Out of Place
Saturday 5th October
LOCATION: Devonport Guildhall
10:00 - 11:15 | 57min plus Q&A
International short films
These films are acts of taking flight, departures and arrivals. A sense of place is at their centre, where the familiar might take on a sinister, threatening quality, or filmmakers find themselves far away, feeling perfectly at home. From the museum to the motorway, they interrogate how the architecture around us might inform our sense of ourselves and our place in the world.
Films by:
Andrea Marquez | Vasilios Papaioannu | Gillian Waldo, Sam Taffel | Faye Shu | Eric Daniel Butler | Jonathan Kan | Biviana Chauchi | Eislow Johnson
Little balls of mercury
Andrea Marquez | 8min
Through the recounting of a dream—an image from the past that insists on reappearing—the film dissects and displays the very materials it’s made of: still photography, moving image, narration, as if these cinematic elements were minerals and gems in a museum showcase. In doing so, it transforms them into an evocative exploration of what is preserved and what is lost. An archive of broken and silent images? A mausoleum of time? By weaving together fragments of memory and cinematic form, the film not only examines the nature of preservation but also invites reflection on cinema itself. What became of its promises, its potentials, or, to borrow from Gilles Deleuze and Thom Andersen, the thoughts we once had?
A Poem
Vasilios Papaioannu | 3min
In an underground garage, a voice message becomes the testament of a love left in limbo, while fleeting images allude to the moment that led to it.
Learning from Learning from Las Vegas
Gillian Waldo, Sam Taffel | 18min
An experimental adaptation of the seminal architectural text Learning from Las Vegas (1972) by architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. The film details the evolution of their relationship, explores the motels, neon signage, and wedding chapels described in the book, and asks what lessons can we glean from the contemporary landscape of Vegas.
a traveller's lament
Faye Shu | 3min
a seagull made a bet
The Joy of Personification
Eric Daniel Butler | 4min
An old, poorly produced VHS, once slowly decaying in a dying retro media store, comes to light one last time. The editor of this movie uses their last gig to project their fears and desires onto birds.
Squint Your Eyes To Get A Better Picture
Jonathan Kan | 4min
Squint your eyes to get a better picture is a hand-drawn charcoal animation that observes the shifting of attention and interruptions in perception during everyday movement. Whether on the way home or enroute to meet a friend, our focus constantly shifts—from the phone screen to passing pedestrians, from casual conversation to streetlights and approaching traffic. These irregular pauses and transitions reflect a rhythm of contemporary life that appears natural, yet is filled with fragmentation. Actions are interrupted and then resume; tactile sensations are triggered through the skin’s contact with the physical world.
Lima
Biviana Chauchi | 4min
Lima — mischievous, untamable.
Mist-wrapped, restrained, yet alive.
Wounded, beloved, always Lima.
Injured?
Eislow Johnson | 13min
Need help? Crashouts, manifestation influencers and injury lawyers collide in this breakneck ride through the Midwest. 50 years after attorney ads were first legalized in the U.S., their ubiquitous self-portraits (allegedly) invoke a churn-and-burn economy of volume, velocity, fears and veneers.
