The Forest

The Minibike Ride Says Karen Treanor of the film: “The Minibike Ride” is Jim Jennings’ oldest extant film, shot when he was a student at Oakwood Friends’ School. For years, it was shown at Danbury High School (CT), until the print of it disappeared". Also screened shortly after completion for members of the avant-garde clique-- the film was called 'intriguing' by Nathaniel Dorsky.

Refraction “In “Refraction,’ the camera is set so that the leaves of a large tree fill the frame. Green ordinary leaves which move in their baroque ways under the wind. In a sense it is shocking to put on film such ordinary things, things which could be so easy to dismiss. Yet this undemanding, pleasant image hides something. The image IS of what one hypnotically stares at in forgotten moments, amd from which one wakes, when shapes make themselves up in it. These furtive possibilities confront the delimiting, all-eyes-cinema. The intimate sensation is made to bear on the public circumstances of film, provoking new readings of the moving leaves. As the image presses its quiet offerings on the viewer, a subtle interaction occurs between changes of speed in the camera and wind as they, in different ways, accentuate or diminish the speed of the fluttering leaves."

Silenced A poetic tableau of village life surrounding the Morning Calm Monastery in Luang Prabang, Laos. Cho manipulates time within fixed frames, creating stunning time-lapse landscape shots and evocative slow-motion images. The monks' vibrant robes are seen in relation to the everyday life around them -- local children, motorists, passersby. The relative motion of these interacting parts is emphasized by color, creating a visually minimal but emotionally complex portrait of a place.

Leaving Home Ten years ago Keisuke went to Tokyo to become a musician. He receives a call from his far off hometown informing him of the funeral for his older brother who went missing while fishing at sea. Having lied he achieved success in Tokyo, Keisuke is hesitant but nevertheless returns home. Gathered at his parent's house are his father who lives alone; his brother's ex-wife; Hiroshi, a classmate who was the last to see his brother; and Hiroshi's younger sister Nagi who bears a limp.

MonsterDyk... Last year, Kaye Adelaide and Mariel Sharp won Best Canadian short for their incisive and charming short comedy, DON’T TEXT BACK. This year they're back with the gritty and erotic monster love story MONSTER DYKE. A transgressive portrait of desire shot on 16mm, MONSTER DYKE examines trans-lesbian love and longing with humour, heat, puppetry and a subversive twist. – Justine Smith

Snap Snap is a taut, minimalist work that explores the aesthetics of digital video production. Fingers and hands in close-up move fast, then slowly, to a soundtrack of stylized clicks and snaps, while intermittent flares of color burn through the original black and white footage. Snap pushes figure and sound toward abstraction in an inventive, considered, and pleasurable exploration of moving image technology.

The Sound of Grass Kudo Kazuo is a man diagnosed with psychataxia. As he cannot work and he only goes out for his follow-ups, Kazuo begins running every day as part of his psychiatric treatment and changes gradually thanks to the people he meets.

Skeleton Flowers High school student, Yo, lived with her father, Nao, after her mother, Sachiyo, left the family when she was very young. However, their life together came to an end and they started a new life as a family of four with her father's second marriage partner, Miko, and her stepdaughter, four-year-old Hinata. She confides in Riku, who belongs to the same art club as Yo, about her confusion about this new life. Yo, who has been developing curiosity for her biological mother, Sachiyo, promises to go with Riku to Sachiyo's art exhibition.

Unconcerned Seoungho Cho writes: "This work is based on an attempt to psychologically document my routine but unconscious line of questioning as to if I were a nonbeliever. At one of the holiest places in the world, the birthplace of the Buddha, Rumbini in Nepal, I find apathy in the tension between my perception of the religion and culturally ingrained responses to my psychological state. I became aware of the ephemeralness.

Uno dopo l'altro A man drives off in a car with a girl: it is only the beginning of a story that touches the deepest sensitivity and pushes us to look inside.