Full Screening Schedule for Friday, Sept. 13th
11:00am – 12:30pm – Narrative Shorts Showcase 01
“Darcine’s Day”
(USA)
We spend the day with Darcine Thomas (Kyla Diane Kennedy), divorced and jobless, as she strives to thrive, and survive, in post-pandemic Los Angeles. She plans to start a new business that would help those living on the street, and struggles to find her own new job, but hits obstacles at every turn. She ends her day in the most surprising – and tragic – of places.
Directed by Aaron Goffman
“Here and Nowhere”
(USA)
A young girl is trapped inside her home by her father and seeks freedom once a new neighbor moves in.
Directed by Brendan Burks
“Memorable Night”
(France)
In a retirement home, Robert and Marcelle are getting ready for an event that will take them out of their daily lives: a night out at the discotheque. Despite Robert’s Alzheimer’s disease does not improve, Marcelle stays by his side, reviving memories. Clémentine, their granddaughter, has volunteered to accompany them and is looking forward to sharing important news with them.
Directed by Romain Fleury
“Mis-Alignment”
(USA)
When an engineer who destroys malfunctioning androids encounters a shocking abnormality in a rebellious patient, she risks everything to save her new friend and herself.
Directed by Pablo Riesgo Almonacid
“My Fair Dairy”
(USA)
An exclusive behind the scenes making-of the original production of My Fair Dairy, written and directed by Kenny Lamaunt! This short film explores the creation process of artists yielding to their creativity as well as the will of the funding of an industry.
Directed by TJ Hill
“Red Guard”
(USA)
Amidst the Cultural Revolution, a young man’s participation in a Red Guard march is interrupted when he unexpectedly finds an object from his past.
Directed by L-J ShenFilerman
“Runaway”
(United Arab Emirates)
A seemingly successful and brutal biker comes to the desert to get rid of the contents of his rucksack. But he clearly lacks the determination and will to say goodbye to all his belongings. The events reveal to the viewer of the short film the dramatic situation in which the hero is driven, fleeing from the circumstances that have changed his life.
Directed by Andrey Solomonov
“Shame”
(United Arab Emirates)
Mahra’s attempt to flee from home is abruptly halted when her mother catches her. In the ensuing intense confrontation, Mahra is faced with a pivotal choice: accept her predetermined fate or summon the strength to assert her independence and forge her own destiny.
Directed by Fatema Al Mansoori
“The Game of the Goose”
(Spain)
Luna is eight years old and has a brilliant mind but lives in her own world: she is a girl with ASD (autism spectrum disorder). After an incident, Luna is expelled from school for a week while the director imposes the same term on her mother Vega to put the girl in treatment.
Directed by Ana Maria Ferri
1:30pm – 3:00pm – Experimental and Music Video Showcase
ABURIDASHI Assortment: Video Letters written in invisible ink.
(Japan)
This work is an experimental documentary animation by the traditional Japanese technique of “ABURIDASHI”. And it’s consists of three parts: Beginning, Middle, and End.
Directed by Nonoho Suzuki
“An Occurrence”
(USA)
A distant, culturally-mixed family attempts a ceremonial day together. Lifelong emotions surface through small gestures, while the world around them keeps changing and carries on.
Directed by Dien Vo
“Anemoia”
(Denmark)
Referring to nostalgia for something one has never experienced, Anemoia follows three characters while they fall in and out of synchronicity, unclear of what lies within reach and what is non-tangible.
Directed by Andreas Aicka Thomsen
“Black and Blue”
(USA)
A man’s relationship with his partner is at its breaking point as she walks out of his life.
Directed by Naomi Yoder, Gregory Compton, Jon-Micah Griffith, Thane Syswerda
“Closure”
(Czech Republic)
Within M’s poignant odyssey through fractured memories, she unearths wounds from former lovers, embodying abuse, deception, and death, all in her quest for self-acceptance.
Directed by Faraz Alam
“Don’t Bother Me Babe”
(Portugal)
An urge to change, a yearning to traverse the subconscious. As we drift, rootless and restless, into the interior of guitars and other gateways, so does reality shift (from real-world to fabricated, from an industrial, lifeless landscape to a natural one, from underwater to the martian desert) in this lyric video with surreal and fantastical elements.
Directed by Alice do Carmo
“Dream Machine Ballet”
(France)
Like a bridge between two worlds, the user of the Dream Machine can see complex color patterns appear, these patterns can become swirling shapes and symbols, until the user feels overwhelmed with colors. In “Dream Machine Ballet”, the rhythmic impulses of the music cause patterns, shapes and symbols of colors in movement, which emerge from the unconscious according to the different musical phases.
