The 6th Moscow International Experimental Film Festival MIEFF will open with the screening of the international competition program Behind the Doors.
The city is a battlefield—a space of accident, the clash of cultures, classes, and voices that can give birth to the collective. The space behind the door often seems to be the polar opposite of the comfortable apartment, where every wall protects the inhabitant from the forces outside. The moment one leaves home, one is carried away by a storm of images from different times and sucked into a whirlpool of private and public stories about violence and injustice, self-organization, and trust—stories that offer a multitude of perspectives on the visible and hidden reality. Directors featured in this program explore the urban landscape as a multidimensional cultural space where the borders between technology and society, politics, and private life get erased.
Glittering Barbieblood
A young mother and her daughters have dinner under a bridge. The camera scans the surroundings: endless construction works, graffiti, and waste. Their forced halt is the starting point for a journey through different urban spaces full of poetic imagery. Like a jigsaw puzzle that the viewer collects from different, deceptively random elements, from the dancing Barbie horse to the ruins of a car factory in Detroit, the film is an imaginative contemplation about a modern individual’s sensory perceptions, self-discovery, and position in social structures.
The film will be screened in German with Russian and English subtitles.
Dir. Ulu Braun
Germany, 2021. 27 min. 18+
The City Bridges Are Open Again
An experimental found-footage film constructed from fragments of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927) and two cinematic improvisations based on his unfinished Mexican project: Grigory Alexandrov's ¡Que viva México! (1979) and Oleg Kovalov’s Sergei Eisenstein. Mexican Fantasy (1998)). Masha Godovannaya revisits the revolutionary potential of montage, dedicating her film to forgotten decolonial historical projects, such as the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804. Regardless of historical processes, in humanity’s collective hands, there will be a hope and desire for a change, tools for fighting against structural and institutionalized oppression, a will to win and be emancipated.
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
Dir. Masha Godovannaya
Russia, Mexico, Austria, 2020. 10 min. 18+
Maat Means Land
A look at his homeland through the eyes of artist Fox Maxy, a representative of the Californian indigenous tribes of the Kumeyaay and Luiseño. While portraying everyday American life, this compelling collage film is constantly changing trajectory, morphing into a radical gesture of reclaiming the local landscape. Maxy contrasts the destructive colonial forces and the use of natural resources with the strategy of getting to know the land and caring for it. Mixing primitive and modern, collective memory and post-anthropocentrism, computer games’ digital structures and home video, he tries to find an identity image for the indigenous people of Los Angeles and California.
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
Dir. Fox Maxy
USA, 2020. 30 min. 18+
In Ictu Oculi
A film about the traces of time in the urban landscape, compiled from photographs taken between 1910 and 1976 in the same part of the Basque town of Vitoria-Gasteiz. In Ictu Oculi was inspired by Jorge Moneo Quintana’s personal experience, caused by the irreversible changes in his native places, as well as by the amazement produced by the beauty once inherent in them. The appearance of today’s cities is determined by the pragmatism and pettiness of economic calculations, while the former splendor of streets and squares has disappeared in the blink of an eye (Latin for “In ictu oculi”), leaving traces only on a few archival photographs.
The film will be screened in Spanish with Russian and English subtitles.
Dir. Jorge Moneo Quintana
Spain, 2020. 15 min. 18+
All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes
Public administration of light and darkness is an essential policing tool. The video is set in major world capitals, but artist Haig Aivazian’s center point remains his native Beirut. Building an associative genealogy of light sources that move from oil lamps to gas lanterns to LED bulbs, he creates a spectacular collage of found frames and videos shot on a smartphone. Aivazian generates a sensorial meditation on how human vision was mechanized and turned into instruments that capture human movements in everyday life and digital space.
The film will be screened in Arabic with Russian and English subtitles.
Dir. Haig Aivazian
Lebanon, 2021. 18 min. 18+