WATCH THE FIRE OR BURN INSIDE IT (2022) – 18’21
In Corsica, a woman chooses to care for the earth by burning it.
Caroline Poggi was born in 1990 in Ajaccio. She studied at the University of Corsica, and then graduated from the University Paris VIII. Born in Toulouse in 1988, Jonathan Vinel studied Editing at La Fémis. They began directing solo before embarking on a collaboration for TANT QU'IL NOUS RESTE DES FUSILS À POMPE (2014), which won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlinale. Their first feature film JESSICA FOREVER (2018) premiered at TIFF and subsequently played at the Berlinale. Their latest film is WATCH THE FIRE OR BURN INSIDE IT (2022), selected at Locarno FF. They’re working on their second feature film. They live and work between Paris, Corsica and Toulouse.
WARSHA
film by Dania Bdeir
France, Lebanon, 15'
Mohammad is a crane operator working in Beirut. One morning he volunteers to take on one of the tallest and notoriously most dangerous cranes in Lebanon. Away from everyone’s eyes, he is able to live out his secret passion and find freedom.
Dania Bdeir is an award-winning Lebanese-Canadian filmmaker.
Bdeir, currently a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, has a BA in Graphic Design from the American University of Beirut and an MFA in directing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she received a full scholarship in her third year.
IN WHITE, her graduate thesis film, received the Spike Lee Production Fund and had its world premiere at Clermont-Ferrand before screening at BFI London, Uppsala, and more than 30 other festivals worldwide.
Bdeir was a 2019 Berlinale Talent and participated in its Short Film Station with WARSHA, which had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and won the Jury Prize for the Best International Fiction Short. WARSHA, which is a co-production between Inter Spinas Films (France), GoGoGo Films (France) and Né à Beyrouth Films (Lebanon), secured a pre-purchase broadcast deal with European TV channel ARTE. The short has won over 20 awards and has been selected at over 60 festivals in the first six months since its premiere, including SXSW, Rotterdam, Clermont-Ferrand, Aspen Shortsfest, Palm Springs Shortfest, and Tampere, among many others.
SUBLUNARY
a film by Mariangela Ciccarello and Philip Cartelli
A young woman investigates an island’s geologic specificity, discovering hidden strata where history and memory meet barely submerged narratives of displacement and imaginaries of possible futures.
Philip Cartelli is a moving-image artist and researcher whose film and video work has been exhibited at Locarno Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Visions du Réel, Torino Film Festival, FID Marseille, and Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real, among others. He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Wagner College in New York City. Mariangela Ciccarello is an artist working in moving image, installation, and sculpture. Her work has been featured at the Locarno Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Harvard Art Museum, and Film Society of Lincoln Center among other venues. She holds an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University (US), an MA from the University of Provence (FR), a BA in Philosophy from Alma Mater Studiorum, Bologna (IT) and she was a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program – Studio Program.
Songs For The Sea
a film by Renata Poljak
The sea is unwell and it’s our fault. So the question is: how to heal the sea?
Can the sea be healed? Can we at least try to help it? Can we compose music for the sea? Can we give it hope?
Stories have shaped our memory since ancient times, narratives shape our history and beliefs. To make a change today, we have to rethink the narratives. Thus, with this poem, we give the sea back the power to tell its own story. This song was created out of a desire to give the sea back its creative energy, to console it, to embrace it, but also to remind us humans of how the sea is the beginning of life, and how it is essential for our ecosystems to exist.
In this poem of ours, unlike the usual Old Slavic myths and the tree of creation, the Sea is the creator god. Just as in science, it is the beginning of creation.
A 12-year-old boy, Vanja Cetinić – Koća, has been catching and studying plankton for the past two years. Now he owns his own professional plankton net and conducts scientific research under the microscope, studying known and unknown kinds of small, almost invisible sea inhabitants. His research has already contributed to some new scientific studies.
Amira Medunjanin is a well-known Sevdah singer, who carries in her voice the tone from ancient times since birth. Through her storytelling and songs, she brings new narratives to life.
The Sinakuz brothers are creators and vivid explorers of contemporary electronic music, focusing on experimental sounds.
With the combination of traditional (hi)story and contemporary music through improvisation, we wish to bring hope, to the sea, and to people.
- - -
Emma Mattei (Malta) is a writer, curator and film programmer. She
recently co-curated the inaugural edition of the Malta Contemporary
Art Biennial (2024). She is one of the co-founders of Kinemastik NGO
(2004, Malta), and Programme Director at the Kinemastik International
Short Film Festival (KISFF), which this year celebrates 20 years. She
founded Uncommon Guide Books in 2011, publishing editions in Malta,
Stockholm, London, Dubai and Cairo. Occasionally, she can be found on
the set of Hollywood Blockbusters as Home Economist within the Art
Department.