VISIO Production Fund 2022/2023
Simon Liu
Gerard Ortín Castellví
(Italy, Hong Kong, UK, USA, 2023, 11’)
by Simon Liu
co-produced with Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci
In the wake of cataclysmic regional change in the artist’s homeland of Hong Kong, Simon Liu’s new Cinema-Strobo-Scopic film features a laborious sequence of analogue darkroom practices and dense shrouds of video processing techniques which actively work to both conceal and reappraise approaches to personal expression in the face of censorship. Times ahead and behind collide – a new linearity is in need of; the glittering lore of the way things were, generations lost to resolution errors. Sifting through new realities of misinformation, digital consciousness, and cultural disappearance, Single File seeks new lexicons of civil disobedience through formal experimentation.
The movie competed for NEW:VISION AWARD of the CPHD:DOX, Copenhagen, March 13-24, 2024.
It was presented at MOMI Museum of Moving Image, New York, for FIRST LOOK 2024, March 13-17, 2024
It was screened in a dedicated focus during the Open City Documentary Festival, London, April 24-30 2024.
(Italy, UK, Spain, 2023, 26′)
by Gerard Ortín Castellví
co-produced with Fondazione In Between Art Film
Bliss Point focuses on the transformation of food into moving images by documenting the new regimes and infrastructures of distribution. From the advanced technologies of circulation in AI-managed warehouses to commercial perception and representation in food photography studios, the journey portrays fragmented coexisting realities. The term Bliss Point refers to a specific amount of an ingredient such as salt, sugar or fat in order to optimize the palatability of a product. In the film, this concept is expanded to include other aesthetic and scopic qualities. As the third piece of a trilogy on food production (Agrilogistics, 2022), distribution (Bliss Point, WIP) and consumption (Future Foods, 2021) it completes his long-term investigation Technologies and Ecologies of Food Regimes.
Bliss Point was presented at Tate Modern London as part of the artist’s trilogy Politics of Food trilogy, March 6, 2024. The movie competed in the “international Medium Length & Short Film” category at the Nyon Vision Du Réel International Film Festival, April 12-21, 2024.
(Iran, UK, Italy, 2024, 28′)
by Maryam Tafakory
co-produced with Seven Gravity Collection
In 1998, two schoolgirls sent a letter to Iran’s first-ever women’s newspaper. While they waited to be published, they considered making an impossible film. The film represents a new step in Maryam Tafakory’s research on the representation of women and forbidden bodies in post-revolution Iranian cinema, the first chapter of which, Mast-del, premiered at the 55th Cannes Quinzaine des Réalisateurs.
The film was in competition for the Pardi di Domani – International Competition at Locarno Film Festival , 6-16 August, 2024, and won the Junior Jury award for Best International Short Film at Locarno Film Festival.
Maryam Tafakory has been awarded the prestigious Film London Jarman Award 2024, a recognition that celebrates excellence and innovation in the field of artists’ moving image in the UK.
(Italy, France, 2023, 17′)
by Yuyan Wang
produced by Petit Chaos and co-produced with FRAC Bretagne
The Moon Also Rises is inspired by China’s 2018 initiative to launch three artificial moons for endless daylight. The film envisions a drift into the eternal glow through a nocturnal society dominated by relentless efficiency. A collective hallucination sustained by everlasting activity, accessibility and connection. Lethargic crowds are immersed in fluorescent landscapes while machines enter a trance-like state performing repetitive tasks on the production line of luminous gadgets. Haunted by memories of omnipresent brightness, people search for the fossils of light within the mineral dust tracing the “light” back to its earthly origins. Guided by Édouard Glissant’s call for “le droit à l’opacité” (the right to opacity), the film contemplates the myth of immaterial new technologies, offering an enigmatic interplay between technology light and darkness in our modern world. A first version of the work was presented as an installation at the 12th Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2022.
The movie competed for the NEW:VISION AWARD of the CPHD:DOX, Copenhagen, March 13-24, 2024 and it was screened at Leiden Shorts on June 2024.