Directed by Pierre Ajavon
“Fragments of an Echo”
(USA)
The film is largely made up of fragmented static shots evoking a sense of nostalgia and abandonment of a medical facility soon to be no more.
Directed by Martin Del Carpio
“Never Enough”
(USA)
Music Video For Independent Artist Grady Mathison
Directed by Jake Apgar
“Mare Tranquillitatis Part 1 & 2”
(China)
This experimental short film, with two-dimensional montage, aims to explain the vicious cycle of depression and visualize the stigmatization of patients and the impossibility of empathy for others.
Directed by Tianming Zhou
“Metamorphose”
(Japan)
I focused on the metamorphosis of ice, including the movement, texture, bubbles and droplets that occur during the melting process. I expressed the beauty of melting ice that we do not usually notice.
Directed by Yoshihisa Kitamura
“Methuselah”
(USA)
Rooted in a childhood memory, ‘Methuselah’ examines the exploitation of trees and their haunting dual role, as silent witnesses and unwitting participants, in humanity’s long history of violence.
Directed by Nathan Sellers
“Night Ride from L.A.”
(Germany)
This film is based on a real car ride at night from downtown LA to the desert near Palm Springs a few years ago. The footage was taken from the car by continually shooting single long exposure photos to document the ride of about two hours without any break. This technique condensed the whole trip to a flickering twirl of time-stretched movements and night light graffiti causing a kind of psychedelic trance. A love letter to the energy and vibe of the Californian way of life.
Directed by Martin Gerigk
“RAM (Like the Verb)”
(USA)
During the casting process for a reality series, an openly gay Asian actor reconciles his sexuality with his career struggles. Rotoscoped with example-based synthesis technology.
Directed by Chance Calloway
“Sofá TV (PopArt3)”
(Spain)
Sofá TV (PopArt3) is an instrumental artistic research work with Artificial Intelligence and is part of an audiovisual artistic research project that tries to transfer expressive and emotional concepts to the screen with moving images and therefore deliberately lacks formal, narrative and structural aspects.
Directed by Luis Carlos Rodríguez
“The Stream XIII”
(Japan)
In “The Stream XIII”, the 13th in the series, I focused on how the landscape is transformed when the wind as a weather phenomenon streams through the fields and reed fields cultivated by humans.
I used the wind chime to perceive the invisible presence of wind as sound. And also we can perceive the invisible presence of wind as visualized wind ripples in the fields.
Directed by Hiroya Sakurai
“Zap On”
(USA)
“Zap On ” is an experimental film made by Colorado artist and filmmaker John Dawson in 2024. This short film is 100% hand made by drawing, painting and scratching directly onto 16mm film stock. It is paint with a pulse and abstraction that moves. I am taking an old school technique and trying to do something modern and current.
Directed by John Dawson
3:30pm – 5:00pm – Narrative Feature Screening
“The House That Stood”
(Italy)
San Pietro Avellana, southern Italy, 1943. Camillo, a teenager, sees his life being turned upside down when, one day, some retreating German soldiers begin using his family’s inn as a base of operation. Amid a war that seems never-ending, Camillo has much more in mind; and first things first, to ask Bianca, his longtime crush, on a first date. The world seems a little less ugly, even for a moment, until something changes their lives forever.
Directed by Antonella Spirito
6:30pm – 7:30pm – Opening Night Reception
Join us in the lobby of the Nordlof Center for our red carpet arrivals, refreshments, and music to celebrate the opening of the 2024 fest!
7:30pm – 9:00pm – Awards Ceremony and RVC Mass Com Showcase event
We will announce the award winners for the 2024 MWFF and screen 4 short films made by students of Rockford, IL’s own Mass Communication program at Rock Valley College.
The films:
“Sky Sisters”
A short documentary that details several female pilots and the journeys they’ve had in their careers.
Directed by Miriam Nesemeier
“Vincent”
An artist struggles to find his next source of inspiration.
Directed by Isaac Frazier
“Brushes, Beats, and Bruises”
A documentary about different artists and their processes.
Directed by Corbin Rivers
“The Operator”
An elevator operator greets a variety of strangers on his working days. Hidden in these brief encounters, he discovers something profound.
Directed by Blake Atterbury and Julia Moore
The filmmakers will be in attendance and be part of a Q and A panel after the screenings.