Grrl Haus Cinema: NeuroCinema
Run Time: 90 min.
NeuroCinema : Shorts by neurodiverse artists or exploring neurodiversity
All films are presented in English or in their original language with English subtitles
Camille à corps perdu
Alice Dontenwille
Paris, July 1892. After her breakup with Auguste Rodin, sculptor Camille Claudel lives isolated in her workshop. One night, as her grief becomes spite then hatred, Camille’s sculptures come alive and drag her into a hellish dance – to unleash her from Rodin’s poisoned stranglehold, or to bring her to the brink of madness?
Alice Dontenwille is a young filmmaker and editor from France. Devourer of horrific and supernatural films of any kind, Alice is infatuated with the themes of reality distortion, monstrosity, onirism and violence, imbuing her world along with dance and the notion of materiality, which she gets from her visual arts background. ‘Camille à corps perdu’ is her directorial debut.
Rabbit
Jessica Mackie-Hunter and David Kreibich
Willow is young, ambitious, and knows what she wants – but it isn’t going to come cheap. Working multiple jobs and taking on extra shifts, Willow doggedly saves every penny. As different men cross her path, they try in their own ways to woo her and draw her into their worlds. But despite their charms and good-looks, Willow finds herself disconnected and withdrawing from their advances. To her eyes, they are a slate of well-meaning caricatures, and Willow is searching for something beyond the realm of what men have to offer. When Willow hits her savings target, she places the order and waitazs eagerly for package to arrive. And at last – the moment she’s been waiting for! The package arrives, and Willow unwraps it, revealing the fantastical, out-of-this-world sex toy of her dreams!
Jessica Mackie Hunter is a queer Czech/Scottish writer/director based in London. With a focus on historically marginalized groups, her films explore community, identity, escapism, and disobedience through the lens of LGBTQIA+ folk, neurodivergence, and immigrant experience. ‘Rabbit’ is her directorial debut. Her work was selected for Messy Collective’s Overexposed: Live Read, International ELBE DOCK Film Festival’s Film Inn Story Editing Workshop, Boosting Impact Emerging Writers programme and Torino Film Lab Extended – Film 2024.
David is a Czech filmmaker and photographer based in London. Much of his experience stems from creating music videos, visualizers, and narrative short films. His experimental approach to work with new technologies drives him to continuously seek innovative workflows and fresh aesthetics. As a filmmaker, David Kreibich has collaborated with artists like Georgia Cecile, ilselena and Yasha 96. Throughout his work, he has been mostly focused on music videos and short documentaries, while gathering experience as a camera assistant along the way.
Planet Abundance
Emma Bowen
This short film documents a series of artist-led local workshops, which took place at Category Is Books. Participants were encouraged to collectively imagine a world led by women, where Earthlings had adopted a feminist abundance mind-set. In a shared vision of post-work society, they explored moving beyond scarcity to collectively organise planetary and people care through feminist economic principles. The Planet Abundance project took Teresa Feldmann’s draft text for a feminist science fiction as a starting point for collaboratively imagining a world beyond capitalism, using speculative science fiction as a vehicle for radical political imagination. Planet Abundance workshops were led by Elaine Gallacher and Allie Rutherford for Feminist Exchange Network. The work was commissioned by Feminist Exchange Network (Glasgow) and curated by artistic director – Ailie Rutherford.
Emma is an artist filmmaker based in Scotland. She makes DIY short form observational documentaries and experimental films with artists, musicians and non-profit organisations. Emma works empathetically and with a person-centred approach. Recent screenings & collections include; Hens on Film – Leith Late, Glasgow Zine Fest, LUX – London, Oodaaq Festival – France, SQIFF Opening Night at Glasgow Film Theatre and Radical Film Network, UK.
Endocast: A Non-Linear Memoir
Efrem Hawk
“An endocast is the internal cast of a hollow object, often referring to the cranial vault in the study of brain development in humans and other organisms. Endocasts can be artificially made for examining the properties of a hollow, inaccessible space, or they may occur naturally through fossilization.” (Wikipedia)
A video memoir made up of personal cellphone videos and photos, photographs, postcards, letters, handy cam footage, and other ephemera of the artist. Inspired by the artist’s experience living with short-term-memory-loss the narrative of the film is fragmented, and slightly degraded. Its up to the viewer to put the pieces together. The memoir captures the pain and chaos of a person’s coming into being as queer and trans, and documents the process of escaping an abusive living situation. Stream of consciousness dialog is read by Gwyneth A.I. from Speechify. Music composed by the artist.
Efrem Hawk is an artist based in Brooklyn NY. They experiment with sound, create music, and other multimedia projects. They explore trauma, pain, and love within their practice.
Gillyfish
Sarah Sellman
When Gillian’s girlfriend, Lana, reveals that she was abandoned by her father as a child, Gillian offers to drive her across the country to confront him. When the two women arrive, Lana finds herself unable to engage with the past, and deserts Gillian – who chooses to confront Lana’s father alone, claiming to be his daughter. Invited to stay, Gillian connects with Max, Lana’s half-brother (6), exploring the nuances of his autism. She juggles the expectations of Rose and David with surprising ease, but the tension of her secret lingers. Gillian by proxy, works through her own healing. After a heated encounter, Lana’s parents explain to Gillian that Lana left just over two years ago, not the ten she told Gillian. They’ve known she wasn’t Lana the whole time, and they thought hosting Gillian might bring them closer to finding Lana. Gillian thanks them, apologizes, and leaves, returning reborn.
