Ewa Górzna’s Collapse (2017), Sami van Ingen’s Flame (2018), Antti Tanttu’s Qualia (2017), and Timo Wright’s Ex Nihilo (2017) were selected for the short film competition of Split Film Festival, held from October 4–12 in Croatia. Górzna’s and Tanttu’s films are screened on Friday, October 5, at 19:00, while van Ingen’s and Wright’s films are screened on Tuesday, October 9, at 19:00.
Ewa Górzna’s Collapse depicts a situation where a seemingly complete and established order is submitted to a sudden surreal displacement. The camera flows slowly through a peaceful and flawless space to reveal an unexpected element. Thin surface cracks easily. Superficial comfort is shifted to unfamiliar territory.
Antti Tanttu’s blackboard animation Qualia seeks for the essence of experience. There is no such thing as same feeling, same pain, same colour. Qualia is always subjective. The essence of universal experience is unreachable.
Sami van Ingen’s Flame is a fractured melodrama, based on damaged frames from the last minutes of the only remaining nitrate reel of the lost feature film Silja – Fallen Asleep When Young (1937) directed by Teuvo Tulio. All screening prints and the negative of the film were destroyed in a 1959 studio fire. A sequence from the middle of the film was found at La Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2015.
Timo Wright’s Ex Nihilo is an experimental short documentary about life, death and our attempts to control them. It tells the stories of an advanced humanoid robot, a cryonics facility, where brains of deceased are held and of a seed vault, where crop seed from around the world are kept frozen.
Split Film Festival, October 4–12 2018, Croatia
More information: Split FF