The MicroActs Newsletter: December 2024 Edition
Wishing you all a Happy Holiday season! Join us for a roundup & photos from our last screening, our recommendation section and the final few days of our open call!
Hello there from all of us here at the MicroActs team! We hope you are having a wonderful festive break, whether celebrating the changing of the seasons or honouring a spiritual holiday; we hope you are safe, well & surrounded by merry-making! Thank you to global MicroActs artist/filmmaker community for making 2024 a fantastic year and for sharing your work with our free Artist Film screening events. It has truly been wonderful to show your films to such creative & curious audiences and we are very excited for what 2025 will bring.
We showed 50 films this year from 15 countries, including: Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, the UK & USA! Thank you so much for being part of our MicroActs community!
MicroActs 19 - An Evening Roundup with Photos
It was a blustery night on Thursday 26th September, but we were all cosy by candlelight at Little Louie in central south London’s Elephant & Castle, for an intimate evening of 15 experimental short films from Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, the UK & USA. We opened the first half with Phil Hastings’s evocative ‘I Dreamed of Things Forbidden and was Afraid’ (5mins 40sec, USA), drawing the audience into a mysterious mediation to leave the cold night outside behind. This film was followed by the punchy analogue micro short ‘This Is How I Felt’ by Josh Weissbach (1min 35sec, USA) and first-person performance film ‘My Funeral’ by Agnes Zhang (6mins 22sec, China), both exploring existential anxieties in contrasting but complimentary mediums. We transitioned into Eeva Siivonen’s ‘ex vivo’ (6mins 7sec, Finland/Canada), a mesmeric collage work exploring human connection & loss, which was followed by ‘Carry On’ by Megan Young (3mins 40sec, USA), an innovative film using 3D scanning technology to delve into family connections. The web-like interweaving of ‘Carry On’ spoke to the next film ‘Thread’ by Stella Brajterman (6mins, Brazil), an experimental re-telling of the Greek myth of Ariadne & the ‘thread’ of memory. Closing out this half was the charming multidisciplinary animation ‘Flickering Light (Peeli Batti)’ by Jahnavi Misra & Apoorva Mundoor (2mins 46sec, UK), exploring loneliness & longing within an abstracted domestic setting. We then took intermission, a chance to grab a top-up on our frozen Margaritas and chat about the films so far- ready for another unique selection in the second half!
With all of us back in our seats, we opened the second half with Jack Catling’s hilarious ‘Blue Chair’ (2mins 51sec, UK), a short that follows a chair’s journey across a frozen lake & across our screen. In keeping with this playful tone, this film was followed by ‘Blue is the Night’ by Mikael Trench (3mins 38sec, USA), a wonderful claymation serenade from the heartsick moon. We then had Lorenza De Benedictis’s hand-drawn animation ‘Scatter Brain (Cabeza de Chorlito)’ (1min 10sec, Canada) inspired by automatic drawing for wellbeing, before we met ‘12 Lemons: Further Adventures from the Gig Economy’ by Beth Fox (6mins 27sec, UK), a tongue-in-cheek personal account of the struggle of trying to survive in an economically inaccessible city like London. This film’s theme was complimented by the next piece, a monologue performance called ‘Sam's Interview’ by Funkẹ Alafiatayọ (4mins 6sec, UK), a hard-hitting but vulnerable exploration of the dehumanising effect of capitalism, inspired by the lived experience of the film’s writer Janine Lanek. Following this, we had Prajvi Mandhani’s digital collage film ‘Endlessly Hungry’ (3mins 5sec, UK), using archival media in a claustrophobic abstraction of violence to create a feeling of alienation. Lauren Marie Dake’s ‘Black Hills’ (6mins 5sec, USA) then continued our collage film journey, this time using analogue found footage filmed in South Dakota’s Black Hills, creating an experimental exploration of personal memory and the grief of witnessing a loved one’s mental & physical decline. Wishing to end the screening on a note of hope, our time in nature took us to Zillah Bowes’s ‘Allowed’ (3mins 45sec, UK), a gentle love letter to plants in urban environments, their ability to exist & grow, to find a crack in the concrete and seek out the sun. The filmmakers of MicroActs 19 took us on complex journey, from stories that shared the filmmakers’ personal struggles with loss & the overwhelming nature of modern life, to experimental inner meditations in both digital & analogue forms, to celebrating the small joys that keep us going. It was an absolute pleasure to curate the films and showcase these fantastic shorts!
Thank you so much to all of the artist/filmmakers who shared their work with us at this screening; it was fantastic to be able to meet a few of the filmmakers at the screening, and we are especially grateful that you ventured out to join us during such tempestuous weather! A big thank you as well to Sophie Myles for, once again, taking such gorgeous photographs of the evening; you can follow Sophie’s work on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/sophie.m.sk
Another huge thank you to the team at Little Louie in Elephant Park (London, UK) for being so welcoming and hosting us for MicroActs 19! Find out more about the space here: https://littlelouie.london/about/
MicroActs Recommends
Our recommendation section is back with some more favourite finds for our December edition, bringing you a selection of cinematic gems we hope you enjoy!
Akinna:
Screening at an International Competition programme at this year’s Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Adrian Flury’s Panic In Nowhere might just be a semi-fictional hellscape for the eco-anxious - and yet I would not hesitate to recommend it.
In Panic in Nowhere, Flury blends fiction, documentary, and experimental styles to dive into a surreal sense of time slipping away and the growing worries about our planet’s future. The film weaves together a captivating mix of online video clips, creating an atmosphere of looming collapse and shared destiny. Sitting in the cinema I felt as if I was set on a conveyor belt - setting off at the eerie feeling of a world on the edge, taken through to the sublime mixture of awe and fear during an adrenaline-fuelled collapse, before landing at the numbness of a lost civilization.
Panic In Nowhere is a film that feels both stretched and rushed, leaving viewers to reflect on our deep connection with nature and the uncertainties ahead. Leaving the cinema I had a vague sense that I’ve been left with this feeling before. I turned to my friend and said “That whole film felt like one of my nightly doom-scroll sessions”.
Liberty:
My recommended offering is a humble comfort film to hopefully give you a 90 minute breather in a year of uncertainty & anxiety. This film has been a double watch for me this year as I couldn’t help but be absolutely charmed by this small but perfectly formed British comedy. Set in a tiny Welsh village, ‘Brian & Charles’ (directed by Jim Archer, 2022) tells the story of a kind, kooky & isolated inventor Brian and his build-your-own-friend Charles, a makeshift robot. It’s a simple story of friendship, eccentric folks & small communities, with a gentle magical realism that feels both quirky & cosy. With a wonderful balance of slapstick humour & nicely observed rural dynamics, David Earl’s characters have you rooting for them to find their happiness. Without giving too much away, expect stone cottages on the rugged hills of North Wales, heartwarming mockumentry moments & an ingenious use of a washing machine!
Check out the trailer here:
OPEN CALL: last few days to submit your films for MicroActs 20!
We’ll be back for another exciting edition happening on Valentine’s Day 2025, and our open call is accepting submissions up till the end of the year! Click the button below to head to FilmFreeway to submit your work, and keep your eyes on our social media for updates about the event. We’re looking forward to seeing your work and seeing you again in the New Year!
DEADLINE: 31st DECEMBER 2024
Wishing you all a wonderful festive season, we can’t wait to see you in 2025!
Our very best wishes as always,
Liberty, Jhenelle & Akinna
The MicroActs Team
