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The 14th International Festival
Signes de Nuit
Bangkok
Thaïland
February 27 - March 10, 2016
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AWARD CELEBRATION
The 14th International Festival Signes de Nuit
Phuket - Bangkok - Chiang Mai / Taďland
February 27 - March 10, 2016
Short Film Competition
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Main Award :
The Golden Legend
Oliver Smolders |
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The Golden Legend
La légende dorée
Oliver Smolders
Belgium
2015 / 0:24:00
Collector of cursed musicians, unreasonable murderers, fairground freaks, paranoid revolutionaries, flatulists and suicidal hermits, a psychiatric patient presents a gallery of the historic figures he is haunted by.
Extrait :
https://youtu.be/Qft92-reorU |
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Jury Statement :
The Golden Legend (La Légende Dorée) is marvelously stunning because
of its bravery and boldness. Olivier Smolders let us facing his unique
way of storytelling. Dazzling stories told by a man staring at the
camera is not only breaking the fourth wall Smolders wisely
demolishing it, brought audiences inside, and lured us to rebuild that
wall from those debris left behind. |
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Signs Award :
The Reflection of Power
Mihai Grecu |
| The Signs Award is attributed to films treating an important subject
in an original, convincing and surprising way. |
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The Reflection of Power
Mihai Grecu
France
2015 | 0:09:00
This film is a rare glimpse into one of the most secret places of the world, Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. Slowly, an unexpected natural phenomena devours this strange city. But the city's atmosphere of eternal celebration never changes no matter how obvious the nearing end is. The people keep absurdly demonstrating the same preset patriotic behaviour.
Extrait :
http://www.bathysphere.fr/fr/films/reflection-power
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Jury Statement :
Watching this film while living in military-controlled Thailand evokes
a sense of odd melancholy and ironic resonance. Though ideologically
dissimilar since the onset of so-called Cold War, Thailand and North
Korea are never somehow able to become as succinct reflection for each
other’s as these days. Yet visible differences are still obvious, but
underlying analogy would never miss the eyes of the keen observer of
the two countries. The film provides a thought-provoking image of the
peopleless society where we see nothing but the architectural
grandiosity, impeccably hygienic environment and uncannily
well-planned city, but with none of the living soul. Nonhuman (be it,
building, statute, ideology, system, belief etc.) is more vivid and
vital than the actual human being and when the human emerges from this
concrete structure, they are treated, willingly or not, as mere
ornamental function decorating the system. Through its brilliant
formalistic design and technical precision, ‘The Reflection of Power’
reflects the nightmarish vision of the world where people are
powerless and yet paradoxically the film itself becomes so powerful. |
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Signs Award
Special Mention :
Sea of Ash
Michael MacGarry |
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Sea of Ash
Michael MacGarry
South Africa
2015 / 0:12:00
The form of the film is one of a fable, that grafts Thomas Mann’s 1925 novella, Death in Venice, to the contemporary issue of African refugees and immigrants in Italy. The film takes Mann’s book as a nexus point and expands upon a number of themes inherent in it. In Sea of Ash, Mann’s character Tadzio is an immigrant to Italy from West Africa (Senegal) who has survived the treacherous and often fatal journey by sea. While the lead character of the original – von Aschenbach – is embodied in the unseen filmmaker himself. The narrative of the film follows Tadzio on a short journey from the remarkable Brion Cemetery at San Vito in the mountains of Northern Italy to the coastal area of the Venetian lagoon. On Lido Island he visits the famous Hotel dés Bains as featured in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film version of Death in Venice. The film concludes on the dés Baines beach, with Tadzio embarking on a doomed attempt to return home.
