Since television and later the world wide web have radically altered our notion of time and space, our sense of experiencing the world has also changed. These essayistic short films from around the globe invite meditation on how we inhabit this planet, both on the surface and below.

Deep Focus

Regained

where were we

IFFR 2017

The film transports to a landscape of silence and solitude, alone with the wind, eyes burnt by the light. A place that turns harshness into tenderness.

Remote

In 1958, shortly before the communist revolution, a tourist film was made to promote Cuba. In 2014 the filmmakers revisited the same locations.

Tempo of Tomorrow Revisited

In 1920s and 1930s Milan, Piero Portaluppi became a successful architect, as well as an enthusiastic filmmaker. His collection of amateur films not only illustrates his career but also gives an impression of a society increasingly under the spell of Mussolini.

L' amatore

Haunted by Italo Calvino’s books and the land art of Robert Smithson, this audiovisual trip takes us through the volcanic landscape of Lanzarote.

The Stability of the System

Images on celluloid eventually deteriorate. In fact, a loss of colour is already noticeable in this poetic collage of recycled, predominantly magenta fragments.

Answer Print

Plato’s allegory of the cave is often read as a prefiguration of cinema. Yet this film illustrates how online gaming was born from a network of caves.

Colossal Cave

The absurd wealth of typical tourist photos that can be found online allows for new forms of archaeology. A frame-by-frame reconstruction of generic behaviour.

A Place I've Never Been

Immersing the viewer in the darkest corridors deep in the earth, this film suggests all sorts of underground activities, from the political to the mythical.

Burning Mountains That Spew Flame

Essayist Georg Wasner used fragments from three films to breathe new life into a text from 1909. This was the year that Norman Angell published his manifesto <em>Europe’s Optical Illusion</em>, in which he warns of violent reactions to globalisation, which even then was in the air.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025