Labo Competition 1
The festival’s competition section focused on innovation, creativity, and experimentation presents films that boldly explore different approaches to filmmaking. From unexpected combinations of traditional methods with new technology to fresh takes on narrative and visuals, LABO combines the joy of discovery with a yearning to push the envelope.
Chinese artist Yuyan Wang’s Green Grey Black Brown is set in a world steeped in oil and shaped by techno-solutionist visions. Delving into Iran’s cinematic archives, Irish experimental filmmaker Maryam Tafakory’s Daria’s Night Flowers distills dozens of Persian-language films into a work dedicated to women constrained by the regime’s repression of forbidden love. The playful mathematical animation of German director Jon Frickey’s Ploo uses vectors to tell the story of undulating sine waves – or, if you like, y = A sin(Bx + C). American director and multimedia artist Dylan Pailes-Friedman’s thoughtful and stylistically complex Someone to Steal Horses With introduces us to an unusual protagonist, a retired racehorse who has just published an eponymous book. And the Austrian guerilla filmmakers of Total Refusal return to LABO with another of their artistic interventions into the world of computer games. Taking a different look at the concepts of victory and defeat, World at Stake presents us with vitally important games where everything counts.
A jury made up of prominent figures from the domestic art scene will name one of the ten submissions the festival’s Best Experimental Film. The award comes with a financial prize of 1,000 euros.
