipated death. The cryptic and universal nature of these cinematic worlds is initiated by a certain realism that has very little to do with its usual representation. Dead and living, human and non-human coexist in an accord of dream and sensuality. This is the land of her semi-autobiographic narrations; returns to personal histories that reveal something of the subsequent carving of a place’s fiction and not necessarily of the place itself.

SYNOPSIS Three Farewells: The Last Burial Janis Rafa The Last Burial proposes a visual approach on the concept of death and the fear of losing, outside the rigid anthropocentric understanding on human / non-human existence. It describes the moment of loss within the intimate space of a family house. The father and mother of this familial environment are silenced, in a state of mourning. Their sorrow is expressed through the form of water, rain or onions; visual symbolisms that take the characters into a timeless state of being and awareness, reflecting on the house’s past. The Last Burial consists part of the Three Farewells (2013), a trilogy of burials produced by Janis Rafa, with the support of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten.

BIO Janis Rafa Lives and works between Amsterdam and Athens. She completed her education in Fine Art (BA, MA, PhD) at the University of Leeds in Britain with scholarship by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. Her body of work spans from experimental-documentary practices, to video-essays, archival footage and most recently cinematic narratives and medium length films. She has recently completed the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten residency (2013-2014) in Amsterdam, with a scholarship by Onassis Foundation (GR). Her first solo exhibition was presented at Martin van Zomeren Gallery, Amsterdam, 2014. She currently presents work at EYE Film Institute, Close-Up: A New Generation of Film and Video Artists in the Netherlands (Jan-May 2015). She has participated in group exhibitions: VISIO European Program on Artists’ Moving Images 2015; 1st Research Pavilion, Venice Biennial, 2015; Art Rotterdam Projections, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, 2015; Ce que raconte la solitude, ART-O-RAMA, 2014; Rijksakademie OPEN, 2013 – 2014, Manifesta 8, 2010; No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern, 2010. Her films and video works were screened at: Netherlands Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, BFI London, Cinema de la Nouvelle Lune, Curtas Vila do Conde, Gulf Film Festival Dubai, Capalbio Cinema, Project Space Leeds, and as part of Rencontres Internationales, 2010, at Centre National d’Art Moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, Reina Sofia National Museum and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Her work is part of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam collection.

The film is based on forms of experimental documentary practice. Its title reflects the distance between Pakistan and Greece that clandestine migrants have to cover through their movement from the East to the West. The opening and closing scenes of the film take place inside a car and present footage of the journey that Pakistani men and myself made to the centre of Athens to covertly receive a newly arrived migrant who entered the country through smuggling networks. The narrative of the film is located on the outskirts of Athens where Pakistani male communities live and work undercover within a horse-riding club next to the city?s airport. The project attempts to question notions of travel, movement and distance outside a westernised perspective by concentrating on a terrain vague. Through the travelling camera, the film documents the ?invisible? sub-geographies of the urban landscape in one of Europe?s capitals.

Janis Rafailidou (1984, Athens) the last nine years lives in UK. She studies as a PhD researcher on contemporary forms of video-installation art and experimental documentary practice in Fine Art, at the University of Leeds; awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She has participated in exhibitions in Greece and UK, with her latest participation at the Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art 2009. Her practice-based PhD research is presented this year in Manifesta 8, Murcia. Further information on her work can been found at: www.janisrafailidou.co.uk

Jon Rafman’s Poor Magic is a vision of a post-human dystopia featuring animated 3-D bodies continuously tortured in abstract digital space. The video presents the viewer with a haunting programme of repeating motifs: a blue featureless avatar, a view from a colonoscopy, and ranks of identical figures crashing and toppling over each other, made with the help of crowd-simulation software. While a poetic lament, Poor Magic addresses the fragmented consciousness of a post-physical existence. The film shows a terrifying image of a future where all humanity is uploaded to a virtual purgatory and endlessly abused. Or perhaps it is also a brutal representation of the present moment and the effect that technology has on our flesh and psyche.

Rafman was born in 1981 in Canada. He works and lives in Montreal. Artist, filmmaker and essayist, he holds an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.A. in Philosophy and Literature from Mcgill University. His work centers around the emotional, social and existential impact of technology on contemporary life. He is widely known for exhibiting found images from Google Street View in his online artwork “9-Eyes”. Much of his work focuses on melancholy in modern social interactions, communities and virtual realities. His videos utilize personal moments to reveal how pop culture ephemera and subcultures shape individual desires, defining those individuals. The artist’s recent solo exhibitions include Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016); Westfälischer Kunstverein, Munster (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal (2015); the Zabludowicz Collection, London (2015), and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv. His work has also been featured in numerous international group exhibitions, including Berlin Biennial 9 and Manifesta 11 in 2016, The Future of Memory, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2015), Speculations on Anonymous Materials, Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2015), and the Lyon and Moscow Biennial in 2015. He was also presented at Saatchi Gallery in London and at Palais de Tokyo in 2012. The artist was rewarded for excellence in the visual arts at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2015, and has been nominated for the Tiger Award for short Film, the Mainsqueeze and the Sobey Art Award.