Competition programme №4

Great Britain | 2017 | 19 min
Ben Rivers

The last woman on Earth, perhaps. Her logbook accounts her struggles with sustaining her world, sanity and dedication to her unforgiving sealed environment. Filmed inside «Biosphere 2» in Arizona, it forms a cinematic meditation on ambitious experiments, constructed environments, and visions of the future. The film considers what an endeavor such as «Biosphere 2» might mean today in terms of human kind's relationship with the natural world. «Urth» takes its title from the Old Norse word suggesting the twisted threads of fate.

USA | 2016 | 14 min
Peter Burr

A journey to the threshold of a utopian labyrinth. We follow the perspective of a solitary woman who descends into an abandoned subterranean arcology. She is tasked with cleaning up the mess that has spawned from this feral structure, becoming lost in the process.

Germany | 2017 | 29 min
Philip Widmann

A Japanese philosopher writes a letter to a famous German colleague. He asks the German to advise the Japanese people how to deal with the permeation of modern life by technology. More than 50 years later, the same issues are being discussed among academics and aspiring engineers. It is hard to grasp how humans and technology continue to coexist. Resorting to biographical trivia, mythological histories and the recounting of dreams is not helping them to see these issues any clearer. In the grainy images of the film, landscapes from an uncertain time appear, occasionally flooded by water and a cacophony of brass players. The uncontrollable finds its ways into a world that tries to minimise risks and thus creates new dangers.

Thailand | 2016 | 16 min
Chai Siris

In Lampang, at the archeological site that found fossil of homoerectus 17 years ago, now nobody care about this scientific discovery. Just locals went there for spiritual activity sometimes. One evening an outdoor cinema truck went there to screen a film as an offer to the ancient ghost, Kohka man, during the screening, something unexpected happened.