Eye For Film >> Festivals >> EIFF >> 2013 >> Black Box

Daring experiments in film form. This year there will be a Black Box Live event, which will see multi-projector, perceptually immersive performances with live sound by Edinburgh'sScreen Bandita, Paris-based Collectif Nominoe and the Finnish artist Sami van Ingen. All the programmes in this strand contain strobe effects.

The shorts are split into the programmes are listed below. Those that are in competition for the inaugural shorts award are marked accordingly. Which programme a short falls into is listed in itallics.

• Black Box 1: In(-)action - A series of actions and reactions with no conclusions.
• Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions - Quirky, cyclical and always unpredictable.
• Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis - Experiments in matter and materials, nature and alchemy.
• Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters - Performance, ritual and alienation: ten portraits of the cinematic body.

View other Edinburgh International Film Festival Films by strand: American Dreams, Animation, Directors' Showcase, Fantastic Voyages: The Films of Richard Fleischer, Films on Film, Focus on Korea, Focus on Sweden, Galas, International Feature Film Competition, Michael Powell Award Competition, New Realities, Night Moves, Not Another Teen Movie, Shorts, Special Screenings, Symphonies Of Life: The Films Of Jean Grémillon, World Perspectives

"10" and Fair Wind - Notes Of A Traveller

"10" (Country: Germany; Year: 2013; Director: Telemach Wiesinger)

A documentary film poem, a travelogue, a twin town odyssey across the world.

Full Review

2012 (Country: Japan; Year: 2012; Director: Makino Takashi)

Makino Takashi returns to EIFF with another perceptual treat – moving from abstraction to figuration, and from analogue to digital, 2012 tells the story of a year that developed subconsciously.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

21 Chitrakoot (Country: India; Year: 2012; Writer: Shambhavi Kaul)

Composed of 1980s chroma-key backdrops from a famous Indian television series, Kaul constructs a mysterious, barren and unsettling landscape emptied of its original narrative purpose.

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

7346 120' WE (Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Director: John Woods)

A mysterious abandoned roll of unexposed 16mm film is taken on a bike ride through the streets of East Vancouver.

Black Box 1: In(-)action

Abdou's Dread in Teatro Argentino, Roma (Country: Germany; Year: 2013; Director: Guillaume Cailleau)

Between two rehearsals of Peter Brook’s The Magic Flute, performer Abdou Ouologuem demonstrates how he deals with his dreads on stage.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Aldona (Country: Lithuania, Norway; Year: 2012; Director: Emilija Skarnulyte)

Aldona lost her sight in 1986, probably due to the Chernobyl disaster. We follow her on a daily walk through a sculpture park of Soviet-era statues.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Cyrstal World (Country: UK; Year: 2013; Director: Pia Borg)

Inspired by J.G. Ballard’s dystopian science fiction novel, crystal growth is woven into the iconic 1955 film Night of the Hunter.

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Déjà-vu (Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Director: Jean-Guillaume Bastien)

Five women carry out repetitive actions, creating the sensation that we've seen this before.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Doll Parts (Country: US; Year: 2013; Director: Muzi Quawson; Writer: Muzi Quawson)

Minimalist and contemplative road movie featuring two young women on the margins of society.

Black Box 1: In(-)action. In competition

Fair Wind - Notes Of A Traveller (Fahrtwind - Aufzeichnungen einer Reisenden) (Country: Austria; Year: 2013; Director: Bernadette Weigel)

Falling in love with the world at first sight.

Full Review

Felinheli; Hefin And Als (Country: Sri Lanka; Year: 2013)

Animated drama of actions, reactions and interactions, expressing the poetry of life’s banal comings and goings through everyday spaces.

Black Box 1: In(-)action. In competition

Funny Games Ghost (Country: Austria; Year: 2012; Director: Karin Hammer, Stefan Hafner)

Scenes from Michael Haneke's original film are overlaid with scenes from the subsequent US version.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

The HandEye (Bone Ghosts) (Country: Germany; Year: 2012; Director: Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy)

A mechanical voice hypnotizes an unseen subject through a surreal combination of statements and commands set to an equally illogical series of images.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Hate (Country: Finland; Year: 2012; Director: Sami van Ingen)

Stereographic images are created from two separate, but simultaneously captured images in the 1959 version of the Finnish national epic Kalevela.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions. In competition

Hay Algo Y Se Va (There Is Something. Now It's Gone.) (Country: US; Year: 2013; Director: Kimberly Forero-Arnias)

Family footage is gathered and sifted to create a perpetual sea of bodies, gestures and gazes that collide to create a familiar yet estranging reunion.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

HedonHeathen2 (Country: USA; Year: 2013; Director: Lana Z Caplan)

Into the pink crystals from the snow swept landscape, a journey from the hibernation of winter to a thawing arctic.

