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You Are Still Somebody’s Someone (2017)
Esther Wellejus, 24 min, video
Synopsis:
In a dreamy realm of nature and with an abstract use of archival footage You Are Still Somebody’s Someone takes us on a journey of the sensing and discovery of memory of a now estranged relation.
Sombre images of summer twilight and 8mm archive film from years past frame the universe along with the sound recordings from the director’s childhood. The film tells the story of the director’s own father who broke off the contact with her many years ago. Like a child absorbed in tiny details of plants and leaves, we are watching as she’s creating her own world while experiencing her father engulfed in a newfound religious awakening.
The blurry paths of memory are revealing themselves like a painting of potent colours and unsettling shadows - unfolding the story of the religious father and his worsening mental condition as an increasing darkness.
The past weave itself in and out of the present along with the now adult daughter telling the story of her father’s evolving illness. We move between memory and an unpredictable reality. The film is desolated and deserted. We hear the sound of a voice. We sense the images and the emotions from the memories.
Artist Bio:
Esther Wellejus (b. 1977) MA in Film and Media Studies from the University of Copenhagen (2008) made her debut as the director of You Are Still Somebody’s Someone (Vi Lader Billedet Stå Et Øjeblik), world-premiering at CPH:DOX 2017, selected for the NEXT:WAVE competition for new talents challenging the observational documentary. You Are Still Somebody’s Someone celebrated its international premiere at Sheffield DocFest 2017 as a New Talent Award-nominee. The film was nominated for best national short at Odense International Film Festival 2017, selected for Open City Documentary Festival 2017 in London and the Astra Film Festival 2017 in Rumania, nominated for Best International Short Documentary and won Best Original Soundtrack at the Ekko Shortlist Awards 2017.
Esther has been giving artist talks with screenings of You Are Still Somebody's Someone at the opening of the Bacon, Freud and the London School-exhibition about existentialism and the vulnerable artistic mind at ARoS (Museum of contemporary art, Aarhus Denmark), and at Don't Fear The Weird-flm festival the Cinematheque in Copenhagen, and at the Danish Psychiatric Foundation autumn/winter 2017. In May 2017 she was a panelist at the DOK-day at the Danish Film Institute, discussing her work with the film under the headline of radical visuality. You Are Still Somebody's Someone was also selected for streaming at politiken.dk during CPH:DOX 2017 and cmore.dk during winter 2017.
As a film director she's affiliated with the production company made in Copenhagen with Mathilde Hvid Lippmann – the producer of You Are Still Somebody's Someone who's also producing her next film Hearts are only practical when they are unbreakable. She works as a speaker at the online news-site Zetland (zetland.dk) and has worked in concept-development of documentary formats for television at Koncern Film & TV (2017). In 2018 she's been accepted to the ANIDOX:LAB – a workshop at the Viborg School of Animation focussing on animated documentary.
Ikeru Hito (2018)
Akio Yuguchi, 20 min, video
Synopsis:
The blue forests of Aokage have got the blues. Only one child lives in the village, revealing the demographic imbalance in the community, and the legendary statue of the little buddha, silently but amiably, characterizes the dilemma about the future existence of Aokage. More about the project can be found here: http://aokage-project.com/.
Artist Bio:
Born in Hamamatsu, he graduated in English Literature at Meijigakuin University in 2009. In 2015 he received a master’s degree in Audiovisual Media from the Baltic Film Media School in Estonia. He currently lives and works in Vilnius.