Sarah is a queer, neurodivergent writer + director (pronouns- they, them) who uses genre narratives to explore the role of myth in distorting and healing personal and generational trauma. Born and raised in the agricultural community of Alamosa, Colorado, Sarah graduated from NYU’s Tisch, where they also studied Neuroscience and Ancient Religion. In television, Sarah worked as a Writer’s Assistant on Netflix’s BLACK SUMMER, for which they also wrote an episode. They have previously worked on shows at SyFy, Netflix and Amazon (Z-NATION, LORE). Sarah’s magically real pilot – COTTONWOOD – was selected as Series Fest’s Writer’s Initiative’s Grand Prize Winner, presented at IFP’s Project Forum, featured in Deadline as a top un-produced pilot for 2020’s WeForShe List, and is currently in development with Brad Silberling (JANE THE VIRGIN, CHARMED). On the film side, their feature documentary – American Bear: An Adventure in the Kindness of Strangers – screened theatrically across the United States, and can be found online at Amazon, iTunes, and Hulu. Sarah’s short narrative – Hold Your Arms Out – was offered a fellowship at Hewlett-Packard’s inaugural post-production program at Sundance Film Festival, and screened at festivals across the country in 2018. Sarah’s work has been supported by IFP, Women In Film, Series Fest, The Stowe Story Labs, Cinestory, CDDP, Austin Film Festival and more. They are a founding member of THIRD SPACE artist’s collective — a group of artist-activist-witches working to bring about a new America.
Two One Two
Shira Avni
Two One Two combines shimmering clay on glass animation with personal archives in this deeply intimate, experimental animated documentary love letter to motherhood, parenting on the spectrum, and two headed monsters everywhere. Award-winning animation filmmaker Shira Avni continues her deeply personal animated documentary journey to explore motherhood, fragmentation, neurodiversity, trauma, and healing through the infinitely laborious, handcrafted frame-by-frame filmmaking process. Two-One-Two mixes archival video, sound recordings, experimental, shimmering clay on glass, under-camera, and rotoscoping animation in this intimate, experimental animated documentary love letter to motherhood, parenting on the spectrum, and two headed monsters everywhere.
Shira Avni (MFA SAIC, 2003) is an animation filmmaker and Associate Professor of Film Animation at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Her animated documentary films (John and Michael, Tying Your Own Shoes, and Petra’s Poem), in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada, garnered over 30 international awards, including the prestigious DOK Leipzig Golden Dove and the NHK Japan Prize, and screened in over 120 festivals worldwide. Avni’s recent film Two One Two (2023) has won 18 international awards and 11 nominations to date, including the Special Jury Prize at the Sommets du Cinéma d’animation, Best Animated Short Film at the Berlin Short Film Festival, the Nonviolence Award at Ann Arbor, Best Documentary Microshort at Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation and Technology, with over 135 film festival screenings worldwide. She is the proud recipient of a 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award at Concordia University. Her current research weaves documentary, animation, and personal memoir to address neurodiversity, identity, social justice, motherhood, and interdependence through luminous clay-on-glass animation, back-lit to create the shimmering effect of stained glass in motion.
Talking Heads
Nicole Overbaugh
Talking Heads is a narrative short that follows new roommates, Arthur and Corey, as they settle into their new apartment. Arthur introduces Corey to his best friend, Melvin, who takes the form of a mannequin head. Corey’s obvious discomfort fuels a fight with Arthur later that evening. Arthur stands up for Melvin and later leaves him with Corey, so they can reconcile their differences. By the next morning, amends have been made and the three share breakfast together.
Nicole Overbaugh is a young storyteller based out of Western Massachusetts, with credits that span from theater, to film, to photography. They are drawn to awkwardness and discomfort, and in turn, seek to create work that makes audiences feel as such. Overbaugh centers their work around non-traditional intimacy and the domestic sphere, creating stories that contain two occupants to one space. Their work has shown in galleries and festivals across Massachusetts. They received a B.A. in Screen Studies from Clark University in Worcester, MA, USA.
Dear Ceiling
Sarah Legow
A love letter from the floor to the ceiling spelled out in silent, stop-motion text, “Dear Ceiling” takes as its starting point the rejection of a human-centered vision of the world. The two inanimate ‘characters’ of the piece are granted their own interiority, with their own wants, needs, and points of view. The text of the piece reads, in full, “What if the floor were in love with the ceiling? Ceiling is lofty and remote. Floor is dirty and hides secrets under the rug. They have a perfect vision of each other, but can never touch. Both quietly hope for an earthquake. Dear ceiling, Love, floor” Hoping to awaken the viewer’s relationship to their built environment, and to step outside the human to speculate on a subjectivity of objects, the work is a playful invitation to reimagine the architecture around us as just as spiritually yearning and libidinous as we are.
Sarah Legow (b. 1982, Youngstown, Ohio, USA) is a sculpture, video, text, and installation artist living in Porto, Portugal. She has had screenings, exhibitions, and site-specific projects shown internationally — film festival appearances include FUSO Festival Internacional de Videoarte de Lisboa (MAAT Museum, Lisbon), Cadence Video Poetry Festival (Northwest Film Forum, Seattle), Bideodromo (Bilbao), and Mientras Tanto CINE (Montevideo), while her video installations and sculpture have appeared in gallery exhibitions + site-specific public art projects with Media Art Friesland (the Netherlands), the Jane Addams Hull House Museum (Chicago), Grizzly Grizzly (Philadelphia), ArtSpace Bremerhaven (Germany), and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania (2016), BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2011), and BA in Art History from Grinnell College (2005).
Sorry for Staring at Me
Hanie Ali Hemmati
This self-portrait film follows the director, referred to as X, as her friend speaks on her behalf. X shares her struggles with social anxiety, narrating her feelings in various situations and inviting viewers on a deep, personal journey.
Growing Eyes Out Of Your Spine
Janella Mele
escapegoat
Noa Sepharia
planten met stekels of doorns
Janne Elens