On Sunday, IFFR proudly announced the first big winners of this year’s festival. Ismaïl Bahri (Apparition), Maïder Fortuné and Annie MacDonell (Communicating Vessels) and Dorian Jespers (Sun Dog) all won an Ammodo Tiger Short Award, along with a €5,000 prize. These are their films.
The Ammodo Tiger Short Competition jury – Nathanja van Dijk, director Kunsthal Rotterdam; Greg de Cuir Jr., film curator and writer; Safia Benhaim, filmmaker and Tiger Short Award winner 2015 – awarded the filmmakers and also designated a special mention to Wong Ping (Wong Ping’s Fables 2).
"Apparition
Apparition is a three-minute work by Tunisian artist Ismaïl Bahri in which a photograph is revealed paradoxically through a process of obstruction. A static camera records hands framing a brightly lit rectangular item. Through the movement of the hands – casting shadows over the item, rotating and bending it – fragments of the image it holds appear. We start to see heads, faces, a street scene, and soon a mass of people come into view, a number of whom stare directly into the lens. Bahri manages to capture a fleeting image while creating a statement on the mediation of history.
The jury cited Apparition as “a short, poetic piece that contemplates history and memory through the materiality of the moving image.” Bahri feels “very happy and surprised” to win the award with what he characterizes as “a short, simple and humble film, which I made quite in secret.”
There’s something that feels immediate and contemporary about the gaze of the people in the image, their eyes focused directly on the lens and the way their faces are gradually revealed. In reflecting on Apparition, Bahri describes “a kind of tension between the materiality of the photograph and at the same time something very much about light, projection and questions of photography and cinema.”...
To read the full article : Introducing IFFR's Tiger Short Winners