SFF 2023
21-22
OCT
Good Shepherd Studios, Leytonstone, London
This was a big year for the Slow Film Festival. The festival has historically always taken place in the village of Mayfield, East Sussex and was very much rooted in this place. The change in director and board of trustees however necessitated finding a new home for the festival. We searched for a location in East London where we would be able to create the feeling of communal spectatorship and discussion that was always fostered in Mayfield. We feel that we found a wonderful new home for the festival in Good Shepherd Studios, a community centre with artists studios, a cafe and two wonderful screening rooms on the edge of Epping Forest.
The festival featured a rare screening of Al Wongs 70’s masterpiece of slowness Twin Peaks with a lively discussion led by Kiki Yu and Victor Fan. Other highlights included an artist in focus session on the durational work of Melanie Manchot. Melanie presented her work in person and was joined by Helen de Witt who led the discussion.
Sister Mother Lover Child by NADIA SHIHAB
It is spring yet all is coloured by a season of grief. A child dances, the grapevine ripens. We press our ears to the glass and hear singing from afar. Suspended, together, we are an unlikely constellation. I hold the frame until I find the form. Sister mother lover child.
Now I am Old and Do Not Need The Moon by DASHA BOUGH
In a small Roma village deep in Moldova, an old woman named Daria lives in fear of the Russian-Ukrainian war at her doorstep. Mischievous kids, watchful babushki, and stray dogs surround her. Alone in her hut, she contemplates love, the Soviet Union, and the tragedy that derailed her life as a young woman. Her television set fills the silence.
Have You Seen That Man by YOTAM BEN-DAVID
An 8 year old boy finds a dead man’s body at the top of a mountain. As he knocks on doors, a portrait of a village is revealed – a place torn between the traditions of the past and the violence of contemporary reality.
Friends on a Beach by ALDONA VIDEO CLUB (GRAND DAVIS/KAPIL DAS)
"Friends on a beach" is a dreamy vignette of a group of close male friends enjoying their beach holiday together in Goa, India. The camera's presence stirs up their tender affections and playful antics, as they savour the last moments before the sun sets.
Interior (The Spectator) by MATTHEW BURDIS
'Interior (The Spectator)' contemplates director Matthew Burdis' relationship to the painter Howard Hodgkin.
The highly personalised domestic interior of Hodgkin’s London home becomes a container to explore this relationship: as objects and belongings draw out themes of personal loss, memory and identity.
Seemingly beginning as a memoir, the narration and images directly correspond to each other. This structure begins to fracture as images disjoint from the text, before reconnecting at particular moments. The script is collaged from personal writing, gathered quotes and references to literary sources to create an equivocal identity.
Please Make It Work by DANIEL SOARES
Surrounded by breathtaking mountain ranges, Cláudia cleans where others go to enjoy the marvelous view. The perks of modern day comfort come with struggles in someone else’s life, which we seldom get to witness. Instead of being taken to the mountains to appreciate a stunning view, in ‘Please make it work’ we get to stay with the cleaning lady.
This film was made within the Locarno Spring Academy, where 10 filmmakers from all over the world were invited to make a film in the Ticino region, under the mentorship of Michelangelo Frammartino.
Les Grand Pres by SOPHIA REMER/MICHAEL KARRER
Somewhere in a forest the wind rises.
The Unofficial Countryside by NICK JORDAN/ JACOB CARTWRIGHT
The Unofficial Countryside is an observational portrait of the ‘edgeland’ landscapes that exists between the urban and the rural. The film documents the intrinsic characteristics of these places, where nature thrives on the fringes of the city. Filmed in a patchwork of urban woodland, ramshackle smallholdings, abandoned industrial sites, utility substations, scrapyards, open fields and informal riverside beaches, the documentary includes a voiceover drawn from Marion Shoard’s essay ‘Edgelands of Promise’, and captures the rich biodiversity of both native and introduced species, in a landscape shaped by the activities and imprints of people passing through.
Extended Presences by MARGAUX ANNE ALI DAUBY
'Extended presences' follows several women in their seasonal work as fire watchers in Portugal. The film comes close to their breathing, to the passing of time and to solitude, from within.
Immaterial Terrain by EMILY RICHARDSON
Immaterial Terrain is a film made by Emily Richardson along a seven-mile stretch of the Suffolk coast between Sizewell nuclear power station and the mythic drowned city of Dunwich. Camera in hand, over the duration of a year Richardson repeatedly walked this coastline. These walks – pilgrimages and acts of protest – structure a film that documents a singular and fragile landscape at an uncertain moment. Plans to expand the nuclear power station at Sizewell will have a lasting impact on the environment.
Resolving to look at the locale more carefully and with more appreciative eyes, Immaterial Terrain engages with ideas about energy, transformation, erosion, loss, erasure, memory and forgetting.
The film’s evocative soundtrack sees Richardson working once again with long-time collaborator Chris Watson whose sound recordings have been collaged with music composed in direct response to this unique coastal landscape by Suffolk-born producer LOOM.
