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





7° Festival internazionale Segni della Notte - Urbino - November 21th - 26th, 2023

21th International Festival Signs of the Night - Italy






MAIN AWARD


Ghosts in the Cloud Forest
Karl Nussbaum
United States / 2023 / 0:21:00


There are Ghosts in the Cloud Forest that suck the digital data out of humans to stay alive and to stay in the realm of memory. And there are also modern day Hungry ghosts who feed on the energy of political anger, racism and violence in our country. In return for the data of the living, these Ghosts from the Cloud Forest provide the spirituality of nature and the beauty of biology. This film was shot in the sacred Huangshan Mountains of China.


 


JURY DECLARATION


A complex and beautiful film shot in sacred Chinese mountains on a split-screen like a screen decorated with sketches on extreme oriental music at a very slow rhythm. Ghosts breathe in the clouds. From a plan of the Brooklyn Bridge, the pace accelerates and we understand that actually the ghosts became Big Brothers who steal our memories to the point of annihilating our critical spirit
.


DIRECTOR STATEMENT


Thank you so much for your letter and this award! I am honored once again by your festival(s) and that the jury sees the underlying messages and techniques of the film and has found them worthy of acknowledgment. I am very happy to be recognized for my film and the ideas it brings forth.




SIGNS AWARD

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




Negative / Positive Film
Film Negativo / Positivo
Federica Foglia
Italy / 2023 / 0:14:00

Negative/Positive Film is a hand-made, camera-less collage film composed of layers of erotic 16mm films from 1920s, 1940s and 1970s, intermingled with nature documentaries and layers of organic materials. This visual abstraction merges together both positive black-and-white film, and its negative black-and-white counterpart - on the same film base. This allows the film to exist in two versions, one positive and, the other negative. The artist once again uses the very delicate technique she has been perfecting over the past years of Emulsion Grafting, also known as Emulsion Lifting. The film is as an abstract remediation of female bodies dislodged from their original erotic context and, ripped away from their male co-protagonists. The man is removed from the picture, while the female body slowly merges with the body of insects and flowers at the crossroad between eco-criticism, decorative art, sculpture, and cubism. This unique film uses organic material, melted together with gelatine emulsion, first liquified then re-solidified, to produce a crystallized allegory of womanhood.


 

 


JURY DECLARATION

The Signs Award is attributed for the film´s transcendental image collage and subtlety that is necessary today to transform our imagination of women's bodies. The film becomes in itself erotic while questioning our ability to perceive bodies through erotism and the political meaning of such manipulation.



DIRECTOR STATEMENT

"Negative/Positive Film", like all my other experiments, was born from a subconscious urgency to remediate and manipulate some old erotic films. I never know where the films are going, nor do I know why I am making certain choices as I make them. Meaning comes later, once the film is finished, and I have a clear sense of why things unfolded in such a way and the message that the images were trying to convey.
As I was reviewing these old erotic films, I knew I wanted to "decorate" the women's bodies with floral patterns, so I started looking for nature documentaries. Later, the nature documentaries, initially intended only for decorative purposes, took over, merging and becoming one with these women's bodies. Ultimately, what I was trying to express, in my abstract way, was a visceral experience in which the feminine body and the feminine force return to nature. It's truly an ecological matriarchal metamorphosis that I now see sculpted on the celluloid of film. I am humbled and touched by the Jury's award, and I thank them, as well as the entire organization and audience, for giving me an opportunity to have a dialogue with them through my film.




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


A Crooked Path Through The Dark
David Franklin
Ireland / 2022 / 0:25:52

A butoh dancer (Atsushi Matsuda, of the internationally-renowned group Dairakudakan) travels across Tokyo on his way to rehearsals, traversing a subconscious landscape that bridges the interior world of the self with an exterior world that extends through the city to the cosmos. In reflecting on a dancer’s creative process, "A Crooked Path Through The Dark" offers a phantasmagorical look at the ties that bind the individual to the world around them, the connections we form with our environment, and the role of personal experience in shaping both lives and artwork. As storms boil and earthquakes rattle, we witness the visceral and moving process of destruction and renewal needed for the creation of a new performance.

ITALIAN PREMIERE



 


JURY DECLARATION

The camera follows a famous butoh dancer, “the dance of the dark body”, which is about introspection and availability to the universe. During his wonderings through the streets of Tokyo to his rehearsal venue, at night, he probes the relationship with the vision of his world. The strange sound of his voiceover tries to reveal what is the mysterious gestation of the expression of his art.




EDWARD SNOWDEN AWARD

The Edward Snowden Award honors films, which offer sensitive (mostly) unknown information, facts and phenomena
of eminent importance, for which the festival wishes a wide proliferation in the future.


My Digital Truth
Swen Werner
United Kingdom / 2023 / 0:09:01


A banker in present day London on a quest for knowledge, battling illness, and forming an eerie alliance with ChatAI, blurring the lines between reality and the digital world.



 


JURY DECLARATION

A banker put into abyss the sentence written, six centuries before Jesus Christ, on the pediment of the Temple of Appolo in Delphi, “ Know thyself”, which philosophically proposes a quest for truth, which is the starting point of knowledge intimate to that of the universe and the Gods. In front of his computer, he confronts this concept during a chatAI, asking the question of what is introspection today and finally digital truth ?

