Lines

Direction: Sandeep Ashwath

Text: Hoshang Merchant

India 2025, 3:31 min

This film looks at the tensions and possible intersections of queer desire with the Hindu Brahmin ways of life and sacredness. It plays on the role of the sacred thread, the marker of caste and religious morals, and its appearance on male torsos in profile images on gay dating apps. Many localities in urban India, and especially the one that I live in are full of several temples and religious institutions at close proximity to one’s home. At the same time, when looking at an app, the geolocation technology perhaps reveals an alternative space of desire, overlapping with the sacred geographies connected to these sites. The film explores the idea of cruising in such a location.

Sea, ripe & daring

Direction: Franz Indra

Text: Matthias Santiago Staehle

Germany, Chile 2023, 3:00 min

Love does not bite.
Love does not tear.
But love constantly eats
one after the other.

Matthias Santiago Staehle writes poems bilingually – in his mother’s Chilean Spanish and his father’s German. SEA, RIPE & DARING follows his lyrical odyssey of longings from Santiago, the capital of Chile, along the coast via Valparaiso to Patagonia – Tierra del Fuego.

What Was Said at the Reunion of Deathbed Wishes

Regie: Mark Wilkinson

Text: Rich Ferguson

USA 2025, 3:27 min

L.A. poet/spoken-word performer Rich Ferguson travels from the far reaches of Bombay Beach to the Hollywood streets and Grandma’s Warehouse recording studio in the Valley to consider what was said at the reunion of deathbed wishes. Mark Wilkson directed the film, which features Butch Norton (Lucinda Williams, Tracy Chapman) on drums and David Sutton (Lucinda Williams) on bass—engineering and additional guitars by Andrew Bush.

Lettre à ma fille

Direction: Michael Maurissens

Text: Amee

Benin 2024, 4:09 min

Unfolding on the beaches and streets of Benin, a heartfelt letter from a mother to her future daughter expresses the challenges and joys of growing up as a woman. Through song and dance, a tribe of women dispel fairy tales myths to center embodied values of feminine power: strength, independence, and self-worth. Their rebellious spirits find freedom and joy through the rhythms of their bodies as hands clap, shoulders shake, hips swirl, and feet stomp out their bold dreams of womanhood.

The girl in the elevator

Direction: Gang Zhao

Text: Wanghua Yu

China 2024, 3:00 min

A young girl danced into the elevator. She kept dancing during the ride. When she reached the floor she was going to, she left. However, influenced by her emotions, the old man watching the elevator also started dancing, but he failed. Time defeated him…
In terms of the film’s visual style, I borrowed some of the expressions from comic strips. This is a personal exploration of mine.

Because We can

Direction & Text: Ian Gibbins

Australia 2023, 4:26 min

Botanic Gardens symbolise the tension between the human desire to both admire and control nature. In the drying climate of South Australia, a reliable water supply essential to meet these demands. In this video, we see the different ways in which water inhabits the interfaces between the natural and the manufactured. Now and then, we catch a glimpse of a reflection or shadow of an on-looker. Yet none of these scenes is real: all have been composited from multiple images of one Botanic Garden.

Without Anesthesia

Direction: Monika Požek

Text: Aleš Debeljak

Spain 2023, 3:45 min

Silence is portrayed as an escape from a mundane life that is insignificant in the eyes of the universe and longs for meaning. “Without Anesthesia” is a choreographic piece inspired by Slovenian poet Aleš Debeljak’s poem about paradoxes. In an attempt to discover the principles influencing the perception of typical, human noise. And the calm of nature, where only being is possible; everything else is empty.
‘It is time. Say what was once already said.
So that there will be no misunderstanding.
Begin where you want.’

Beside Myself

Direction: H. Paul Moon

Text: Bob Holman

USA 2024, 3:00 min

“BESIDE MYSELF” is a poem/film that engages the reader/viewer to trade places with the poet for a generative new thing that can, with your help, change the world.
Step outside yourself, look back at yourself, whom do you see? That’s the question Bob Holman asks in “BESIDE MYSELF.” Fighting the metaphorical with the literal, H. Paul Moon’s film captures a small band of Bob’s friends voicing the poem in alternating identities, scored by composer David T. Little, for this meditative reflection on A.I. and the life cycle of the creative process.

Unseen

Direction: Helmie Stil

Text: Sjaan Flikweert

Netherlands 2024, 2:26 min

A poetry film about the feeling of isolation, struggle and being unseen. 1 in every 5 women endures domestic violence … unseen.