Spending a weekend attending a film festival is a new thing for me. I don’t watch a lot of films and the only film festival I attended in Indonesia is Europe on Screen. And because of my work I usually just watch one or two films there. That’s why for Aesthetica Short Film Festival, I went there completely not knowing what to expect and how it works. But I’m excited about the city.
The first thing I did when I reached York was to collect my ticket from the festival hub, grab the programme book, and sit down to see which films I would like to see. A lot of self-conflict and debate happened since I’m at the festival with some friends. Here are my favourites from ASFF 2019:
What interests me is the minimal set design and sound whilst focus on the model’s actions and expressions as a reaction to the narrative are captivating. I think the model herself plays a big part as the video wouldn’t be as fun if she’s not 100% into it. The choice of styling with vibrant colours, texture, and shape of the clothes makes the minimal set up make sense.
As a fan of God and Goddesses in mythology, I fell in love with this film. The creator made the characters based on classic painting and Greek mythology, making traditional sport into the form of deities each assigned with specialisation and their own world. This is similar to what I’ve been doing and will continue to do from now on.
I hate films with too much blood so I don’t watch horror/thriller films. But this one–even though I watched it while rising my hands in front of my eyes a couple times–I like. The setting is simple, just two strangers trapped in an elevator: one is an injured, dying man and one a woman who is dying to escape. The unique story and element of surprises make this film memorable.
Inspired by the speeches of Greta Thurnbeg and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, director Nina Holmgren tries to visualize the teenagers’ words. The story depicts a family whose house is on fire but the occupant seems ignorant and not reacts to it.
Most of the fashion film I watched at the festival doesn’t have any storyline with them. But this one sounds like a beginning or introduction part of the film and I like how they create a brief story about each character.
Another fashion film that has a storyline. I like it because it’s a bit absurd it’s funny. I looked up the director’s website and watched his previous work. His films feel like moving photographs.
The Blink Fish, I think, is clever on their take of a fashion film. They put the narrative into it, do it with humour, and sometimes poking the irony of fashion with it.
Stone Blind is a film made as a response to Brunei Darussalam’s government recent law that states homosexuality is illegal in Brunei. Sexual relations between the same sex are punishable by death; one of them is death by stoning. The film depicts the horror that will be faced by the LGBT community in the country.
The story of a man who feels a change in himself while subtitling a documentary about a butterfly. I love the colour palette, set design and how they visually portray the similarity of identity changes with caterpillar transformation.
The film started based on Legrove’s curiosity on the existence of Phone Sex Operators. She spent money and rung up numerous sex lines and collected recordings, then she fictionalised the characters behind the voices and constructed her own interpretation of them on-screen. Legrove also shared the women were hesitant and hung up the phone as soon as she said she wanted to create a documentary. She needed to get permission from the official sex lines first in order to reassure the women that their identity and story are confidential and safe with her.
A more experimental film with dialogue. The work is made of archive footages and visual metaphors that illustrate the dialogue. For me, the nation mentioned in the film could also be interpreted as the state of self–how the chaos happened inside yourself–and I cried a little watching it.
I went to watch the animation films in the hope to find more lighthearted and funny pieces, but I went to the one with ‘suffering and choices’ theme so all the movies were sad and dark. For Deady Freddy, the story is about Freddy, who lived a happy life and given an encore: he must live again through the eyes of every bug he has ever killed. Uncomfortable.