MELANIE MANCHOT IN CONVERSATION WITH HELEN DE WITT
Melanie Manchot is a London-based visual artist who works with photography, film and video as a performative and participatory practice. Her projects often explore specific sites, public spaces or particular communities in order to locate notions of individual and collective identities. In this session she presented her new film Liquid Skin alongside a selection of past works employing duration as a key creative element. She was in conversation with Slow Film Festival Trustee Helen de Witt.
Perfect Mountain (2011)
Out of Bounds (2016)
Cadence (2018)
Cornered Star (2018)
Snow Dance (2019)
Liquid Skin (2023)
The Two Sights (AN DÀ SHEALLADH) by JOSHUA BONNETTA
The first solo feature from Joshua Bonnetta (co-director, El Mar La Mar), The Two Sights (An Dà Shealladh) explores the disappearing tradition of second sight in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. As we listen to locals' accounts of haunting experiences--phantom horses, ghost voices and other supernatural phenomena--Bonnetta connects their testimonies with striking 16mm images and a carefully-curated sonic montage of the physical and aural environment of these enchanted islands. The Two Sights is an ethnographic marvel of non-fiction filmmaking that thrills the eyes and ears and invites us into the extra-sensory beyond.
Nocturnus by Harm Dens/Meltse Van Coillie
In the darkness of the polar night, a scientist tries to shed light on a remarkable phenomenon: an Arctic village in hibernation. The synchronous breathing of dozens of human hibernators echoes through a snowy valley. Three sleep scientists find shelter in a small cabin. The sea is about to freeze over. Time is running out. But time feels like a strange construct when night never ends.
Nightlife by R COLVILE
"Nightlife" is an film made from the structures, stories and surfaces of the City of London, one of the most uncompromising commercial environments on the planet. Shot and recorded entirely on iPhone, "Nightlife" provides a unique and immediate insight into the culture, challenges and psychological cost of a life spent at work in the City.
Sonnenstube by DAVIDE PALELLA
Sergio Cortesi dedicated his life to solar observation. At the “Specola solare” in Locarno, between 1957 and 2021, he made over 15.000 sunspots drawings, driven by the faith of a monk to whom his own god never gave an answer.
EN AVANT [about a year in MPLS] by Dan Schneidkraut
A meditative ride through the city during a period of tumult and transition: coming together and falling apart.
Grief by Marleen van der Werf
Grief is a short film about the perception of life after a personal loss. Using experimental visuals, land-art and soundscapes, the natural world becomes a decor to express the unsayable.
Teetering Graphite 巛－－－谷 by Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu
Broken landscapes like screen paintings from a long river. Teetering Graphite shudders in the crevices between document, surrealism, and ethereality, sketching a life-world that is disintegrating.
Artist statement:
As my mother-in-law's dementia progressed, her consciousness often wandered out on its own, and language gradually lost its meaning. Memory became a disconnected landscape, sometimes within reach, most of the time misty, sometimes barren. This film recording was an infrequent moment she spoke to us in recognisable words.
To Cut a Tree on a Green Moon by Felipe Esparza
From the diary of Christopher Columbus, October 15, 1492: "And deviated from the land by two lombard shots, there is in all these islands so much depth that one cannot reach it. These islands are very green and fertile and have very sweet airs, and there may be many things that I do not know, because I do not want to stop to go through many islands to find gold". They had only been on land for four days. The gold never existed. It is only possible to suppose the sweetness of the air. The islands are still green.
An Unknown Summer by Bhaskar Jyoti Das
On 4TH March 2009, security forces came to Phoubakchao Makha Leikai in Imphal valley, in the Northeast Indian state of Manipur, looking for a militant ostensibly named, “Azad.” They dragged Azad Khan, just 12yrs and studying for school exams, out of his home, and shot him dead in front his parents. The draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. 1958, in force in large parts of several states of NE India, offers unbridled impunity to security forces for such gross lapses. Azad’s parents are still waiting for justice. In recent years AFSPA has been withdrawn from some parts of Manipur. Civil rights groups have been demanding its complete abrogation for many years now.
Twin Peaks by Al Wong
Twin Peaks (Al Wong 1977) is a masterpiece of slow cinema but has rarely been screened in the UK. In fact this was the second screening it’s ever had this side of the pond! The film was followed by a conversation on Zen Buddhism in film between academic and filmmaker Kiki Yu and writer Victor Fan.
"Al Wong recorded this meditative film over the course of a year in 1976-1977. Taking the idea of the journey as its form, Wong’s camera is set inside the car as he slowly drives the infinity loop road that winds around Twin Peaks in San Francisco at different times of the day. In one part the film image splits in half and becomes out of sync synthesizing Wong’s interests in perception and the illusory nature of reality. A masterpiece of subtle shifts in light and tone…” (Tanya Zimbardo, Assistant Curator, Media Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)".