Our Introducing… slot is a space for discovery and collaboration at Screening Days. With it, we aim to bring you films beyond the release calendar that you may not yet be aware of, but which may connect you to new audiences in your communities.
We’re delighted to present the short films in this edition, selected by curator Naomi Gessesse: The Limits of Looping, directed by Ishwari Bhalerao and Leonie Rousham; The Medallion, directed by Ruth Hunduma; Braiding, directed by Gianni Esporas; The Key, directed by Theo Panagopoulos; and Pouring Water on Troubled Oil, directed by Nariman Massoumi. Scroll down for details.
The Introducing… shorts will be available to watch singly or together on our online platform at Autumn Screening Days, as well as screening in-person at Broadway in Nottingham.
With many thanks to all the filmmakers and curator Naomi Gessesse
The films
The Limits of Looping
Dir: Ishwari Bhalerao & Leonie Rousham (Kneed) | UK | 2020 | 4 mins
A critical view of a piece of British landscape, an attempt at document and an attempt at testimony. Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre is shown in flickering fragments, while two voices probe and provoke. The camera shows the compound from a distance, where a banal landscape foregrounds the horrors and indignities that occur within the buildings.
Booking enquiries to Leonie Rousham.
The Medallion
Dir: Ruth Hunduma | UK | 2023 | 19 mins
The Medallion is as expressive as it is informative; a documentary with elements of poetic spoken word, archival news and home video footage that illustrates the shadow of war and trauma on one family and the filmmaker’s own place in the legacy of this pain.
Tsehay and her family’s story is the root of The Medallion, through which the wider socio-political context of Ethiopia’s Red Terror is elaborated. This testimony guides the viewer through a harrowing part of history that is poorly understood by many outside of the country; it is a frank and generous contribution to survivors of the war.
Booking enquiries to Tolu Stedford & Lily Usher.
Braiding
Dir: Gianni Esporas | UK | 2023 | 11 mins
Braiding is a percussive exploration of colonialism in the context of the American occupation of the Philippines. Labour, industry, national and cultural identity are interrogated through edited archival footage and expressive sound design.
Booking enquiries to Gianni Esporas.
The Key
Dir: Theo Panagopoulos | UK | 2023 | 13 mins
The Key explores memory and grief. After the death of her father, Linda is forced to retrace her memories of her relationship with him, and by extension, her Palestinian heritage. Panagopoulos gestures at a deep grief simmering within the subtext of the conversations between father and daughter.
Booking enquiries to Theo Panagopoulos.
Pouring Water on Troubled Oil
Dir: Nariman Massoumi | UK | 2023 | 26 mins
A poetic documentary following Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s journey through Iran in 1951 on a film assignment for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Combining original archival images with Thomas’s lyrical reflections (performed in voiceover by Michael Sheen), this film captures Thomas’s haunting vision of oil and modernity in 1950s Iran, as a political upheaval for oil nationalisation unfolds.
Booking enquiries to Nariman Massoumi.
Part of ICO Autumn Screening Days 2024
Also screening:
Architecton (in-person & online)
Bring Them Down (in-person & online)
The Brutalist (in-person only)
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (in-person & online)