Public Surfaces
Gillian Waldo, 2023, 12 min

In 1964, Baltimore passed a law stipulating that for any new building in the city, 1% of its construction budget had to go towards commissioning a new piece of public art. Open to interpretation and variably repurposed by the city’s residents, Public Surfaces revisits the resultant sculptures and installations. In dialogue with a wide cross-section of Baltimore residents, director Gillian Waldo’s questioning prompts intergenerational musings reflecting upon the project’s innovation and neglect, while her camera isolates the loops, curves and spirals that ornament their neighbourhoods, as part of one city’s historic “battle against urban ugliness.

Becoming Landscape
Eva Giolo, 2023, 20 min

A portrait of Fogo Island, off the Eastern coast of Canada. Giolo approaches the unique environment of the island – human, geological, floral – proposing an indivisibility between landscapes and the bodies that inhabit them. Shot in her distinctly frontal style, a series of 16mm tableaux hint to the relationship between observation and composition, between seeing and dreaming. As someone reads, “a landscape is a state of mind”, or more accurately a “state of mind is a landscape.

In Praise of Slowness
Hicham Gardaf, 2023, 17 min

In Praise of Slowness is Hicham Gardaf’s alluring study of Moroccan street hawkers, as they roam Tangier’s streets and hills to dilute, bottle, and sell bleach. Capturing their startling, bulbous silhouettes and distinct, acerbic cries announcing goods for sale, In Praise of Slowness hones in on the methodic rituals of a slow and humble trade, and the domestic labour it enables. In revisiting a childhood memory – a once ubiquitous livelihood is now under threat by mass industrialisation – the dreamlike reverence of infancy imbues the film’s imagery, lending its mundane subject matter an otherworldly texture. Yet, in his exploration of the gentle, dedicated pacing of unautomated and resourceful labour practices, Gardaf is sparing with his rich visuals, playing with absence of image to explore sensory intuition and interdependency, exploring how sight and hearing intersect to form an understanding of one’s place within a given environment.

Slow Shift
Shambhavi Kaul, 2023, 9 min

Geological, animal and human timescales flow across one another in Kaul’s portrayal of Hampi, the site of a 14th century city in central India. The ruins continue their gradual decay and the precarious formations of boulders, no longer able to hold, topple precipitously, all overseen by the native langur monkeys who have come to inhabit the world heritage site. In turns clambering across the ancient rock formations and languidly reflecting on the landscape, Hampi’s primate custodians playfully guide the film through multiple pasts, be they real or mythic, natural or human.

Followed by Q&A with the filmmakers.

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With the generous support of The Delegation of Flanders (Embassy of Belgium) to the UK and Ireland

Presented as part of Open City Documentary Festival