LIFE SPANS

Memory, anticipation, and grief; the breadth of lived experience is expressed in these films across every stage of a life. A deployed US soldier and his pregnant wife anticipate their impending parenthood through zoom calls; an empty house is filled with memories of stillbirths; an elderly Japanese woman celebrates the emergence of a new season while reminiscing on her adolescence; children in a Baltic family learn about the cosmos. Yearning for a past, present, future, or the unknown is a constant of the human condition. These films explore the fragility and ephemerality of these encounters, through slow, deliberate filmmaking.

Content note: Sounds of Stillness deals with the theme of still birth.

The session will feature a Q&A with Asako Ujita (Fade) and Jana Raschdorf (Sounds of Stillness), chaired by programmer Kat Haylett.

Fade

Asako Ujita / 2024 / Japan / 14:10

Fade portrays the life of a grandmother in the mountainous region of Hyogo, Japan while persimmon trees enter their late season. Capturing the grandmother’s tenacious care for traditions, trees and home, the film poetically depicts the tableaux of forgotten rural memory of the post-war; the glimpse of human spirit and persistence appears in the passing of seasons, awaiting new beginnings.

Sounds of Stillness

Jana Raschdorf / 2024 / Sweden / 20:40

An ordinary house, surrounded by trees and ever-changing weather. Different voices fill the space and tell us of stillbirth experiences at different stages within healthcare journeys – together forming a whole.

Forward Operating Base

Peter Schulman / 2024 / USA / 27:32

An anonymous medical evacuation pilot films his daily routine during the final years of the U.S. War in Afghanistan. A collaborative diary and fever dream where the malaise, isolation, and background violence of war coexists with conversations between the soldier and his wife about their first child, months away from being born.

The Wind Is Taking Them

Ann Carolin Renninger / 2024 / Germany / 25:00

Rovin lives on a farm by the Baltic Sea. He explores his environment. Moss, fire and his great curiosity: discovering new planets, stars, unknown beings. Maria is taking care of the stones at the beach very close to her house, while Christopher is busy moving stones up on a little hill. All of them search for something.