We’ve emerged from under the pile of 2,400 entries to put together a series of screenings that showcase the best 86 new films from 41 countries around the world. They can be funny, dramatic, bizarre, subdued, scary or autobiographical. The one thing they have in common is that we think they’re the pick of the crop. 8 international competition programmes. Every technique, every genre, every style – this is your annual window into the international indie animation universe.
This programme is our annual survey of abstract and experimental animation. Animators working in this field employ every technique from hand-drawn ‘musical scores’ all the way across the scale to high definition, computer assisted image making. These 17 short films share a pure love of animated movement and an artist’s eye for filling the screen, harnessing colour and creating non-narrative imagery.
Inner Ray – Kazuhiko Kobayashi, Japan
The movement of light due to reflection, transmission, and refraction that occurs on the surface and inside of a diamond.
2023 2’55 min
Motus – Nelson Nogueira Fernandes, Portugal
A stop-motion animation where conception, degradation and regeneration cohabit in a unique way. A creation on a metal sheet using ethanol as the raw material.
2023 4’10 min
Happy Doom – Billy Roisz, Austria
A short, fast-paced audiovisual ode to the hypnotic power of colour and vertigo.
2023 3’15 min
Vision – Çağıl Harmandar, Japan
Eyes are magical spheres that make up dreams and retain memories. In our eyes, the visions of the within and of the beyond overlap. New worlds come to be when our gazes meet.
2023 7’20 min
Telia – Chun Yee Chen, Kam Tan Kwun & Jia Yi Zhang, Hong Kong
A lively world under a microscope where different microorganisms are born, mating and decaying.
2023 3’20 min
Silent Chirping of Invisible Digits – Vera Sebert, Austria
Like a single film frame, insects flash for the fraction of a second, only to immediately withdraw from the field of vision again.
2023 10’10 min
Beardiful Tone – Masashi Yamamoto, USA
A playful film made with the filmmakers real beard and moustache.
2022 1’30 min
The Artist in the Machine – Claudia Larcher, Austria
What happens when an AI is entrusted with the creation of art?
2022 3’25 min
Observatory – Wiesława Ruta, Poland
Light and colours are melting, transforming, pulsating. A play between abstraction and figurativeness, accompanying the music of Danish sound artist Sofie Birch.
2022 5’45 min
Makulatour – Tim Markgraf, Germany
Based on a four-to-the-floor beat and a wall of sound. A landscape full of motion and colour to offer a new perspective.
2022 5’50 min
Burnt Fox – Jaron Kuehmstedt, Lok Tung Kwan, Hiu Yin Tse & Shuxin Wang, Hong Kong
Sounds turn into abstract images creating a tightly connected audiovisual experience.
2023 3’10 min
Overheating – Jim Chung, Lizzy Bovee, Yuna Tang & Nathan Yeom, Hong Kong
A musically synchronised film that draws inspiration from the Portuguese word, “verão” (summer). Rising temperatures within a digital domain, yielding errors, crashes, glitches, and malfunctions.
2023 3’20 min
Deep Breath – Leonor Pacheco, Portugal
During the night a form tries to fall asleep. Struggling to maintain control, it gets trapped into vicious cycles of abstract madness, visually and audibly growing into a visceral and bizarre conflict between compression and decompression.
2022 4’05 min
Progress – Saule Matvienko, Russia
An attempt to see the past by looking at the present. The origin, growth and progress of the line in the painting by Paul Klee.
2022 1’45 min
‘Prototipo – Tina Frank & General Magic, Austria
A perception shifting audiovisual work exploding with saturated light, colour, movement and synaesthetic sound.
2023 4’15 min
O/S – Max Hattler, Hong Kong
Taking inspiration from 20th-century avant-garde experiments in graphical sound generation, the entire image in O/S functions as an optical soundtrack. Abstract motion becomes sound.
2023 4’45 min
Our Funding Partners
With Special Thanks to the Arts Council England
Event supported by Film Hub London, managed by Film London. Proud to be a partner of the BFI Film Audience Network, funded by the National Lottery.
Venue
Opened in March 2022, The Garden Cinema screens repertory seasons and new releases from around the world. Being truly independent, they choose films that are worth seeing, films you’d be happy to see more than once. Films of all genres that are true to life, well made, that left us feeling better or wiser for having seen them. For more information about The Garden Cinema and how to get there, find out more.
Online, The Garden Cinema
