12/07/2023 - Cinema of action: An overview of the experimental works programmed at Fest Anča, focusing on works from Estonia, Switzerland, Korea and Japan

From perceptions of the genre only appealing to a niche audience to its essentially elusive nature, abstract and non-narrative cinema can be one of the most difficult sections to programme for a festival. But while many other such events might struggle with such a challenging objective, Fest Anča has succeeded by scheduling a single, stand-alone, tightly curated section which proved a real audience favourite.

Gate (2022) by Estonia-based Italian director Francesco Rosso combines deserts with Middle Eastern aesthetics and futuristic visuals to produce an effect much like travelling through time and space. One sequence involves a character shown in a seated position and presented in silhouette form, of whom we see multiple, echoing, side-by-side versions against a fully abstract background, compositionally reminiscent of David Byrne’s dancing in Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” video. The work’s skilful usage of choppy and looped audio further enhances the overall experience.

Swiss director Adrian Flury’s Arrest in Flight (2021) flies us over a cityscape using a unique combination of 2D animation, stop-motion, and even live-action characters, where neon colours and blurred actions are in the spotlight. Described by Flury as an experiment in “transferring movement to alien objects”, the film comprises sequences which range from depicting a chair caught mid-air while being thrown away, to a person tumbling down a staircase.

Other segments feature 2D animation, and backgrounds which bear the influence of minimalism, leading the audience to fully focus on the looped actions in the foreground. The final sequences where several people are shown mid-action, accompanied by rather “otherworldly” background music, are particularly effective.

Korean director Ok Seyoung’s Overlapping Universe (2022) breaks down the boundaries between dimensions. Featuring various ordinary objects which are animated within acrylic boxes during the first half of the movie, the camera suddenly zooms out during the second half and the mechanism used for displaying these containers is revealed to us. A spinning device is closely observed by someone in what seems to be an empty gallery. The alienation of quotidian items — and thus, by extension, daily-life activities — is elegantly depicted by means of short, looping animations.

Continuing with this theme of daily life, Estonia-based Sophia Bazelgette uses photos and videos from her personal archive to explore memory in Recents (2022). Bazelgette deploys printed versions of individual frames from her videos to re-animate her recorded memories, but this results in the frames decaying every time she does so. Some sequences feature multiple video-segments played simultaneously: one of these typically features an environment, such as a forest, while the other features a person. The process of decay is accompanied by disorienting sound effects, as if we are witnessing, or maybe even experiencing, memory loss.

Finally, the audience’s ultimate favourite within the section was RotAte Shika (2021) by Japan-based Chinese filmmaker Sijia Luo. Based on an imaginative interpretation of a chapter from James Joyce's novel Ulysses (the eleventh section, sometimes known as "Sirens"), the film transports us into a mechanical world using both sight and sound. The Ulysses chapter is read aloud by a computer-generated text-to-speech program. Luo uses her own pictures to form a rudimentary animation where the only action consists of spinning in different environments, including a park and a room.

The film places great emphasis on the various instances of onomatopoeia featured in the original text, where Luo tries to imitate sounds by varying the speed and number of her spins. Additional sound effects help the filmmaker to fully engage her audience. At the Fest Anča screening, the viewers' response to sudden onomatopoeia such as “Clap!” and “Slap!” was especially lively. Amused laughter accompanied the entire film, which eventually received an ecstatic ovation.

The film’s Japanese title Kaisen Shika is also worth a side note: "Kaisen" not only means to rotate but also to have room for manoeuvre. "Shika" means song lyrics. This secondary title further shows how the director wishes to explore and reinterpret her chosen text sensitively.

The Contemporary Abstract and Non-Narrative Animation section was the only one to focus exclusively on experimental works. This line-up allowed Fest Anča to accomplish the tricky task of creating an engaging selection of films from all over the world.

Ultimately, the section consisted of a group of films in which repetitive actions are highlighted as a form of thought-exercise, and this almost creates a narrative in and of itself. The selection might have been called “non-narrative”, but some of the films do cover similar themes and topics, and watching them back-to-back raises the question of whether there might be some sort of hidden story or narrative arc hiding within the programme…