Imagina

Here's work in progress that’s relaxing to watch. A stark, analytical and meticulous film which nevertheless pulsates with life as it demonstrates that machines, animals and people can function in a fascinating synergy. Does efficient industrialisation give you a sense of well-being or is it more likely to make you feel nervous? Whichever answer you give, Agrilogistics is a film that will have you reaching for those tomatoes.

The young and the restless from the Venetian Lagoon. The heroes of this impressionistic docu-fiction piece are shrouded in a dreamlike atmosphere; their prospects, however, are not entirely favourable. A film about a shared experience where, in a world of fast motorboats, there is no room for gondolas.

“I didn’t think about religion until it became a violence.” A personal film, where religious iconography merges with intimacy, and in which a dense text accompanies images of Catholic icons and personal items. A colourful prayer which reminds us that faith is bound by many frontiers.

Does a creaking rocking chair make you feel uneasy or totally relaxed? In this crafty parable by animator Luca Dipierro it’s probably the former. His is a world of informed buffoonery, resourceful infantility and playfulness – the only adversary here is death, and you don’t want to trifle with that. The film’s uncomfortably seductive soundtrack is the work of the Father Murphy duo.

What might a film examining the human body from inside rather than outside look like? The answer lies in this fascinating surgical trip with its unexpected arthouse catharsis, a movie which offers an immensely powerful physical experience for hard-boiled festival matadors. However, we strongly advise sensitive individuals of the film’s extreme subject matter and its equally explicit treatment.  

Winner at this year’s Rotterdam festival, Eami is an ethnographic docu-fiction hybrid that poetically – yet without compromise – exposes the extent to which the original inhabitants of the Paraguayan primeval forests were dispossessed of their home. Now, thanks to this lyrical yet clearly intelligible film, they are finally given the space that is normally denied them.

An urban symphony. Bolivia’s La Paz as seen by two outsiders who give us the opportunity to take a look at the chaos, but also the harmony of a place which is probably more hostile than open towards newcomers. A documentarist approach combines with intuitiveness, while desolation encounters subtle humour.

A silent parable that might just as well play out on an industrial estate outside the city as on another planet altogether. A master of 16 mm film, Ben Rivers draws us into a dismal landscape, whose mood suggests toxic devastation, yet ultimately there will be signs of life. Six minutes which, despite a limited palette of colours, generate very strong impressions.

An experimental soundtrack from Delia Derbyshire and three queer performers who navigate the discipline of lip-syncing into darker waters. A hypnotic film which resurrects not only the traumas of unknown respondents, but also the ghost of Derek Jarman. A contemplative plunge into the depths.

A woman is receiving physiotherapy for her paralysed lower body; an old man contemplates an even older tree – both are celebrated figures of Taiwanese culture. Tsai Ming-liang in silent communication with people and places, presented in a way that makes us feel as if we were waking up from a restful summer's afternoon nap.

A period of eighteen months spent in the garden, playfully flipped over into an agreeable short film. Hlynur Pálmason and his three children build a hideaway together and, in doing so, unwittingly capture a palette of micro-stories, the changing scenery and the passing of time. The shifting Icelandic landscape, shot on 35 mm film, is only the beginning.

An old Chinese song about the night which carries off a little fragment of our heart. Ordinary secluded spots in Hong Kong as we will never experience them again. The hustle and bustle of a night which seems remarkably serene. Tsai Ming-liang as a master at capturing muffled streets, the passing of time, and fleeting moments.

There are demonstrations in Bangkok but the insects on the white bed linen have other concerns, if they have any at all. In his short film hovering on the border between dream and wakefulness Apichatpong Weerasethakul again blends familiar banality with the realm of the dead. While fluorescent lamps attract night-time creatures, some of them are more interested in the food that’s been left out – and a curious stillness hangs in the air.

A love story from beyond the grave, a tribute to the aesthetics of early cinema, and the fourth meditation on the various forms of hell. Creative duo Shazzula and Daniel Dujeux set off on another of their macabre strolls and, along the way, give shape to an original spiritual world which exposes human endeavour as futile yet, at the same time, romantically enticing.

Even a doll’s house can provide the setting for a macabre tragedy. Or group sex. Radu Jude assembles a junk shop full of toys and depicts existence as a weird and tragicomic collection of amusing contradictions. Bloodless plastic casts are given an infusion of life, which the film describes in all its grotesque futility. T-Rex will still make a comeback eventually.

Dancing as if there were no tomorrow, or as if you wanted to flush out a malignant disease. For his lo-fi dance film Jonathan Glazer got together with cinematographer Darius Khondji, while the music was entrusted to Mica Levi, who scored the sci-fi Under the Skin. Empty rooms providing dancers with a refuge from the pandemic now come alive with frantic movement.

The rules for a pack of tigers are the same as those governing a mystic community which plans to expel one of its members. The film hypnotically blurs the border between banality and magic, it awakens the tension and strength of traditions, and demonstrates that our lives are often formed by rite and ceremony. The line between grieving and dancing is often pretty thin.

Every state gets its own representative shot, in alphabetical order – from Alabama to Wyoming. A portrait of the USA in fifty-two scenes which might not be picture-postcard pretty, but they’re undeniably mesmeric. A systematic yet unpredictable film – among others, in the way it shows that even conceptualists have a sense of humour.

Even in decay you’ll see beauty – you'll often find it really is there. Director Jodie Mack sets out for the third time in search of poetry in objects condemned to extinction, on this occasion in flowers and other plant life. In its visual eloquence this restful film draws our attention to details and textures and prompts us to contemplate the state of impermanence.

What can you see on fragments of Super8 film? And is there any point in talking about it if you cut the respondents off mid-sentence? Hovering on the border between impenetrable abstraction and very specific perceptions, this fragile work imaginatively plays with the nature of the given medium, a love of which is only one of several personal confessions.