Color, Movement, & Fashion | VAEFF 2024

Color, Movement, & Fashion | VAEFF 2024 Screening and Q&A

The “Color, Movement, & Fashion” program highlights conceptually and stylistically innovative films from various genres, including music video, dance, animation, and fashion film.

Director: Drue Bisley

Synopsis: Embark on “Tales of Courage: Harriet’s Story,” a visually compelling exploration of self-discovery and healing. Celebrating the transformative power of dance, this film follows Harriet as she finds her voice and inner strength through movement. Through evocative imagery and Harriet’s own heartfelt narration, witness vulnerability metamorphose into empowerment.

Director: Sirius

Synopsis: At daybreak on a country road, a young couple returns from a restless night visibly exhausted. Angry with each other, the couple, in a magnetic dance, try to reconcile.

Director: Jonathan Fine

Synopsis: The music video for “DJ Spinnin” by Lolita Leopard and the Dunmore Brothers is a vibrant celebration of 90s house and pop culture, blending nostalgic visuals with modern energy. Seamlessly integrating bold fashion, iconic performance, striking visual effects, and playful 90s motifs, the video captures the essence of “hip house” music’s golden age while pushing its style and sound forward.

Director: Evgenii Bakirov

Synopsis: A short documentary about tattoo artist Herman Devyashin, who is trying to find a way out of a creative crisis. He calls this crisis a “circle” and associates it with his creative burnout, which increases during the endless repetition of the process. To get out of the circle, he decides to make a tattoo in a way that no one has ever done before, wearing augmented reality goggles.

Director: Kristyna Archer

Synopsis: In this experimental short film, two rhinestone space cowboys engage in a highline duel that defies not only gravity but the very essence of reality itself. Within this surreal, otherworldly landscape, these intrepid rhinestone-clad riders maintain a mesmerizing balance that borders on the supernatural. Their acrobatic prowess becomes a dance with destiny, and their rhinestones glimmer like distant constellations in a celestial frontier. This visionary creation fuses AI and virtual production, charting toward an entirely new era of cinematic innovation.

Director: Virginia L. Montgomery

Synopsis: A surreal, synesthesia-esque film interweaving a cacophony of circular symbols, sounds, and gestures. The film features Bella, a North American luna moth, as she gently flutters between sticks and bells. Her moth-ly movements create the film’s soundscape as VLM hand-dances alongside her. Working together, Bella and VLM co-create a healing soundscape as both entities, moth and human, share in a common dialogue of sounds, symbols, and intimacy.

Director: Vasco Diogo

Synopsis: Anima # 1-4 is a mash up of four different experimental animations that finish a cycle of creative work by Vasco Diogo. The film explores interior sensations and emotions from intrauterine memories to growing shadows, ghosts and chaos that emerged in a context of generalized anxiety. Instead of trying to give solutions to problems the film expands a space of mystery through screen awareness.

Director: Maya Marzuki Peters

Synopsis: Final Gaze invites viewers into the surreal world of a water planet, blending aquatic life with sci-fi splendor in a high-fashion narrative. Through rich textures and otherworldly imaginings, the film envisions a future where humanity evolves into underwater hybrids, merging with the depths of this captivating aquatic realm.

Director: Amrita Li Newton

Synopsis: Two sisters, Lucinda and Mary, dream of shedding their skin and becoming lizards, only to find themselves tricked by the very idol they strive to be. In association with California Dirt, “Becoming” utilizes this allegory to explore themes of women’s relationship with society. As women, we are led to believe that we have to look a certain way by the world around us. However when we strive to become that societal idol, we can either put our life on the line or be told we are vain and care too much. Or in other words, women can be devoured by society! Chomp!

Director: Terry Blade

Synopsis: “Won’t Be Around” is a song written and performed by singer-songwriter Terry Blade. At its core, the song is about leaving an abusive relationship by having the will to speak it, the courage to do it, and the strength to never return to it. The music video follows three individuals who are descendants of African-American sharecroppers, and who confront the racial history of sharecropping in the American south by showing that black bodies can exist and subsist on land in the south without the exploitation of black labor.

Director: Miche

Synopsis: Everything Must Glow was produced on occasion of Pabli Stein’s art exhibitions “Real Fake” and “What Are You Looking At?,” commissioned by Buenos Aires’ prestigious San Martin’s Cultural Center. The film offers a hypnotic look within the increasingly blurred boundaries that separate art from consumption culture. The seams behind luxury and desire are revealed through Stein’s creative process. When the celebration of excess comes to an end and we’re left face to face with the void, reflecting on our own identity, the only thing left to ask is: what are we looking at?

Director: Laëtitia Daché

Synopsis: In the Distance offers a perspective on the notions of complementarity and duality, expressions of resilience in the face of challenges. The film invites us to examine the physical, mental, and emotional states evoked by life’s circumstances. Whether through our relationship with others, ourselves, or these circumstances, the ability to take a step back emerges as an introspective exercise in balance – a test of the mind and soul, heightened by hardships.

Director: Katherine Maxwell

Synopsis: Pennies portrays the complexities and challenges found within partnership.

Pennies comes from ‘a sigh of origin’, a 40-minute film situated within an aging psyche, exploring how the brain and body store memory beyond the conscious mind. This work is inspired by time spent between the director and her grandmother, who has late-stage dementia. In developing this work, Maxwell researched neuroscience, neuroplasticity, and epigenetics to further understand how the brain and body store memory beyond the conscious mind.

Director: Michelangelo Carliez

Synopsis: Exploring the magical world of iiWii Hub, an experienced tailor uses his powers to create new and wild clothes. Where other people see garbage, iiWii hub finds a rare opportunity: “flaw” is just a cruel way to say uniqueness.

Director: Jonathan Coleman

Synopsis: Veil is a cinematic music video, exploring vulnerability to others and oneself. It’s a showcase of Megan Shung’s incredible violin talent onstage, while also exploring ways to be personally vulnerable in art. Veil prompts us to question why we choose not to be vulnerable? What is the cost?

Director: Wilberto Lucci

Synopsis: In a post-apocalyptic New Orleans inspired by Mad Max, Big Freedia and a fierce crew of “warriors” stand as guardians of the city and it’s vibrant music culture, fighting to protect it from the forces of gentrification and devastation. This high-energy visual captures the gritty landscapes, the pulse of bounce music, and the unbreakable pride of New Orleans’ people, celebrating the resilience and spirit that keep the city’s culture alive.

Director: Sandra Geco

Synopsis: A visual fable with poetic notes that oscillate between reality and surrealism to reveal a universe mixing plastic, landscape and poetry. We discover a couple looking like René Magritte’s lovers who have exchanged their veil against a plastic bag. In research of sensitivity, this video fable questions our rupture with the rest of the living world and our (in)ability to identify with it. We are this living being caught in a trap: how could we forget about it?

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, New York, United States