MicroActs 16: An Evening in Review

Join Akinna Aquino for a review of our latest screening evening MicroActs 16, plus all the information about our current open call for our first film night of 2024!

It’s a drizzly October evening in New Cross and in the basement of a South London coffee shop, mismatching chairs and benches are being arranged into a seating configuration for the best possible viewing experience. Signs and posters for the evening are scattered and pasted up on the cafe’s deep green walls. “MICROCTS 16”, “SCREENING BEGINS AT 7:30PM”. The space is aglow, warmly lit by a scattering of spherical lamps, and attendees begin to arrive in dribs and drabs. The low murmur of chatter begins to grow as the coffee shop fills. Below the crowd, in the waiting basement, the stage is set for the second MicroActs screening at CORNER cafe and art space.

This October’s iteration of MicroActs presented 20 shorts from Canada, India, Italy, Romania, Singapore, the UK & the USA. With a wide range of styles and perspectives from around the world, the programme stretched across a mix of audio-visual delights. From pixelated kittens to ominous steel wool, the films screened this month showed an impressive array of ways artists make sense of themselves and the world around them. Throughout the evening the programme dances an audience through high energy absurdism into slow-burn considerations of existence into a joyous celebration of queer love and much more. As with all MicroActs editions, once submissions come through to us the curators watch the films without trying to find or apply categories to the submitted films. There’s a sense of play in the MicroActs’ programming which comes through when you’re watching the screenings. You may get a sense of the relaxed and explorative approach to the programming. This ease of play and exploration is embodied in Liberty Antonia Sadler’s mixing of digital viewing with analog methods while curating MicroActs16, such as hand cut-&-paste arrangements used to order the films into two distinctive parts. In keeping the mind open and receptive, audiences might find themselves seeing themes emerge in the selections, in the absence of any prescribed lens to look through, they might begin to feel out connections between films that they would never have considered before. In the comfort and darkness of a coffee shop basement surrounded by filmmakers, artists, film-lovers and purely curious minds, what might you discover in the interplay of sound and moving image? 

At 7:30pm attendees shuffle down narrow steps and descend into CORNER’s low-ceilinged basement. Everyone finds their seat and the lamps lining the walls are switched off one by one. After a short introduction from the founder, the programme begins. Part One of the screening drops you straight in with Adrian Florin Ardelean’s Rocketman a portrait film with a fast-paced rhythmic editing style that accompanies scribbly graphic layers and narration. Keeping the pace we move into the world of Gearstick Shifter by Alex Marshall. Filmed on Kodak Ektachrome Super 8 Film, this bitesized snack of a film sits at just about 40 seconds and leaves you thinking “I don’t know what that was but I enjoyed it”; a fairly typical response to a film that ends with a human-sized gear stick dancing erratically to a rock and roll drum beat. If Gearstick Shifter had just dropped the audience into absurdity then Sophie Ansell’s Requiem for a Bike follows by hitting point blank the absurdity of existing in a femme-presenting body on London’s streets and canals. This modern day fable told in a video essay style edit holds a voice and sense of humour that is refreshingly new and sweetly radical. At this point of the evening we move from high energy absurdity into contemplative abstraction with Jonathan Bower’s Steel Wool. Shot on iPhone and using a 9-volt battery to give the humble material of steel wool new life. The images are accompanied by an ominous buzzing that becomes increasingly unruly as the film progresses. A textural investigation of an everyday item that results in an enticing film with viscerally sinister undertones. On the subject of sound’s powerful effect, the film by Di Liang Cut& creates a soundscape worthy of ASMR brain tingles. The film - “a visual thesis on scissors as a metaphor for personal feelings of disconnection and doubt.” - builds scenarios atop a soundscape of satisfying kinetic paper and cutting sounds. The programme moves further into the experimental with Mandy Eugeniou’s KOMPROMAT which is made exclusively from creative commons material and explores the act of viewing. It is a destabilising film that holds a mirror up to the audience, challenging them to explore their subjectivity. And kittens, many kittens. We follow with another animal-themed film (though not quite the animals you’d be expecting) with Lee Campbell’s Slangbang, a poetry film about bears and cubs. In gay male slang, ‘bears’ and ‘cubs' refer to body shapes and age groups. Campbell’s poem skips through a playful reflection on the codification and categorisation of roles between gay men. Keeping with the spoken word element, the next film is an excerpt from Julian Konuk’s From the Ground with Love. Where Campbell’s poem dons a bouncier cadence, the piece featured in Konuk’s film is a waterfall of words spilling over each other to build a surreal picture of a trans-masc experience. Pivoting on the same axis we come on to Olivia du Vergier’s Space Chords. The film “examines the potential for a language of movement to help the body express what words often cannot” There is a scene featuring a triptych of silhouetted bodies swaying in unison that is hypnotising and we come to understand, if just for a moment, how repeated gestures can move us through emotions in a different kind of way. We close Part One with Gaps by Gabriella Cisneros a reflection on our response to body and time using text quotes and overlayed x-ray scans. An apt film to close Part One as we ponder the way in which our bodies moves through time and how we choose to fill it.

