Talking Shorts

The Camera As a Weapon: Shorts of Babylon’13

For more than a decade, Babylon’13 has been documenting the war in Ukraine. In over five hundred films, the association of documentary filmmakers has adapted the camera to act as a weapon. Their work achieves the purest form of documentary cinema as a creative treatment of current events, according to John Grierson's infamous definition.

Films Retrospective

The House is Black

Poetics of Empathy

Review by Laura Stoeckler

Set in an Iranian leper colony, Forugh Farrokhzad’s The House is Black paints an intimate portrayal of human existence under the weight of marginalisation.

Talks Interviews

Affectionate Counter-Narratives

Interview with Elahe Esmaili by Savina Petkova

Just a couple of days after images of Iranian doctoral student Ahou Daryaei became a viral symbol of resistance against Iran’s strict hijab laws, we talked to Elahe Esmaili about her short documentary A Move, in which she refuses to wear a hijab.

Films On The Circuit

Man Number 4

Digital Witnesses

Review by Patrick Gamble

Gaza, December 2023. A confrontation with a disturbing photograph on social media triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker in Miranda Pennell’s concise desktop documentary.

Reads Notes

Memory in Textures

Essay by Eneos Çarka

Certain films call to action our entire sensory sytem: the moving image is not only seen but heard and felt too. In shorts by Neritan Zinxhiria, Slava Doytcheva, Norika Sefa and Ana Hušman, layered textures of memory are tactically explored.

Discussions

Working with partner festivals, we organise panel talks, keynotes, and other formats to foster discussions. Recordings are published here to continue the conversation online.