Festival internazionale Segni della Notte - Urbino
International Festival Signs of the Night - Urbino





6° Festival internazionale Segni della Notte - Urbino - November 28th - December 4th, 2022

20th International Festival Signs of the Night - Italy





MAIN AWARD


Iota Period Omega
Giota Teleia Omega
Alexis Alexiou
Greece / 2022 / 0:13:00

Planes of all sizes, fun fairs, neon advertising, protesting people, men, women and children having fun, desert-like landscapes, urban views – the shimmering 8mm images develop a peculiar pull. They come from our present day but seem strangely distant, past. It’s the visual diary of I.O, a girl who lives in a future surveillance state and remembers the world before climate change.

ITALIAN PREMIERE


 


JURY DECLARATION

The Main Award is given to "Iota Period Omega" for its creative and intensive array of editing techniques in order to serve an apocalyptic year zero atmosphere. It is particularly successful in achieving its aims of making the present look like the past through its unique collision of carefully crafted sound and image choices.


DIRECTOR STATEMENT

“Iota Period Omega” is a very personal, completely handmade film; an experimental hybrid between the science fiction and documentary genres. I like to see it as a comment on memory, on the fear and the need of the senses, on the emotional charge of images;  and at the same time as a small metaphor on cinema itself and the need to re-inhabit it.



SIGNS AWARD

The Signs Award honours films, which treat an important subject in an original and convincing way




Agua de Vinagre
Frédérique Menant
France / 2022 / 0:38:50


A woman walks through islands’ landscapes in which intimate territories of grief are being drawn. What do we make of the dead who still live in us? How do we live at the same time with and without them? How can we be present to the world with this abyss? With a sensitive, almost tactile, approach, a world is composed again where the missing find a place aside the living, where sensuality overcomes the collapse.

ITALIAN PREMIERE


 

 


JURY DECLARATION

The Sign Award goes to "Aqua de Vinagre" for the ability of transforming journals into a visual philosophical narrative describing the human relationship with death. With a sensitive whispered voice-over, the visual poetry is almost meditative, making use of archival materials. The reference to the Portuguese word "saudade" expresses the melancholy, the absence and the intense longing through the vintage material.



DIRECTOR STATEMENT

"Agua de Vinagre" is the result of a long journey to share the intimate and profound movement of a personal experience. Shot on 16mm film, it is a work on shadow and light, on cycles of waves, on silences and words, which accompany the experience of loss. I am very happy that the film manages to create a sensitive common space.




NIGHT AWARD

The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterized by enigmatic mysteriousness
a nd subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving


Skinned
Mike Hoolboom
Canada / 2020 / 0:08:34


A terrible virus finally brings down the internet, and humans look out from the wreckage in the aftermath. Five weigh in with personal recollections: pensive, disbelieving, grieving, philosophical. We used to have movie stars and famous musicians. Now we had each other.

ITALIAN PREMIERE






 


JURY DECLARATION

The Night Award Goes to "Skinned" for the ingenious narrative and the cinematic approach to the uprising struggle, while being filmed with uncanny mastery. Also, the use of advanced technology delivers a complicated film experience with much simplicity and awe.


DIRECTOR STATEMENT

Thanks for much for the excellent news about Skinned. It was a task to bring together all of the too many thoughts and reflections, and then to distill them, to cook them down into a simple form. Very glad it could find a home with you there.



JURY AWARD FOR A MASTERFUL REASSEMBLAGE


Train Again
Peter Tscherkassky
Austria / 2021 / 0:20:00

18 years after Kurt Kren produced his third film 3/60 Bäume im Herbst [3/60 Trees in Autumn], he shot his masterpiece 37/78 Tree Again. 18 years after I created my third darkroom film L’Arrivée (an homage to the Lumière brothers and their 1895 L'Arrivée d'un train), I embarked on Train Again. This third film in my “Rushes Series” is an homage to Kurt Kren that simultaneously taps into a classic motif in film history. My darkroom ride took a few years, but we finally arrived: All aboard!

 


JURY DECLARATION

"Train Again" is the recipient of the Jury Award because of the creative reformulation of Kurt Kren footage, taking it to both a new dimension and new level of interpretation. Furthermore, its technique of repetitive visuals never subsides from the intention to constantly intrigue.




DIRECTOR STATEMENT

All of my films aim to connect with the history of avant-garde filmmaking and art history in general. In the case of “Train Again” that was the work of Kurt Kren, classical avant-garde films of the 1920s, and cubism. I thank the jury for recognizing and honoring my intentions, and I herewith announce that my next film will reflect the heritage of Italian futurism … both in cinema and in fine arts. Forward march! 


SPECIAL MENTION


Gibber Eidolon
Charles Chadwick
United States / 2021 / 0:17:20


"Gibber Eidolon" is an insubstantial image, whose speech is clouded to the point of incoherence. It is what we see when we visit a place where the dead are buried; the vision of murky histories. The graveyard and the mausoleum are liminal spaces, where every end is the beginning of a process. That process is the technological management of death. Through footage of outdated computer technology, punch cards and magnetic spools, Gibber Eidolon attempts to tie its super8 film footage of various centuries old graveyards into a dialogue of corporeal archival. The graveyard as archive. But like technology, a tombstone can lose its markers, the information of the deceased. Like an old disk whose format has long died.