After the interval we are right back down at CORNER’s basement, seated and ready for Part Two of this evening of short films. Legs were stretched, toilets were used and compliments exchanged between the filmmakers we had the pleasure of joining us. We kick off softly with Reclaiming by Amrit Kaur Sanghera. A lush view of foliage overlayed with foliage, fragmenting into a textural wonder of the natural world as the narration invites us to interrogate our relationship with the land; with belonging and remembrance. In connection with reflecting on the notion of “source” we then come to Flora Cullerne Bown’s Poem of Mum. A cumulative video-poem made up of shaky phone footage and strung together by collected lines of poetry. The film feels deeply personal, a warm and sentimental capturing of memory. Sticking with the theme of memory, we watch Against by Sally Waterman. An image projected against a figure moving through a series of repetitive gestures, performed by the artist in response to Donna Mckevitt's score ‘Dance Against the Void'. The image, which we later learn is the artist’s late grandmother, takes on a new life, if at least a fragmented one, as the face appears to shifts and contort with the movement of the body. The programme moves us through from a study of body to a study of space with the next three films all concerned with the energetic personality of various spaces. A Poet is Dead by Mattia Biondi begins with a piercing ringing tone paired with footage of empty rooms. The ringing continues but as we move into rugged natural landscaped it is accompanied by the diegetic sounds of nature. Passengers by Alvin Tang is a film that gives life to lonely urban spaces. The spaces, predominantly shown in split screen, takes on its own character, it own respective life. The pairing of images allow the audience to examine the connections. How do we feel seeing the glow of a vending machine matched with the glow of a cross, both against the dark of a night sky, as ethereal voices sing? Signs by Clair Kinnen captures an urban landscape in blue-tinted, grainy film. The short film is paired with a poem filled with hope. After an exploration of space, we take a break with animation. After Images by Evan Bode & Mackenzie Duan gives us inky images that fill the screen and creates layers of vibrant colour as Duan youthfully recites her poem. Coming towards the end of the programme, Froth by Elia Djemil begins with a hazy focus on a figure flowing like the river in the backdrop and we enter a watery dreamscape of refracted light. And then me move into Boys by Celia Willis & Kane Husbands. The film is adapted from an award-winning stage show by The Pappyshow and sits between the lines of documentary, fiction and improvisation. There’s a heart-warming playfulness in Boys as we watch men of colour share in youthful love and care for each other. Our final film to close the night is Amor - The Tune of Love by Jijo Kuriakose Kurian. Keeping with that heart-warming feeling we got from Boys, Amor is a music video tenderly expressing a celebration of queer love as we watch through scenes displaying beautiful moments of intimacy between gay men.

MicroActs 16 ends with stories of love and mutual care - a sweet ending to conclude the night’s collection of short film. Audience members slowly file out of the basement, chairs are stacked, placed neatly back in place and the basement of CORNER coffee shop and art space is left waiting once again. We’ll be back with the next edition of MicroActs in the new year. Until then we have once again launched our open call and warmly invite you to submit or to share around.

MicroActs 16: An Evening in Review by Akinna Aquino, November 2023

© Photography by Sophie Myles (@sophie.m.sk)

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We hope you enjoyed our first review of a MicroActs event, please share and/or keep the conversation going by leaving a thank you comment to Akinna!

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OPEN CALL: MicroActs 17

We are excited to announce that we are now accepting submissions for MicroActs 17 - an evening of artist short film!

Celebrating artist filmmakers from around the globe & across genres, we aim to create an international spirit and champion empathetic creativity. We will be showcasing a selection of exciting & inspiring Artist Film from all over the world, at a live screening at the beginning of February in Central/South* London for a fantastic celebration of shorts!

We can’t wait to see what you’ve been creating, and look forward to another eclectic & expressive evening of film to start our 2024 season!

*Venue TBC

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Sending our very best wishes as always,

Liberty, Jhenelle, Akinna & Daragh,

The MicroActs Team

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We are a FREE EVENT, happy & proud to be, but donations are welcome if you'd like to support what we do. We are a small team, and any money goes directly into putting on these events/supporting the team for hard work and care. There's no obligation to donate and any donation is greatly appreciated- thank you!