Core Memory + You Are Closer To God When You Do Not Indulge + My Next Door Neighbours + Finale
Patricia Drati, Tore Hallas, Maia Torp Neergaard & Marlene Lyngstad / Denmark / 73 min
Four artistic Danish short films screened together.
Core Memory
Patricia Drati / Denmark / 2024 / World Premiere / 13 min
A simple and beautiful film about a three-year-old girl spending an afternoon in her own company, with a jar of colour at hand and her own body as a canvas.
A three-year-old girl is left unsupervised one summer afternoon. The joy she finds while painting herself, simultaneously discovering her own body and creativity, is one of these treasured moments that will not repeat itself. These kinds of episodes stay stored inside of us, as core memories that give an emotional value to our human experience. The absence of shame and her pure amazement by own creative ability is at the heart of Patricia Drati’s short film. The little girl is fascinated to the extent that she can hold her focus for unusually long time for her age. As an audience, we get sucked into this magical world of creativity and freedom.
You Are Closer To God When You Do Not Indulge
Tore Hallas / Denmark / 2024 / World Premiere / 22 min
A visual art film based on facts that blends queer erotic imagery with scientific research into the economic consequences of fatness.
Visual artist Tore Hallas treats fatness alongside other forms of queerness, and his new film work is both an explicit and intimate visual study of the discourses that determine which bodies are deemed desirable and worthy of admiration in a sexualised economy. In a stylised tablaeu, lit like renaissance paintings, the camera examines bodies frozen in embrace and desire.
My Next Door Neighbours
Maia Torp Neergaard / Denmark / 2024 / 18 min
The residents in a Copenhagen suburb put their experience of living in a so-called parallel society into words in a beautiful film work that accompanies their stories with hand-developed images shot on analogue 16mm film.
In the last few years, Tingbjerg on the outskirts of Copenhagen has undergone major changes. For 12 years, Tingbjerg has been on the Danish government’s list of parallel communities. A list that each year assesses social housing neighbourhoods primarily on the basis of ethnicity. If a majority of the residents are from so-called non-western countries, the area risks being put on the list, with the consequence that more housing is built to change the demographics and/or people are forcibly evicted from their homes. ‘My Next Door Neighbours’ is a collage of images and voices from people living in Tingbjerg, two kilometres from the director’s home. The words bear witness to hope, despair, uncertainty and resistance, and are accompanied by black and white film images on analogue, hand-developed 16mm film.
Finale
Marlene Lyngstad / Denmark / 2024 / World Premiere / 21 min
The daily routine of a hospital chapel in a film where a floating camera spies on the staff and their clients.
The all-seeing eye of a hovering camera observes the simple and everyday routines in the hospital chapel where ‘Finale’ is set. Here, the living prepare their clients to be sent out on their final journey. Cannes award winner Marlene Lyngstad is a deeply original filmmaker who has a special ability to pull the rug out from under reality, using simple means – such as a camera set-up that looks like you’re spying on the cast through a hole in the wall – to create new ways of making (and at least watching) films.