8th STIFF supporting program: In trasmission and Stitches, from the international exhibition to talks with authors
This year’s Student International Film Festival – STIFF has an exciting supporting program complementing the selection of 38 films in competition. International exhibition In Transmission curated by Elena Apostolovski will open its doors on Friday, 5.11. at 21:30h at the Gallery SKC. Discursive program Stitches will host 10 regional filmmakers from the competition to discuss filmmaking and culture in the cinema’s foyer.
International exhibition In Transmission questions corporeality and the ways in which it is formed/deformed through time, virtual and physical space, how it intertwines with ideologies. Artworks explore bodies in digital engagement as an extension of human relations and acknowledge human perception that enables pleasure, pain, and spending time in spaces of imagination.
Gathered authors study movement semiotics in different environments and play with the notion of materiality to reshape the relation of the body and surroundings. They imagine gestures as tools of resistance and pull back the stretched boundaries of our bodies that everyday life expects of us.
Artists: Adam Wynn (UK), Claudia Borgna (IT), Dario di Paolantonio (IT), Dora Brkarić (HR), Ghinwa Yassine (CA), Kexin Hao (CN), Lily Dean (UK), Luiza Perito (BR), Marcell Mostoha (HU), Mark Zimmerman (US), Mateja Zidarić (HR), Michael Fleming (NL), Mike Megens & Sid Dankers (NL/BE), S4RA (PT), Sean Kobi Sandoval (US)
Opening night: Friday, 5.11./21:30h
Work hours: Saturday and Sunday (6.-7.11.)/10:00-18:00h
Stitches are the 8th STIFF Festival discoursive program aiming to tackle some of the relevant and contemporary themes in filmmaking but also broadly in the culture we live in. Discussions with the authors are a chance for rethinking film as a medium that feels and responds to the intricacies of everyday life.
The program consists of three discussions and each of them brings different themes and perspectives: regional animators are gathered in a talk Round And Round We Go, Touches focuses on intimate relationships in film, and Between Glances is dedicated to documentary filmmaking and the relationship between directors and their protagonists.
Round And Round We Go
Saturday, 6.11./14:00h/Art-kino foyer
The history of civilizations follows the pattern of development, progress, and decay. It seems like
the progress for its own sake always leads to a crash – of communities as well as individually. Western societies are moved by a will for power; motivated by the desire to subjugate the Other, no matter if the other is material reality or the illusion of ourselves. A magic spell of human vanity thematically connects the authors of animated films we will be talking with in this program. Arka (Natko Stipaničev) shows us the barren decadency of a magnificent transoceanic cruiser, reminding us of a need for change. In her debutant film Cockpera Kata Gugić deals with feelings of excessive pride and Sunčana Brkulj in Tower shows a seemingly endless development of a tiny civilization. Every ending is also a new beginning and our world spins a new circle every day, but do we learn enough from our past? We’ll discuss the author’s thematic preoccupations, process and challenges of filmmaking, and different aesthetics and techniques of animation to find out if finishing a film is a rounded story.
Touches
Saturday, 6.11./21:30h/Art-kino foyer
The pandemic has closed us up between our four walls, alone or with our closest ones, and it started an avalanche of questioning ourselves and our relationships. Lack of the outside world formed a pressure, and sometimes we can’t tell if the touch of a loving person is an expression of care or hurt. This program brings us a coming-of-age documentary Between Summers (Anja Koprivšek) following the friendship of two sisters. Jasmina Beširević in Now I Am Irena uses elements of psychodrama skillfully balancing between fiction and reality to show us a final victory of a strong protagonist. Bojan Radanović in Letterstalks about the inability of a father and son to connect after bitter disappointment. In the fiction film Days Lost (Jovana Avramović) we return to siblings and the question: Do I need to grow up if you have? Sara Grgurić in the fiction film In The Woods subtly tells a tale of a relationship falling apart and the
pain that is left. This intimate program talks about the ambivalence of relationships and our inner motivations as the fabric of filmmaking.
Between Glances
Sunday, 7.11./15:00h/Mini Art-kino
Between Glances is dedicated to documentary filmmaking and the relationship between directors and their protagonists. Jasmina Beširević enters an intimate emotional space of her friend in an attempt to heal trauma in the film Now I Am Irena, and Nikola Stojanović in Cornelian Cherries films his own family in the process of grief becoming a behind-the-camera protagonist himself. We’ll talk with the directors and their protagonists about the specificity of their relationships in the process of filmmaking; about the changes and boundaries forming through that process. How much do the authors identify or reflect through their characters and whose is the story being told?