DIRECTOR STATEMENT

At the beginning of this year, I faced a challenging situation. A sudden illness and then passing of my mother spurred an internal struggle for meaning and self-forgiveness for something that felt like my fault. This difficult period, paradoxically, offered a unique opportunity to think freely, unburdened by fear, and discover an inner strength surpassing my perceived limits. This realization is the essence of the story I aim to share in "My Digital Truth," to inspire others to find similar strength in their challenges. My professional world revolves around blockchain, a technology change of creative destruction. Yet, this innovation comes with the responsibility of managing tensions and the necessity of self-awareness. The doubt that our individual efforts might be inconsequential, inadequate, or inappropriate often hinders us. This is where digital technologies, like blockchain and generative AI, step in. They allow us explore new ways how we interact, cooperate, build friendships, and support each other, contrasting the darker potential of control and exploitation.
My Digital Truth" emerged from a need to articulate these complex themes, where mere words seemed inadequate. It represents a personal journey of discovery exploring the transformative impact of technology on our world and ourselves.. The film delves into the ancient Greek concept of truth as a dynamic process of revelation, not merely a static fact. This process requires our full mental and spiritual engagement. I am deeply thankful to the jury and festival organizers for recognising this exploration.



JURY AWARD FOR HARMONY BETWEEN IMAGE, POEM AND MUSIC


The Life We Live Is Not Life Itself
Ian Gibbins
Greece / 2021 / 0:08:45 17


“The life we live is a series of illusions… a fleeting smile… mistaken decisions… dangerous, unpredictable… yet, we will meet again, as lovers… parents… children… and you will know who I am…” Tasos Sagris’s poem, with its haunting soundtrack by Whodoes, offers us an extended exploration of lives lived in parallel, at cross-purposes, in and out of love, around the world, from the innocence of children to the wisdom of elders. There are the good times when summer seems to last forever, and the bad, when persecution and misadventure could land us in prison, with nothing but rain to hear our voice. But what is the reality? What is mere illusion? Can there be more to life than simply living?


 


JURY DELARATION

In an anti-pleonastic way, this film proposes a work that is nourished on the original voice of the Greek poet, Tasos Sagris, and the sound of the group WhoDoes, offering surreal pictorial compositions. It is a beautiful tribute, between art and science, on the meaning of life and understanding the complexity of time from an Australian poet, director Ian Gibbins, to another poet, this time Greek.


DIRECTOR STATEMENT

This film arose from a collaboration after I met poet, Tasos Sagris, and musician Whodoes, in Athens at a poetry film festival supported by the Institute for Experimental Arts. Tasos’ poetry is very different from mine and it took us a while to decide on a suitable approach to the film. I do not usually have people in my work, but the relationships between people at different times of their lives was a critical aspect of the poem. Instead of actors, I ended up using a library of faces generated by artificial intelligence from a commercial source that employs paid models as their source material, so avoiding the difficult ethical issues of many AI generators. I animated these faces so they change in age or gender or both as they look on from windows and billboards at various locations in the film.
The locations themselves were mostly recorded around Adelaide, South Australia, where I live. But almost none of the images is actually how the scenes look in real life: nearly all of them have been composited and animated from multiple sources or time points. So the “real” people in the scenes are often seen as doubles, walking beside or following themselves. Dominating the visual theme is the rain that haunts Tasos’ poem and that reflects the incipient results of climate change we all face. But, as with the people, all the scenes containing rain, running water or storms have been composited. Thus, the film drifts between the real and the imagined, the remembered and the predicted, the certain and the uncertain. Nevertheless, as Tasos’ poem says, “we will meet again”. In making the film, we faced many artistic and technical challenges: we are delighted that it has been so successful.







MENTION FOR THE SIGNS AWARD

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


I Killed You a Dozen Times
Kris De Meester
Belgium / 2023 / 0:06:21

I killed you a dozen times, but you won’t go away. Maybe it’s because you’ve killed me first. Out in the cold, on a strange new globe.
"I Killed You a Dozen Times" immerses viewers in a captivating exploration of the aftermath of a traumatic breakup. The protagonist, driven to erase the other person from their existence, finds themselves exiled to a chilling and unfamiliar realm. As they confront the relentless echoes of their pain, the boundaries between reality and imagination blur, creating a surreal and introspective experience. "I Killed You a Dozen Times expertly uses the power of visual language and sound to communicate complex emotions and experiences. Through its striking imagery and sound design, together with the emotive poetry recited by the narrator, the film masterfully portrays the agony and emotional struggles stem from toxic relationships, a subject that is often challenging to express in words. The film's ability to vividly visualize and depict such complex emotions is a testament to its remarkable use of audio-visual storytelling."
Jane Ching
Sundance Film Festival Hong Kong, Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival

ITALIAN PREMIERE

 


JURY DECLARATION

The jury honored "I Killed You a Dozen Times" for its ability to make us feel what a love separation is and the resulting grieving process. The film is as floating as the emotion it describes and the words are as close to the whirlwind that crosses us at the time of the separation.




