Symone Gibson is a driven Detroit sports journalist in a highly competitive, male-dominated world. She has just a week before Christmas to find an attention-grabbing story that could take her career to the next level. With the help of a newly hired, free-spirited cameraman, Symone chases down a story and finds romance, courage, and a new sense of direction along the way.
Modulating attention between channels, like shifting through the radio, one can reveal messages in noise. This was the basis for Hedy Lamarr's "frequency hopping" technique, which now structures mobile networks and its siren songs. At the beach, transmissions fail, we hop waves, wander to sintonize, and accumulate dead time, asperged. Salt water blocks high frequency signals, found shells resonate.
In 1987, the song of the kauaʻi ʻōʻō, a bird endemic to Hawaii, is recorded for the last time. Its song serves as the starting point for a visual exploration of the landscape and the winged creatures inhabiting it. Mostly shot on location, the film is a visual poem caught between the chaos of disappearance and the calm of an aerial melody that takes us on a journey through seasons and territories.
Migrating from the Amazon basin across northern Illinois, a flock of chimney swifts flutter without perching, using a natural form of radar to navigate. The pulse of infrasound from deep ocean waves vibrates the ground and emanates up, guiding the birds amid disrupted air. Open space heard becomes turbulent, resonant space. Various forms of tuning elicit a strained acoustic ecology between altitudes.
"Arder en deseo" is the result of a Super8 cartridge shot in April 2023 in Santiago de Chile, materializing three different desires for three different images: The first scene depicts "Plaza Dignidad" from various angles, the starting point of the Estallido social (lit. "social outburst") on October 18th 2019, the second is a quote of Hippolyte Bayard’s photographic self-portrait posing as a drowned man from October 18th in 1840 and the third one shows two empty chairs in connection with the first scene of the empty monument. In using the “obsolete” medium of analog film "Arder en deseo" creates a temporal anachronism, a technological ellipsis, in which memory, oblivion and disappearance enter into poetical dialogue fifty years after the Chilean coup d'état.
Two childhood best friends reconnect after years of separation. Chay, a Phnom Penh resident, helps Lyer, who comes from the countryside, get a job as a projectionist in the city. A film screening prompts them to wonder about their future together.
Chinese primary student En Qi struggles with Malay spelling, often confusing it with English. This incurs the wrath of his strict teacher who humiliates and punishes him unsparingly.
As their high school days come to a close, David and William are at odds. David can’t wait to leave the past behind, while William clings to every moment. On the night of their senior prom, a heated argument triggers a nostalgic journey through their shared high school memories.
Emily's wish for a picture-perfect Christmas comes true when a magical, optimistic movie character steps off the screen to help, but as things spiral out of control, she learns that true holiday perfection might look very different from what she imagined.
Mayor Brian Ortega is beloved in the idyllic community of Long Grove. While decorating for Christmas with the residents, Brian discovers his childhood Christmas wish list which magically begins to come true, reminding Brian about the spirit and joy of the holiday. Returning to town for Christmas is Brian’s childhood friend Nina Meyers, and soon a connection becomes undeniable as she helps Brian face a new challenge for the town. As Brian’s wishes come true, he inspires the town to showcase its warm culture and values in order to stop the modern world from stifling the charm and heart of Long Grove.
A struggling actor desperately wants the role of a fast-food brand spokesman—until he faces terrifying visions of the company mascot: a giant, anthropomorphic hot dog.
Through the memories of his grandmother and his mother, a young filmmaker tries to reimagine within the lens of cinema a past time he doesn't remember with his grandfather who passed away almost 20 years ago.