OFF ON SELECTION
Watch Online
As of 2023, our festival adds the 'OFF ON' selection to the line-up. This special section is available for streaming only. Streaming on Whush.com from 25 May to 11 June 2023.
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NARRATIVE FILMS
PILLARS OF SALT (SINGAPORE) BY HILMAN HARIS HOR
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Synopsis: Having some time to himself at a secluded seashore, Luis re-lives moments from his day, struggling with the guilt of his affair with his married supervisor at work. Swirling thoughts repeat and memories fracture as he faces his unprocessed hurt from the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and begins the healing process towards living beyond it. Running time: 00:14:57.
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AMISSA ANIMA (AUSTRALIA) BY TATIANA DOROSHENKO
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Synopsis: Four boys survive on the seedy night streets of St Kilda’s red-light district in Australia in the 1980’s. Based on true events. (Adult themes.) Running time: 00:15:00.
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Selections/awards: Catalina FF, HollyShorts, Sedicicorto IFF, Bucharest Film Awards, Athens International Digital FF, and more.
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THE CALL (USA) BY RYAN JAFRI
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Synopsis: 1965. A small man in a big world works hard to close a deal, doing everything he can to please his boss. But the clock is ticking, and someone is out to get him. Running time: 00:13:36.
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Selections/awards: Oregon Short FF, Austin After Dark FF (Best Dark Drama), Ramsgate International Film and TV Fest, Peekskill FF (Best Cinematography), HorrOrigins FF (Best Actor), New York Shorts IFF, Sunscreen FF West, Berlin Indie FF (Best Thriller Film Best Actor, Best Director), and more.
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NO NEW WAVE (SINGAPORE) BY ZIWEI YAO
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Synopsis: In the metropolitan filled with expired dreams, Ginny tries to find her path via different ways of life, but none of them deliver her to a pier of desirable future. Gone are the days where being yourself is being special, she is nothing but a tiny grain engulfed by waves washing up the shore. Running time: 02:14:41.
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HOLESTEPPER (PERU) BY SERGIO FERNÁNDEZ MUÑOZ
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Synopsis: Angel (Oswaldo Salas), an enthusiastic high school teacher, discovers a website where his students make fun of him and his disability through some strange videos. Mixing reality and the adolescent digital universe, Angel will be involved in a world hitherto unknown. Running time: 00:17:26.
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DOCUMENTARY FILMS
BATUAN: INTERACTIVE (USA) BY ROBERT LEMELSON
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Synopsis: Batuan Interactive, is a multi-modal website intended to widen access to and provide an engagement with the Mead/Bateson collection of paintings and their legacy while amplifying the voices of Balinese painters and visually connecting the artwork to ongoing ethnographic explorations of Bali. We invite viewers to explore the visual, narrative, cultural, artistic, and personal or idiosyncratic elements of the paintings, connect them to content in other works of art, and compare them to present-day Balinese life. Running time: 00:00:53.
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THE EXTRA'S JOURNEY (TAIWAN) BY HSIN-YU WU
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Synopsis: Would you still be willing to try if you have a dream that no one thinks you can achieve? This is a Taiwanese story of struggles among dreams, reality and families. This documentary records Extra Actors of different genders, generations and backgrounds. Through their journeys, we see their struggle and challenges under cultural differences, the strength of little people and the difficulty for women in the industry, but they keep moving forward. Director Hsin-Yu Wu spends 6 years recording the journey of these extra actors with a humorous and relaxing rhythm. Running time: 01:30:10.
Selections/awards: Taipei International Labor FF (Best Feature Film).
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EXPERIMENTAL FILMS
RETARDATION (SWEDEN) BY NILS AGDLER
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Synopsis: The second short film in the Male Nature Studies series. “The Great Acceleration” gained momentum in the 1950s with the Western man at the wheel. The growth curves turned sharply upwards and so did, and still do, the human impact on the biosphere. But what if this man begins to see himself as a small part of nature instead of striving to "conquer" it? What if he abandons the pursuit of status and the ever-expanding claims to power? What if he slows down and throws his paralyzing yoke? Is he still a Man then? Nils Agdler visualizes ideas of another future man – the resigned man, the regressed man, the liberated man, and possibly – the last man. Running time: 00:04:45.
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Selections/awards: Japan IFF (Best No-dialogue Film), Berlin Flash FF, Naples Film Awards (Best Experimental Film), and more.
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KERATIN (UK) BY CHARLES JIMENEZ, SCARLETT WANG
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Synopsis: After a mating of elements, two bodies grieve over a lost third: a child separated from their womb. The three bodies regain connection in a wombic journey, bound by their keratin. This spiritually networks the three into an eternal fusion of a collective body Running time: 00:03:45.
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ATMOSPHERIC MARGINALIA (USA) BY ADAM E. STONE
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Synopsis: Equal parts poetic essay film and family folklore, Atmospheric Marginalia is an enchanting probe into a pair of star-crossed lovers and misfits, the continuing bonds theory of grief, and the existence of an afterlife. Steeped in the tradition of raw, no-budget guerrilla filmmaking, it was filmed entirely by hand on an unmodified iPhone 8 in 2020 and 2021, without the use of tripods, external lenses, lighting aids, etc. The film's free-flowing cycles of imagery feature unconventional palettes of unpeopled skyscapes and waterscapes that evoke, in rich and enigmatic detail, a world that often remains hidden in plain sight. Running time: 01:15:07.
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Selections/awards: Brussels Independent FF, Viewpoint Documentary FF, and more.
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CANDLE (UK) BY CHARLES JIMENEZ
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Synopsis: Confined to an endlessly burning waiting room, a dying sedentary woman experiences herself blurring between existences as she decays. In her last remaining fragments she tries to make amends with her spirit before her last frame. Running time: 00:06:55.
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A FUGUE (UK) BY CHARLES JIMENEZ
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Synopsis: In a melancholic half-alive dreamscape, a nameless and featureless sedentary body forgotten from time and space struggles to find the light to its path amongst an ever-expanding disorderly reverie. Running time: 00:11:00.
Selections/awards: Philadelphia Youth FF (Winner Experimental), Enimation Festival, Farnham FF, Dhaka International Youth FF, and more.
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