MENTION FOR THE SIGNS AWARD

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


From Another Side of the Sun
Oleksandr Stupak
Ukraine / 2023 / 0:29:36

A film-trilogy about war and children's lives.
Etude 1.
A white paper boat floats carefree on the waves. The girl looks into the water from the bridge and peacefully contemplates the reflection of the sun in the water. But everything changes instantly. The war begins. Anxiety grows with each step. And the child laughs, looking at the sun. But the one who has crossed the border goes to block the sun forever. The ship stops, the white turns black and the black turns white…
Etude 2.
A white living creature plunges into black water. Quenching its thirst, it spins in a dance. The dance stops. In the dark, a ray of light outlines the egg in the quiet. Expectation. Someone is just about to show up. A shot rings out. The red flows from the white form. The shot egg disappears in the dark. A white creature appears on the black water in endless motion...
Etude 3.
Spring. The ruined sculptures in the cemetery remind of the former presence of people, their suffering, the horrors that the war brought them. It seems like there are no living beings left on earth, only petrified statues and insects crawling on exanimate faces. Autumn. A ruined temple, from which the eye tries to find a way out into open space and finds only cracks and potholes. The war leaves ruins. But suddenly, amidst the dead silence, a child's cry is heard... val

ITALIAN PREMIERE

 

 


JURY DECLARATION


The Mention is attributed for a real visual and sound proposal of what childhood means in times of war. The film thus questions the inability to normally complete an image, an idea, a dream.



DIRECTOR STATEMENT

Thank you very much for showing my film and for the fact that it was mentioned at your festival. My wife and I appreciate it very much and for us it is a very important in such a difficult time that our country and our people are experiencing. Therefore, when we feel supported, it gives us strength and motivation to continue living and creating. We were also very happy when Francois Bayle supported our film, thereby allowing us to use his music from the album Colors of the Night. It was also nice that Ina GRM responded. Your festival is extraordinary, with a great concept, a good selection of films and beautiful screening locations.
I am pleased that my film was shown and celebrated in the homeland of Rafael Santi. For my wife and I, as artists, this is very significant. Especially since the mother and child from my film resonate with the Renaissance Madonna and my wife Anna and my little son act in this role. For me, this film is not just a story, but the life we lived, and all this is caused by living complex feelings, so strong that it is difficult to convey them in words or a realistic frame. And in order to make this film for us, we had practically nothing, only explosions and sirens. Even the electricity was intermittent and we could not render our film for a long time. But no matter what, creativity gives us strength and patience !
Thank you, dear Dieter, for appreciating creativity. And despite the fact that we do not know each other in person, it seems to me that you are a true fan of cinema and support art. It is precisely on such people that real art and non-conjunctural creativity rest. Good luck in your creative work!
We will be happy to be a part of the festival with such a mysterious name again someday!







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



Forests
Simon Plouffe
Canada / 2022 / 0:16:22

Eastern white pines submerged under the waters of a hydroelectric reservoir on unceded Innu territory transform into flames. This exploration between water and fire illustrates our current climate emergency through multiple stories about the relationship between a community and it's land. In a dark, ambiguous environment, minuscule particles drift slowly before the lens. The image focuses to reveal spruce trees and tall pines, while Innu voices tell us the story of this territory, this flooded forest. Muffled percussive sounds gradually become louder, suggesting the presence of a hydroelectric dam. The submerged trees gradually transform into firebrands as whispers bring back the stories of this forest.

 

 


JURY DECLARATION

A Mention for the Night Award is attributed for the delicacy and the accuracy of what it means to tell your story; that of the territories to which you belong and the sounds that cross you. Plouffe shows us that our world may no longer resemble the stories we hear.




DIRECTOR STATEMENT

I am glad that the jury has recognized the work and thanks to the Innu people of Pessamit who were so generous to share with me their stories, especially the elderly who lived before the flooding of their territory.








MENTION FOR THE EDWARD SNOWDEN AWARD

The Edward Snowden Award honors films, which offer sensitive (mostly) unknown information, facts and phenomena
of eminent importance, for which the festival wishes a wide proliferation in the future.



Warhol on Climate Change
Kris De Meester
Belgium / 2023 / 0:02:00

"Warhol on Climate Change" is short film that plunges viewers into an artistic alienation, capturing the enigmatic essence of Warhol's perspective on the pressing issue of climate change. Set against the vibrant backdrop of a bustling New York street, the film weaves abstract images of Warhol himself with the city's dynamic rhythms. Through a blend of fragmented visuals and dreamlike sequences, the film portrays Warhol as an observer of nature's metamorphosis in the face of environmental upheaval. As the city pulses with life, Warhol's detached yet profound gaze highlights the juxtaposition between urban vivacity and the imperceptible shifts occurring within the natural world.

INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

 

 


JURY DECLARATION

Andy Warhol is one of the most important icons of the last century. In this very short film, we can hear him in his own voice imagining climate change as a pop installation followed by a serie of disasters that fascinates him. This film is a retro-anticipation of what Artavazd Pelechian deals with his last work, “Nature” (2022). On an other hand, can the icons be destroyed?