International Festival Signs of the Night - Paris
Festival internatinal Signes de nuit - Paris
 


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20e Festival international Signes de Nuit - Paris / 1-10 octobre 2022

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October 8th, 2022 - 8 pm
Maison du Mexique - Cité universitaire
9c, Bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris


 



I am Hydra
 
Thale Blix Fastvold
Norway / 2021 / 0:09:00

"I am Hydra" is a hydrofeminist spell to end the petrocapitalist age. The film is shot in Norway and Denmark, its opening scene is from Skagen where two oceans meet (the Northern Sea and the Baltic Sea), and the film juxtaposes footage from the Norwegian oil industry with the forever self-regenerating Hydra species while referencing the mythological multi-headed Hydra-creature. The soundscape is by cello musician Einar Halle in collaboration with Gunnar Halle,


FRENCH PREMIERE




 

Voices from Nowhere
 
Damon M Mohl
United States/ 2022 / 0:05:30

A Man contemplates answering his phone.


FRENCH PREMIERE










 

Once I Passed
 
Martin Gerigk
United States / 2022 / 0:10:00 :23

Walt Whitman is one of the most important poets in American literature. His main work, Leaves of Grass, was written over a period of forty years, and describes human nature, society, and the natural world, both physically and philosophically. Many have speculated about Whitman's private life, to this day. Whitman never wrote publicly about his personal relationships. In 1860, he published his poem "Once I Passed Through a Populous City", an aphoristic account of a romantic relationship with an unknown woman. In 1925, the original handwritten copy of the poem was discovered, in which Whitman writes, however, not about a woman but about an affair with a man in an anonymous city, which may have been his first physical experience of love. Whitman did not dare to publish the original version of his poem, because of the social prejudices of his time. To this day, only the altered version is printed in most anthologies. "Once I passed" is dedicated, on the one hand, to the obviously autobiographical context with all its personal drama, and on the other hand to the content of the poem itself, the profoundly quiet, yet powerful story of two lovers.


FRENCH PREMIERE


 

Ever Wanting (for Margaret Chung)
 
Tina Takemoto
United States / 2021 / 0:06:20

Inspired by San Francisco’s first Chinese American female physician, this film envisions the euphoria and despair of Margaret Chung and her insatiable desire for women and celebrity through her forays into drugs, sapphic surgeries, and queer flights of fancy.

FRENCH PREMIERE





 

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Refection of a Man
 
Martine Stig
Niederlande / 2021 / 0:17:07

In the film essay ‘The Reflection of the Man’ Martine Stig grapples with the meaning of the human in a hybrid world. Employing ubiquitous technologies like face recognition software, while also reflecting on them, Stig examines the act of seeing beyond the explorative and the embodied. Stig uses Rorschach techniques and algorithms in order to draw closer to nonhuman companions, and speculatively broadens the concept of being present. The Reflection of the Man results from the artist ongoing dialogue with writer Ilse van Rijn about technology and memory in a more-than-human world.


FRENCH PREMIERE


 

Masks

Masques
Oliver Smolders
Belgium / 2021 / 0:23:00


A filmmaker mourns the fading faces of his loved ones and evokes the ritual of masks as way of connecting to the afterlife.

 













 

End of the Universe

Wheeler Winston Dixon
United States / 2021 / 0:05:28


"The end of the universe will be very, very quiet." - Sartre ature.

EUROPE PREMIERE









 

Self-portrait in Hell

Autoritratto all'Inferno
Federica Foglia
Canada / 2021 / 0:03:30


This hybrid piece is a collage created assembling both analog and digital material. Several layers of 8mm films merge to create a camera-less self-portrait of the filmmaker. The first layer is an 8mm orphan film (found footage) from the 1970s of a woman dancing. The second layer is an 8mm found footage film that has been buried in earth for some months. While being covered in earth, the film emulsion has been eaten by the bacterias in the ground, plus some bacterias from yeast and sugar. This technique was originally used by the Schmelzdahin group in Germany. After several weeks in soil, the film gets extracted, rinsed, and scanned via a 4K digital scanner. The third layer is an 8mm home movie that has been first decayed in soil, using the aforementioned technique, then hand-painted with ink.

FRENCH PREMIERE


 

Small Silent Disorder

Pequena desordem silenciosa
Pedro Sena Nunes
Portugal / 2021 / 0:07:33


They say that every atheist prays before dying. Small Silent Disorder proposes a dreamlike awareness about where we are and where we are going, a reverberation around the most elementary sensations. A fantasized journey through a collective memory, it is witness to a confrontation between seasons and seems to search, in the midst of desolation, for an autumn that temporarily gives us hope back.

FRENCH PREMIERE