Being Strong Is Hard comprises a barrage of images of Kurdish activists, journalists and fighters – mostly women – facing the camera, often smiling. Scored to rapid electronic music, this visual onslaught echoes the sensory overload of contemporary media. While the similarity of portraits, whose low resolution raises its own political questions, encourages instant parsing, the sight of young women in uniform slows down our perception, inviting us to interrogate the meaning of these smiles and poses.
– Srikanth Srinivasan
Also in this combined programme
-
Pepper Steak
Frame by frame, abstract, hand-painted images tussle with scraps of photographic representation. Which will win? -
Lost on Arrival
A heartrending portrait of a consciousness losing its connections to the past and the world. -
God Moves on the Water
Céline Dion sings praise of God’s implacable wrath in this mischievous media remix. -
-
Överföringsdiagram Nr 1
Destroyed books and reconstituted state documents produce new knowledge in this densely associative political essay. -
-
Lanesville UFO Incident
Cheerful locals play witnesses in this humorous faux report about UFO sightings in backwoods America. -
Surface Tension #2
A lyrical, impressionistic portrait of Manhattan in Kinemacolor, presented through strobing red and green filters. -
Dossier of Tentacular
A dense, shape-shifting scrapbook of ideas exploring the mechanisms of knowledge production. -
Black Rain
Satellite images of spectacular solar phenomena, with artefacts intact, evoke the mysteries of the universe.
Film details
- Country of production
- Germany
- Year
- 2022
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2024
- Length
- 4'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