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Hold (Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Director: Kim Anderson)

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

I Was Here (Country: Canada, Italy; Year: 2012; Director: Philippe Léonard)

A fixed view of the Pantheon in Rome is animated by the ghostly flux of tourists and passers-by filmed in long exposure times.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Métamorphoses du papillin (Country: Spain; Year: 2012; Director: Pere Ginard, Laura Ginès; Stars: /// min )

This handmade film explores the cycle of life through metamorphosis, both natural and chemical, evidenced in the visible breakdown of the celluloid material.

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Niagara's Fury (Country: Canada; Year: 2013; Director: Benjamin R Taylor)

Documentary explores the eerily empty spaces of tourism and consumption surrounding the famous Niagara Falls.

Black Box 1: In(-)action

No Place To Rest (Country: Australia; Year: 2013; Director: SJ Ramir)

A textured melancholic dreamscape in which a solitary figures wanders through a seemingly suspended time.

Black Box 1: In(-)action

Persian Pickles (Country: US; Year: 2012; Director: Jodie Mack)

Paisley pattern is the star in a hand-made 16mm film about repeating shapes.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Point De Gaze (Country: US; Year: 2012; Director: Jodie Mack)

Another richly textured 16mm work by Mack. ‘Named after a type of Belgian lace, this spectral study investigates intricate illusion and optical arrest.’

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Polaroid Versus Roman Photo (Country: France; Year: 2012; Director: Yves-Marie Mahé)

A photograph of Charlélie Couture and his musicians becomes an exercise in animating still images through the medium of film.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Polytunnels (Country: Italy, UK; Year: 2012; Director: Nicky Hamlyn; Stars: )

Using his signature structural aesthetic, Hamlyn films a tobacco farm in central Italy faced with dramatic change when EU subsidies end this year.

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Releasing Human Energies (Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: Mark Toscano)

Darkly humorous film about capitalism and control, using the old Kodak ‘China girl’ image overlaid with a text narrated by the film artist Morgan Fisher.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Remanence 1 (Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost) (Country: US; Year: 2012; Director: Joshua Bonetta)

The creative potential inherent in deteriorating material is explored through electronic signals created by a tape of Jonas Mekas' Lost, Lost, Lost.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions

Ritournelle (Country: Germany; Year: 2012; Director: Christopher Becks, Peter Miller)

A sound-image collaboration between two artists across different cities. Light reflections are registered onto a roll of film with a prestruck soundtrack, creating surprising rhythmic harmonies.

Black Box 2: Patterns and Repetitions. In competition

The Room Called Heaven (Country: Spain, US; Year: 2012; Director: Laida Lertxundi)

Experimental short against a backdrop of American plains and high altitudes.

Black Box 1: In(-)action

Salt Lines (Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: , Cade Bursell)

A salt line cycle, hand salted and painted 35mm film leader meant to bring to mind the process of salt extraction and the hard repetitive labor of those who bring us this commodity.

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

The Sight (Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Writer: Jeremy Moss)

A song of creation: immaterial spawns volatile matter; obfuscated landscape emerges from splintering celluloid. Hand-processed at Phil Hoffman’s Film Farm in Ontario, Canada.

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Sou (Country: Japan; Year: 2012; Director: Tatsuto Kimura)

Intricate study of rock formations and strata through a series of animated still images revealing the layers and textures of time.

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Speaking Corpse (Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: Paul Clipson)

Clipson’s Super-8 film poems celebrate the unique beauty of the small gauge format. Sound and image combine to create a hypnotic sensory experience.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Tokens and Penalties 1 (Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: Talena Sanders)

A performance for camera and a meditation on ritualistic practices and ceremonies set against a barren yet expressive landscape of salt fields.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Trembling Place (Country: USA; Year: 2013; Director: Robert Todd)

Facing East, hard light softening the shivering embers of a reluctant stillness.

Black Box 3: Matter and Metamorphosis

Trespass (Country: Austria; Year: 2012; Director: Paul Wenninger)

Technically rigorous real-animation depicting a figure that traverses geographically disparate locations only to be constantly thrown back to the trap of domestic environment.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Uncertainty Principle (Country: USA; Year: 2012; Director: Kelly Sun Kim)

Combining Super 8mm, 16mm, HD and mobile phone formats, this film captures random and choreographed moments in an attempt to create a space of dialogue between actions and representations.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

We Will Be Young (Country: Canada; Year: 2012; Director: Charlie Marois; Stars: FC Legault)

Contemplation of the life of a man living in the woods.

Black Box 1: In(-)action

When Faces Touch (Country: Italy, France; Year: 2012; Director: Paolo Gioli)

Veteren bricoleur-inventor Gioli consistently explores the materials of analogue film. Here, the process of direct contact printing old photographs onto 16mm gives rise to a flurry of anonymous touching faces.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters

Your Hands and My Teeth (Country: USA; Year: 2013; Director: Laura Bouza)

Visual fragments informed by place, light, sound and time articulate a feminine film language, expressing history and desire through a tactile sense of vision.

Black Box 4: Bodily Encounters