INTERNATIONAL FOUND FOOTAGE COMPETITION Thursday, March 20, 8:00 PM, Motorenhalle, Wachsbleichstraße 4a (Backyard), 01067 Dresden

The films presented in the Found Footage Competition from around the world creatively and innovatively repurpose discovered film materials. The charm of analog film aesthetics meets cutting-edge technology to create cinematic artworks. An international jury will select the award winners, while the audience gets to vote for their favorite as well. The Jury Prize and the Audience Prize for research work in archives are sponsored by the Film Association. Afterward, the filmmakers themselves will share insights into the films during a discussion session.

Congratulations to the winners of the Found Footage Competition 2025:

The jury prize of € 500 goes to Pere Ginard - SIGHTINGS (05:57 min, 2023, Spain).

And the audience award of €300 for research work and the jury's honorable mention went to Niccolò Beretti - IDEALISMO LEGLERIANO (16:00 min, 2023, Italy)

We would like to thank the sponsor of the Found Footage Competition

SAVE - Safeguarding the Audiovisual Heritage in Saxony is a joint program of the SLUB Dresden and the Saxony Film Association, it is financed by tax funds on the basis of the budget adopted by the Saxon State Parliament.

 

Jury: Lena-Ditte Nissen, Messaline Raverdy, Dominick Gray

The nominated films 2025 are:

Agustina Arrillaga Vodanovich, Anaïssa Ali Mogné-Mali – INSOUCIANCE 
0:55 min, 2023, super 8, Croatia
A found footage visual journey through a poem by Anaïssa Ali.

Dawn Westlake - FOR THE SKEPTICAL
03:14 min, 2022, United States 
Stop autocracy in its tracks. With facts.

Douglas Capron - UN NÒT KANKAN
06:00 min, 2024, Canada
This project is a music video for the original song "Un nòt kankan", the first single from the Louisiana Creole album "Mò kouzin, mò kouzinn" by Benoît LeBlanc. A collection of 27 historical pre-jazz songs featuring original Slave narratives, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and laments, that played an important role in the genesis of Americana musical heritage. Un nòt kankan (Another Gossip) was a popular song in New Orleans around 1906, according to Jelly Roll Morton.
This album is the result of several years of research in the very neglected corpus of the musical heritage of the slaves and free people of color of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This music has affinities with what was heard at the same time in Cuba, Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe. We know about field hollers but not about the satirical and rhythmic songs of the Creole slaves. Jazz historians almost always mention the mythical Congo Square when they talk about the genesis of jazz. You will hear on this album some songs that were sung in Congo Square during the first half of the 19th century in New Orleans...Not only is the existence of such a musical heritage largely unknown, most people don’t even know that the Creole language - called Kouri-Vini - is still spoken in Louisiana. This album is proof that Louisiana Creole is alive and well. And beautiful.

Filmgruppe Chaos - FRUITS OF THE NORM
04:28 min, 2024, Germany
Pictures from times when migrant workers were called "Gastarbeiter".

Jan Rehwinkel - HISTORY WILL TEACH US NOTHING
04:30 min, 2024, 16 mm, Germany
Hitler sings Jimi Hendrix‘ songs...
When I heard „Up from the skies“ again, I found it remarkable how topical this text from 1967 is and Sting‘s „History will teach us nothing“ (1987) came to mind - as well as the image that so-called evil is returning with the rise of right-wing populism.
In my movie, Hitler approaches Earth in a
spaceship ...
Using various AI voice generators, I had Hitler speak the lyrics of Jimi Hendrix.
A collage of animated cartoons, found footage,
hand-painted film material and artificial intelligence.

Jonathan Wysocki – INSTITUTION
03:00 min, 2023, super 8 mm, United States
In this experimental documentary, filmmaker Jonathan Wysocki interweaves personal and historical audiovisual elements to raise questions about the past, present, and future of American institutions. Visually, the film juxtaposes Super 8mm footage from two eras: Wysocki’s parents’ “traditional” straight wedding in 1970 and his own “non-traditional” queer marriage in 2018. Aurally, it combines 1970 audio from the Apollo 13 mission with a Republican Representative’s fervent opposition to the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. Through commentary and contradiction, the media amalgam contemplates the notion of “tradition” and “progress” within American institutions, which appear fixed to some but fluid to others.

Niccolò Beretti - IDEALISMO LEGLERIANO
16:00 min, 2023, Italy
1968. While Fredy Legler predicts “a 90% reduction of textile manpower”, his cotton mill patents an “anti-wrinkle” fabric that, once it leaves the factory, does not require an iron. If the “human variable” is ousted not only from production but also from consumption, nothing will stop the fabric-product from unfolding its animated phantasmagoria. Leglerian idealism is a palimpsest of 16mm corporate films, home movies, animated fabric
samples, internal documents and eighteenth-century engravings.

Pere Ginard – SIGHTINGS
05:57 min, 2023, Spain
An underwater walker advances heavily towards the unknown. What he sees, what he finds, makes up this inventory made of melancholy, obsessions and fears.

Philippe Leclert – BLOWN FRAGMENTS
06:53 min, 2024, 8 mm, super 8 and 16 mm, France
What have become of my friends?
That I had held so closely
And so loved
They were too sparse
I think the wind took them away.
(Rutebeuf, French poet, 1245-1285)

Robin Riad – SIX MONTH
01:48 min, 2023, 16 mm, Canada
“Six Months" (2023) is a critique of alcohol within a North American cultural context, through societal pressure and mass marketing. It challenges notions of perfection in maintaining sobriety and the stigma surrounding relapse. This project uses different types of alcohol in its developing process, as well as multiple in-camera exposures, transforming alcohol from an intoxicant to an artistic tool.

Sahand Sarhaddi – SLAUGHTER
07:20 min, 2023, Iran
"Slaughter/Besmel" is a short film that delves into the archival and historical footage of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, depicting a symbolic narrative surrounding the ritualistic act of animal sacrifice, known as "Besmel." It serves as an allegorical representation of a nation's sacrifice amidst the backdrop of political transformations.

Sara Bonaventura – QUADRATURA
03:26 min, 2024, 16 mm, Italy
Quadratura is the first 16mm film signed by Sara Bonaventura - for the album Quasai, by the sonic artist, performer and independent researcher Francesco Fonassi, composed at the EMS in Stockholm on Buchla 200 synthesizers, produced and mixed by Fonassi at IAC, Malmö and Spettro, Brescia and digitally mastered by Marta Salogni in London. Inspired by dark ecology and the Mandel'štam's poem of the voice over, the 16mm film evokes the loop of systemic predator-prey models, starting from microscopic beings - didinium and paramecium - passing through plankton, jellyfish, insects, fish, crustaceans and human apex predators. The found footage comes from a collection of educational films by the American Coronet, Ecological biology, an attempt to spread ecological thought at the end of the 70s. The director intervened analogically on the edited material, scratching the Darwinian parable highlighting its shadows that obscure the stars, and so the delicate balance of complex ecosystems. The piece bends the original meaning of the didactic video, with a bitter twist through the scratched montage and the poem of the voice over.