answer sheet with handwritten names and a test score

SAT SEPT 6 - SUN SEPT 7

2025

Sunday Sept 7

14:00 - 15:30 | Useless Machines, Beautiful Failures | 1h plus Director Q&A

International short films

From chimeric dreamscapes to stop-motion phantasmagoria, this programme's animations meander through the surreal and fragmented terrain of contemporary life. The magic of transformation and the evolving human condition are explored through digital and analogue tools, producing vibrant rhythms, techno-dystopian futures, and kaleidoscopic meditations.

Hugs & Kisses
Marc Richter | 11min | Germany

Richter's video works are highly influenced by the writings of feminist writer Angela Carter (specifically "The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman") hallucinating a world of human snails and snail-like humans, human mushrooms and mushrooms with human skin, hermaphrodites and men without genitals…..chimeric protagonists performing useless, pointless, sisyphean tasks.

Three individuals wearing elaborate costumes resembling abstract, grotesque, and surreal creatures stand in an art gallery. The costumes are made of various materials, including foam and fabric, with exaggerated facial features and textures. One person is squatting and holding a yellowish object, and there is a spray bottle on the floor nearby.

Magic with small apparatus
Paul Tarragó | 8min | United Kingdom

Super 8 stop motion, south London style. Includes feats with cards and ropes, legerdemain, sleights of camera, a perky river, and rare insights into the activities of a local magician-ventriloquist from the 1930s.

Silhouette of a person reaching towards a playing card with a face-up card in the background.

Brixton Bustle
Shaun Clark | 5min | United Kingdom

A journey through the energy, rhythm and culture of life in Brixton, a district of South London with an African-Caribbean soul.

Colorful, abstract image of green vegetables and neon lines with red and dark background.

Tomorrow Doesn't Exist
Chico Peres Smith | 35min | Canada, Portugal

An experimental exploration of modern life’s emptiness, examining how the spectacle, the death of community, and the rise of individualism have reshaped our world.

A woman wearing glasses with long hair, looking to the side, against a colorful, distorted background with overlays of text and graphics from a video player.
Colorful butterfly-shaped wind-up toy with green wings, red, blue, yellow, and black markings, on a white surface.

Mechanical Ripples
Runfeng Qiu | 4min | China

Infinite marks by clockwork frogs.

Deluge
Meejin Hong | 12min | United States

“Deluge” is an ever-evolving landscape where the present inevitably coexists with the past. Memories are formed, reshaped, and obliterated, relentlessly competing for space. Control is surrendered, and mistakes and second chances are embraced. It is the slow stampede of a vulnerable mind.

A black and white detailed drawing featuring various animals, plants, and abstract patterns with two smiling people in the lower center, surrounded by a diverse mix of flora, fauna, and whimsical elements.

Overcome
Guli Silberstein | 7min | United Kingdom

Overcome is a sensory odyssey that challenges perception, celebrates transformation, and contemplates a future where technology expands—and tests—the limits of humanity. It is a vision of a world where utopia and dystopia collide, and where rebirth may only come through embracing the unknown

A surreal artwork of a woman's face with grid pattern, smiling, with two people standing on top of her head near the sky, which is visible through an opening.

Come and visit us soon!