Session: ‘Gestures, Memories, Invocations’

• Flowers blooming in our throats, directed by Eva Giolo. Italy/Belgium, 2020. 8.30”

  An intimate, poetic portrait of the fragile balances that govern everyday life in a domestic setting. The artist uses a 16mm camera to film a group of friends in their own homes immediately after the COVID-19 lockdown, performing various small actions in accordance with her instructions. These actions are deliberately ambiguous, somewhere between playfulness and violence, a comforting or an entrapping embrace. This coexistence of opposites makes the viewer uneasy, with the aim of reflecting on the often-invisible forms of domestic violence.

  Eva Giolo is a visual and sound artist and filmmaker born in Brussels in 1991. She obtained a degree in Fine Art from the KASK & Conservatorium School of Arts, Ghent, and later studied at the Institute of Contemporary Music in London. She is a founding member of elephy, a Brussels-based production and distribution platform for film and media art. In recent years, her cinematic career has taken off with films like A Tongue Called Mother (2019), The Taste of Tangerines (2020) and Flowers blooming in our throats (2020), with which she has participated in some of the most prestigious international film festivals, including those of Rotterdam, FIDMarseille, Viennale, Cinéma du Réel (Paris) and Punto de Vista (Pamplona).

• Eating Soil (Erde essen), directed by Laura Weissenberger. Austria, 2021. 25’. Original version in Spanish

  An exploration of Colombian narrative culture and the stories of Colombian women based on director Laura Weissenberger’s own imagery and memories of her native land. The film gradually weaves a collective cosmos around a fictional family that metaphorically represents a society, reflecting on migration, success and failure, and the present and future of Colombia.

  Laura Weissenberger, born in Colombia in 1995, currently lives and works in Vienna, Austria, where she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2019. She has directed three shorts to date: Nightwalk (2015), One Minute Water (2017) and Eating Soil, which had its world premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival in the Netherlands.

• The Ram's Nap (La siesta del carnero), directed by Valeria Hofmann. Chile/Spain, 2020. 18’. Original version in Spanish

  Valeria and Lucía share a flat in Madrid. One night, while dealing Tarot cards, they draw three that reveal the first two courses of a menu. Without leaving the apartment, the two friends travel from Embún, Spain, to Llanquihue, Chile. These are the villages of their grandmothers, the only ones who know the recipes that the cards have revealed. Through still lifes, maps and video calls, the two witches try to decipher the meaning of the third card in an improvised ritual that will connect both continents in a completely different way.

  Valeria Hofmann, born in Santiago in 1988, is a Chilean director and screenwriter. In 2012 she joined the MAFI collective, with whom she created the collaborative documentaries Propaganda (2013) and God (Dios, 2019), both of which premiered at Visions du Réel in Switzerland. In 2018 she moved to Madrid to study at the MásterLav school and directed several shorts, including The Ram’s Nap, which has been selected for festivals like FICUNAM (Mexico), FIDBA (Argentina) and the Málaga Film Festival. She is currently working on her first feature film, Hechiza.

• Plant (879 pages, 33 days), directed by Ruth Höflich. Australia, 2020. 14’. Original soundtrack with Spanish subtitles

  The transcript of one of the last witch trials held in 18th-century Germany was found in the Höflich family home in the early 1980s. This discovery triggers a conversation between the director and her mother in which historical facts, childhood memories and mundane images of the location are pieced together in a multi-layered montage somewhat reminiscent of structural cinema.

  Ruth Höflich is a German visual artist and filmmaker born in Munich who currently lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. After earning a BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London, she completed an MA at Bard College in New York. Her work often begins with the photograph as the daily imprint of information flows, but in presentation spans moving-image and installation. Her latest creation, Plant (879 pages, 33 days), premiered internationally at the Rotterdam Film Festival in the Netherlands.

• The End of Suffering (A Proposal), directed by Jacqueline Lentzou. Greece, 2020. 14’. Original soundtrack with Spanish subtitles

  A new day dawns, the morning routine begins, and Sofía is travelling on public transport when she suddenly begins to panic. But this time something will be different. The universe decides to contact her. A warm voice from Mars tells her of a place far from Earth, where people have waking dreams and fight for love. In the manner of a sci-fi essay, the film reflects on the management of the mental health issues, loneliness, stress and suffering caused by the capitalist system.

  Jacqueline Lentzou is a Greek filmmaker born in Athens in 1989. Her cinematic language involves finding poetry in seemingly mundane premises, creating visual sensations through the association of words and images. She has directed several shorts, including Hiwa (2017), Hector Malot: The Last Day of the Year (2018) and The End of Suffering (A Proposal), which have been screened and won awards at some of the most important film festivals, such as Cannes, Berlinale, Locarno, Vila do Conde and BFI London.

*Covid protocol:

• The cinema’s capacity has been reduced for this activity.
• Please practice social distancing at all times, even when queuing up at the entrance.
• Please follow the instructions given by attendants and staff of La Casa Encendida when entering/exiting the space and taking your seat.
• Face masks must be worn at all times.
• Thank you for using the hand sanitiser at the entrance to the centre.

* La Casa Encendida, a safe space. Please read the health measures we have taken carefully before attending the event.