 


JURY DELARATION

A Special Mention goes to "Gibber Eidolon" for successfully reimagining the classical notion of the avant-garde template. Sound and image combine to create an eerie atmosphere that lodges in the psyche to an uncomfortable but constantly fascinating effect.





SPECIAL MENTION


The Stream XII
Hiroya Sakurai
Japan / 2022 / 0:03:57


In the artificial environment of the paddy field, water—an element of nature—follows the rules of the artificial. As a result, nature is made abstract, giving rise to a new form of beauty distinct from the natural state. For the twelfth film in the series “The Stream”, I did not limit the stream to liquids, but extended it to in clude the air. I shot wind, flames, smoke and clouds as motifs representing the air. I incorporated aerial shots using a drone as a way to express the wind more visually. When I shot the reeds on the banks of a big river from 80m above the ground, the reeds waved in the wind like waves on the sea. As for the flames, I shot how they created a flow of air that was accompanied by smoke. The smoke converges with the clouds in the sky and becomes rain, which in turn becomes water on the ground. In this series, I have focused on the beauty of nature juxtaposed with the artificial. In this work, I chose the reed fields as a place that is maintained and managed by humans for the production of building materials and daily products. The beautiful landscape of the paddy fields is also a place for the efficient production of food. In this way, I have expressed “stream” as a symbiotic cooperation between humans and nature.

 

 


JURY DECLARATION

Extremely beautifully shot both from above and under the water, "The Stream XII" receives a Special Mention for experimenting nature with the help of hi-tech, offering impressive visual experiences. The sound design amplifies the flowing water and the streams of the wind.



DIRECTOR STATEMENT

In this film, you hear the sound of the wind blowing through the reed fields. It is a thunderous sound like waves crashing. However, this is the recording sound of cicadas singing at an extremely slow playback speed. I create sound that emphasizes the theme by changing the playback speed of the environmental sounds.




MENTION FOR THE SIGNS AWARD

The Signs Award honours films, which treat an important subject in an original and convincing way


Portrait of Omar at 23
Aman Wadhan
Hungary / 2020 / 0:10:55

Omar's journey from Syria to Hungary narrated as a blurry anecdote by the fire.

ITALIAN PREMIERE

 

 


JURY DECLARATION

The Sign Award Mention for "Portrait of Omar with 23" is given for the importance of the subject, dealing with immigration and alienation. The use of voice-over and shaky camera movements serves the film's authenticity and the use of natural elements turns it into a personal experience.







MENTION FOR THE NIGHT AWARD

The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterized by enigmatic mysteriousness
and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving



Light Leak
Nate Dorr
United States / 2021 / 0:08:20


Light is information, a signal more lasting than recollection. If there’s anyone out tere to receive the message. Isolated in a sealed apartment, a lone observer regards an outside world outside become increasingly unreal or unreachable. Archaic illuminations, old slides and the pin-lights of the camera obscura, crawl across the walls. Connections fray. Time loses meaning. A science fictional essay film, or its inverse. A rumination on optics, memory, data, and endings.

ITALIAN PREMIERE

 

 


JURY DECLARATION

A Mention for the Night Award honors "Light Leak" for the playful work with camera obscura and time. This essay film about physical memories becomes more meaningful with the rise of digital technology and the importance of preserving physical photographic archives.


DIRECTOR STATEMENT

While making "Light Leak", I was very deliberate with my lighting, and made sure that the only sunlight seen would be through the pinhole of the camera obscura. Thus, aside from the camera obscura, all other scenes were constructed over long nights of shooting in the dark with only a slide or video projector for illumination, coaxing images out of the shadows, often with long exposure photography. Thus I can't imagine a more perfect category in which to receive the jury's recognition than for the Night Award. I'm honored to have been part of the festival this year.





MENTION FOR THE NIGHT AWARD

The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterized by enigmatic mysteriousness
and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving



Permission to land
Martin Gerigk
Australia / 2022 / 0:03:10

War. Fragility. Instruction Abidance. Intuition. Digitalization. Dichotomous decision paths. What would we do if we were given the freedom to direct possibilities?

EUROPA PREMIERE

 

 


JURY DECLARATION

The Night Award Mention for "Permission to Land" is given for the quirky editing, delivering an eccentric emotional turbulence and forging charming uncertainty through rough imagery. The agitating frequencies in sound design give the film another layer to reflect upon.


DIRECTOR STATEMENT

‘Permission to land’ is a collaboration with Australian multidisciplinary artist Jutta Pryor. The film should be understood as an immersive experience to reflect on potential consequences of our actions. Especially nowadays, while we live in difficult times, the subject could not be more topical. So let’s allow ourselves to land...