Extrait :
https://vimeo.com/130971662
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Jury Statement :
In 1983, Gayatri C. Spivak, a great and highly respected thinker,
asked an influential question in her essential essay ‘Can the
Subaltern Speak?’. Although the question itself was not rhetoric, the
proper answers are still waited to appear. Today where the issues
about refugee, asylum seeker, and immigration are global phenomenon,
this thirty-three-years-old question somehow never loses its
relevancy. Since the last decade, images of refugees have been
flooding the media. Ethical questions have been continuously going on
asked how and in which ways we should represent them. Objects of pity,
often under documentary-approach or neorealistic lenses, refugees are
portrayed as totally helpless victims without any agency only waiting
for rescue from other ‘fortunate and privileged’ people. The supposed
reality captured through filmmaker’s technical mastery, for too
several times, is mistaken for the Real and this hasn’t done those who
suffer from forced migration any benefit. ‘Sea of Ash’ evades the
ideal of the complete capture of the Real and seeks, instead, an
alternative way to portray the issue. In spite of the risk of being
critiqued for overaestheticizing the issue, the film somehow
transcends the stereotypical image of the refugee toward something new
and unexpected. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is not a question demanding
for only one correct answer. There’s never only one most proper way of
speaking for and about the subaltern; however, ‘Sea of Ash’ is one of
the numerous voices to arise here today as an answer. |
Director Statement :
Greatly appreciated - I am currently a PhD. candidate researching
African cinema and the role of imaging the subaltern, so the fact of
the jury's statements focusing very much on this in their analysis of
my film is a great affirmation and very resonant - huge thank you.
Best - Michael Mac Garry
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Night Award :
The Exquisite Corpus
Peter Tscherkassy |
| The Night Award honors films, which are able to balance ambiguity and
complexity characterized by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness,
which keeps mind and consideration moving. |
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The Exquisite Corpus
Peter Tscherkassy
Austria
2015 | 0:19:00
The Exquisite Corpus begins with a search of a seashore. We glimpse a few actors from the prow of a small boat. Gradually what we are seeking is found, a sleeping beauty lies on the beach, right before our eyes. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, we are drawn into her dream. It´s a highly ambiguous dream – sensuous, humorous, gruesome, and ecstatic – a broadly defined seduction lusting after a tangible, perceptible, exquisite physicality – including the body of the film.
Extrait :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVyfMOr5Ckc
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Jury Statement :
Introducing itself as obscene, amoral, shamelessly and self-exposed,
but realized since the year of donkey, Tscharkassky's latest (and
finest) piece of collage as a compilation and accumulation of found
footage, which reveals its status of an artistic avant-garde
experimental film.
As the result Tscharkassy's work is not only decreasing and
deminishing the primitive suggestions of in sexual provocation in the
media, but well-regarded, an artistic work of fine-art, that transform
a stimulation of a erection from male' s private organism into an
intellectual enlightenment just by viewing it. Tscharkassky
successfully use of Hi-Art techniques and styles borrowed from
avantgardist experimentalism, leads us almost to believe, that his
work has been arranged by a contemporary of Man Ray or Marcel
Duchamps. |
Director Statement :
The festival has a short description, just one single sentence, for the
Night Award, which goes like this: "The Night Award honors films, which are
able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterized by enigmatic
mysteriousness and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving."
Well, now that my film "The Exquisite Corpus" was awarded by the jury with
that "Night Award" one might truly say that I have succeded with the efforts
which I undertook when I made the film, simply because this is a wonderful
and perfect description of what I wanted to achieve...
I thank the jury for its decision, I thank the festival for inviting my
film, and I send my very best wishes to the wonderful people of Thailand
(and to my dear, dear friend Apichatpong Weerasethakul up North in Chiang
Mai!)
Peter Tscherkassky |
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Night Award :
Special Mention
Natural History
Júlio Cavani
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| The Night Award honors films, which are able to balance ambiguity and
complexity characterized by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness,
which keeps mind and consideration moving. |
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Natural History
Historia Natural
Júlio Cavani
Brazil
2014 / 0:12:00
A man finds a mysterious organic object at the top of the highest tree of a forest.
Extract :
https://vimeo.com/102683144
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Jury Statement :
First movie on the first day of Signes de Nuit, Bangkok 2016. It
starts off with very symmetrical shot, eerily atmospheric forest. A
man is climbing up the sort of palm tree to get its fruit, coming down
the tree, all of this happen in a very slow and still. And then when
the man walking out, it turn out he is walking out from the garden in
the zoo with a few visitors hanging around. After it finished, the
question about the subject is still open. Sequences of the film stay
in the mind. We become the calm observers of strange sceneries.
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