The winners of the 6th Moscow International Experimental Film Festival (MIEFF) will be announced at the closing ceremony at Garage Screen summer cinema. The winner of the international competition will be awarded a prize of 1,000 euros. The winner of the national competition will receive 50,000 roubles or the opportunity to study on any online course offered by Bang Bang Education school of design. Kodak and Kosmosfilms will award their special prizes. The ceremony will be followed by the Russian premiere of Nova by Chinese artist Cao Fei.
Nova
A computer company in the imaginary city of Nova is working on a secret mission to expand human abilities and develop tools to decode the languages of plants, animals, and machines. One scientist is about to make a breakthrough, but a mistake in his bold experiments ends in a tragedy: his own son becomes a digital entity trapped inside the virtual space—traveling between the past and the future, reality, and dreams.
The retro sci-fi film by Chinese artist Cao Fei explores the history of cybernetics in China in the context of Soviet-Chinese relationships and the question of personal sacrifice for the common good. The measured and visually saturated narrative shifts between different times, inviting the viewer to become something of a video game player that travels the labyrinth of time. The “game” is set in a model of Beijing’s Jiuxianqiao district—the hub of early Chinese electronics. It is there, in a former worker’s cinema, that Cao Fei has a studio, and her Nova is an art research project aimed at creating a visual archive of the rapidly changing city, allowing humans to find themselves in the urban and technogenic chaos.
The film will be screened in Chinese with Russian and English subtitles.
Nova
Director: Cao Fei
China, France, 2019. 97 min. 18+