Ej, máje, máje...

Sadíme my máje

Olive

“Olive” is a short documentary that follows Olive Hagemeier, an energetic woman, on her daily routine of salvaging, repackaging and redistributing food, and occasional other types of “waste”, across Atlanta, GA. Presented in a quiet observational style, this film is both a character study of a committed and enigmatic volunteer, as well as an ethnographic work that places the audience in the heart of a decentralized, volunteer-run mutual aid network in a “post-COVID” American city.

Po horách, po dolách

The Matica slovenská (a mostly government-sponsored cultural, academic, and archival institution) employed Karol Plicka (1894-1987) as its ethnographer, who was able to make documentary shorts from about 1926. He obtained funding from the President’s Office in 1928 to produce an hour-long documentary about village life, Through Mountains and Valleys (Po horách, po dolách). It was awarded a Gold Medal at the International Exposition of Photographic Art in Florence and received an Honorable Mention at the International Venice Film Festival in 1932.

Jaro na Podkarpatské Rusi

Karel Plicka was also cinematographer of this short movie. Editor in charge was Alexander Hackenschmied. There is an extraordinary emotional charge, every shot is working on its own, such as photographs, paintings and poetic complement intertitles in this short. From the perspective of nature and the perspective is shifting to the people and their habits, work and clothes. Peculiar documentary shots underscore Ruthenians (men, women and children) who are interested in looking into the camera and the curious "eye" showing off their habits.

A Poem for My Blanket

Through a collection of home video footage, the filmmaker undergoes a journey of reconciliation and healing, grappling with their identity in the face of the past.

Chocolate of Peace

Chocolate of Peace depicts the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó's experiences of resistance, via a journey through their processes of organic chocolate production. From the seed to the product, the cacao is the narrative thread that takes us through the Community's stories of violence and resilience, and their fight to remain neutral in the face of the Colombian armed conflict. This film offers a panorama of hope, proof that despite great difficulties it is possible to sow peace through human and economic relationships. It invites us to rethink our relationship with food, to value the efforts of those who produce it, and to build bridges between the victims of the armed conflict and other sectors of global civil society.

Nova the Film

An inspiring 75min DIY documentary film on new art and the young artists behind it. It was all filmed on the heat of live action of the first NOVA Contemporary Culture Festival, July and August 2010 in São Paulo, Brazil.

C'est tombé dans l'oreille d'une sourde

Because Quebec Sign Language cannot be captured on paper, videography has revealed itself to be the best way to represent this visual language. The first ‘comic strip’ in sign language, the film depicts snatches of conversations between various deaf and hearing protagonists. A visit to a silent world, where the hearing impaired ask us to listen to them.

Hermes Bird

This 11 minute homage to the male member shows its subject in the various stages of erection. The voice-over poem by James Broughton includes the line "This is the secret that will not stay hidden."

Toorumi Pojad

In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.

Credere a tutto

Designing artificial relationships between found or stolen elements is a technique that seeks to discuss found footage. Credere a tutto tells about houses and living beings and has developed by intertwining ancient photos, a text, a film sequence and original video footage. Materials that take on time, space and new meanings within the expanded vision of the so-called “spectators”. A techno music session while séances and panoramic views of derelict houses question us about what we see and what we cannot see.

Black River

An observational documentary, shot on high-contrast black and white 16mm film, about a largely undeveloped river in southeastern North Carolina that is home to the oldest trees east of the Rocky Mountains.

Todo se olvidará en Corea

Occasionally, "your own" life is only based on the lifes of the rest. The human being, cutted off from the cultural and social, finds things in common with the other of the antipodes. An essay of the common and the different. The protagonist writes a letter and digress and imagine, with what isn't theirs. Taking it, transforming it and turning into another part of their body.

Thân Thể Rừng Thiêng

As queer trans and gender non-conforming children of the Vietnamese diaspora, we are fragmented at the crossroads of being displaced from not only a sense of belonging to our ancestral land, but also our own bodies which are conditioned by society to stray away from our most authentic existence. Yet these bodies of ours are the vessels we sail to embark on a lifetime voyage of return to our original selves. It is our bodies that navigate the treacherous tides of normative systems that impose themselves on our very being. And it is our bodies that act as community lighthouses for collective liberation. Ultimately, the landscape of our bodies is our blueprint to remembering, to healing, to blooming.

O Poeta Americano

The boy runs after the ball. The worker builds concrete dreams between buildings and soccer balls in a lowland field in Recife. The poet receives a word ball, gives a literal stroke and makes an imaginary goal in this film about football, passion and poetry. João Cabral's America goes beyond the four lines of the field or paper, it transcends time and the field; update the memory to the fact that the love of football will not be volatile or ephemeral, neither in defeat nor in victory.

Otro sol

Otro Sol is a group of real and invented characters trapped in a film. It is also a purgatory of retired thieves that takes place on the coast of the Atacama Desert. The film is circular and seeks to invent and verify the myth of Alberto Cándia, a Chilean international thief who stole the Cathedral of Cadiz in Andalucia in the late 1980s.

Battle Front in Britain

From growing potatoes in Green Park, London, to transforming rabbit crates into seed boxes – just a couple of the many ingenious ways of supporting the war effort which are covered in this film from the Ministry of Information.

Third Shift Coming Home

This audio-visual tone poem uses the language of filmmaking to offer a first-hand evocation of the turbulent psychological effects one can experience due to prolonged lack of sunlight.

A Collection of Images from the Point of View of Lightness of Being

A collection of images taken on 35mm film with a point-and-click Holga135BC during the year after I dropped out of school.