INTERNATIONAL FOUND FOOTAGE COMPETITION Thursday 7 July, 21:00, Motorenhalle, Wachsbleichstraße 4a (backyard), 01067 Dresden

The winners of this year's International Found Footage Competition have been announced! Congratulations!

In cooperation with the Film Association of Saxony, the dresdner schmalfilmtage again awarded the prize for works that incorporate film heritage, i.e. found footage, into film. Whether the film clips used come from the archive, whether they are re-scores of existing material or new images to the original found footage soundtrack - there are no limits to the exploration of historical narrow film material.

The jury prize goes to Francesco Di Gioia with his film "Fathers' land." "The film gives us insight into a time in various ways. In doing so, he contrasts images against words. Representations and descriptions. We award the prize to "Fathers' land" by Francesco Di Gioia and would like to honor the responsibility he has taken as a filmmaker towards the material," said the jury: Isabel Apel (filmmaker, Dresden); Till Grahl (artistic director German Institute for Animated Film e.V.); Rasmus Gerlach (filmmaker, Hamburg) and Birgit Dunkel (artist and curator).

Furthermore, the audience could vote for their favorite on site. And chose Philipp Hartmann's film "Microphonie II . A journey with the VW Beetle across the Alps to Italy. With Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and the voices of PHØNIX16. A Super8 found footage film.

Also this year, for the third time, film enthusiasts who could not be present live at the Motorenhalle Dresden were able to follow the competition on demand and also select their favorites. The online audience award goes to Müge Yildiz "Palms". "A found 8mm film was burned during projection. The remains were restored instead of ending up in the trash and given a new narrative based on appropriation. The daydream of a lonely person becomes a film in which the remaining images are assembled. Each image attempts to make the timelessness of this dreamer palpable," according to the filmmaker herself.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

This program will also be streamed live online on facebook.

Nominees 2022 (OV):

Francesco Di Gioia - Fathers' land, 11:24 min, 35mm, 2021, Italy
1910s. Poems with alternate rhymes narrate a journey by sea and by rail. These are the verses of Fadil Hasin Ash-Shalmani who witness a historical fact often forgotten: the deportation of numerous civilians during the first years of the Italian occupation in Libya. The short film follows the poet's experiences and memories using only archive footage, thus subverting the original propaganda function of the images.

Philipp Hartmann - Microphonie II, 14:45 min, Super8, HD, 2021, Germany
Mit dem VW Käfer über die Alpen nach Italien. Mit Karl-Heinz Stockhausen und den Stimmen von PHØNIX16. Ein Super8-Found-Footage-Film.

Roger Horn - Holiday In The Sea Of Supremacy, 4:51 min, super 8, Germany
Upon completion of his PhD and relocation to Germany all that filmmaker Roger Horn wanted was a relaxing family holiday in Spain, but he quickly became consumed with troubling emotions while swimming in the site of countless migrant deaths, the Mediterranean Sea. To make matters worse a trip into Barcelona with his wife revealed a city plastered in banners demanding Catalonian independence, cash machines covered in protest slogans, and African migrant vendors constantly under threat from local police.

Kamila Kuc - Noonwraith Blues, 3:29 min, super 8, UK
Ominous 35mm cinegrams of Albrecht Dürer’s 1514 Melencolia print are intercut, like cascading scythes, with saturated super-8 film of a woman in a fresh-cut farm field, evoking repetitions that exist in harvest rituals, as well as in gestures of madness. Specters of familial anxieties creep into this loose take on the myth of Poludnica (noonwraith or Lady Midday), a Slavic harvest spirit that could cause madness in those who wandered the fields alone. The starting point for this subtle portrayal of the familial effects of transgenerational trauma is Erwin Panofsky’s Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (1955) in which he associates Dürer’s engravings with fear, withdrawal, depression and madness. In this pastoral horror, luscious landscape serves as the site of a woman’s idyllic childhood memories but ones that are disturbed by her ancestors’ experiences of wars and domestic violence. The interplay of the banal and the uncanny is highly suggestive as the film poses a question of whether the effects of trauma can reverberate down the generations through epigenetics?

Danila Lipatov - Overwhelming attraction, 7:39 min, found footage, HD, Germany
Based on Soviet technicolor melodramas from the 1950s the film recreates the macabre choreographies of poststalinism. Everybody is spying on everybody else. Nobody is sure anymore how their sweetheart looks like.

Edgar Pêra - Surgical Flicks, 10:00 min, super 8, 2021, Portugal
SURGICAL FLICKS is a film edited and soundtracked by Edgar Pêra, from images (Super 8) of Portugal in the second half of the 20th century, captured by Domingos Oliveira Santos, Emeritus Surgeon and undisclosed film maker.

Penny McCann & Eric Walker- Events in the Tunnel, 10:01 min, 8mm, super 8, 16mm, 2022, Canada
Drawn from Super 8 films in the artists’ personal archives as well as found amateur 8mm footage, Events in the Tunnel presents an absurdist abbreviated retelling of Canada’s colonial history as defined by that great colonial trope, the cross-country train trip. In the transitional void of a train tunnel, we witness familiar 19th and 20th century paradigms of white middle-class conformity as represented by images of travel, amusement, and domesticity, with Canadian culture embodied by a chimeric portrayal of the early 20th century painter Tom Thomson.

Ian Sexton – Wetlands, 0:49 min, 2022, U.S.
Wetlands is a short film that manipulates the playback speed and direction of the creature from
the black lagoon, condensing and distilling the entirety of the film underneath the opening
narration. What emerges from the depth is ultimately our collective demise.

Oliver Smith – TKO, 1:00 min, 2022, U.S.
TKO uses found footage of an Edison film from 1894. It shows a portion of the Leonard/Cushing boxing match. Added visual effects overlap and delay motions of the two men. A soundtrack was added to enhance the swirling dance created.

Kristin Reeves - What Is Nothing, 10:08 min, 16mm, 2021, U.S.
Using found educational films, direct laser animation, and nine-projectors, I attempt to realize the multifaceted materiality of nothingness through the eyes of those who may be the most vulnerable to the void.

Müge Yildiz – Palms, 3:00 min, super 8, 2022, Turkey
An 8mm found film was burned during projection. The remnants of the film found themselves in a digital scanning device instead of garbage. The found pieces, which were transferred to digital media one by one, square by frame, were brought together on the editing table. The fragile face of the analogue film, which emerged with time and storage conditions, was preserved and the faded film surface was coloured. This found footage has been turned into a 'post-production' film and set on a new narration based on the appropriation. The daydream of a lonely person is turned into a movie, with the remaining frames put together. Each image tries to make you feel the timelessness of this dreamer.