While on the ferry from Victoria to Vancouver, I open my PDF copy of A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Vancouver and Command+F search “global” in an attempt to find some pithy passage for an epigraph. I don’t really succeed, but do receive a nice refresher: 

The speed and scale of Vancouver’s development entails construction financing made possible through the workings of global capital – Concord Pacific Place, for example, was built with money from Asia. A not insignificant number of condominium units are purchased by foreign investors, and many condominium towers have been primarily  marketed in foreign cities. In these ways, the thicket of towers that represents supermodel  Vancouver is the iconic and palpable result of globalization.ⁱ 

The city we today call Vancouver has veiled itself in the most exclusionary aesthetic of globalization. What a treat, then, that we have the Vancouver International Film Festival to serve as a place of transit for those stories carrying universal weight, but which remain hidden behind the universal market—blocked out by the skyline. With this context in mind, I was reluctant to give the following low-budget short films star ratings. It felt more appropriate to make observations about their formal qualities, then go from there. 

MODES is a series dedicated to short films whose avant-garde leanings often fail to attract the same turnout as VIFF’s other programs. Prior to the screening, curator T Bannister (@themavistouch) emphasized that MODES 3 would be an exploration of labour, particularly as mediated by depictions of masculinity. I would add that this collection was highly dialectical, in  the sense that it felt as though several of the films were grouped together for their ability to elicit profound self-reflection. 

+10K – Gala Hernández López, Spain/France

Gala Hernández López’ film opens with a quote from Hegel: “If we were to bring together the dreams of a given historical moment, we would see an exact picture of  the spirit of that period emerge.” López’ stylized documentary follows the ambitions of Pol, a young business student with Muskian dreams of wealth and comfort who feels compelled to navigate the eldritch horror of A.I. tech bubbles, crypto scams, and self-help conferences. Pol isn’t just another Mr. Beast wannabe, though; +10K finds it’s emotional centre in the contradictions inherent to that striver mentality which has come to define a great swathe of  masculinities in the developed world. Pol’s crypto-skeptical grandmother is all he has, and as  kitschy as his dreams of comfort are, they’re built upon the desire to reciprocate love. López  draws our attention to the tragedy of attempting to filter these emotions through capital: Every  sales pitch, every self-promotion, changes you for the worse. As an aside, this might be the only film I’ve seen which uses generative A.I. in a formally and thematically intuitive way. 

L’mina – Randa Maroufi, Morocco/France/Italy/Qatar

Any attempt to describe L’mina with words alone will fail. There’s a reason this picture won the Leitz Cine Discovery Prize at Cannes earlier this year. The film’s cast—composed of local townsfolk who have experienced continuous mistreatment for more than two decades—bring life to every frame, particularly as an extended long take leads viewers through horrific, yet intimate, working conditions. The opening montage of the town’s miners, united in their old age, was one of my favourites this year. Perhaps a crude comparison, but the dioramic recreations of the titular space in Jerada, Morocco, felt akin to painted backgrounds in isometric RPGs.  

Force Times Displacement – Angel WU, Taiwan

Force Times Displacement is similarly ineffable. This is video-art at its most expressionist: Collage, hypnotic montages, brand names interspersed with body horror—the  gang’s all here! This short is, among other things, an investigation into commodity fetishism (not unlike +10K). We see a figure in a factory interact with a strange idol, we see an embryo, and  then we are whisked off into a mire of signifiers. Alongside a small group of animators and cinematographers, Angel WU asks viewers to let these images make connections for them. I  adored the director’s statement for this one, which was itself a short film. The stated thesis?  Force x Displacement = Work. Makes sense to me! The Taiwan Creative Content Agency is  backing some good stuff. 

BOA – Alexandre Dostie, Canada/France

BOA was sweet and simple. A young monk who’s perhaps too attached to his abbot visits the gym—you get the idea, and Alexandre Dostie knows you do. Rather than bore you to tears with an attempt at Beau Travail, though, Dostie takes the opportunity play with all manner of fun lighting and blocking compositions. The result is a brief, sexy, sacrilegious romp that’s as fun as Dostie himself; in his director’s statement, he looked sardonically into the camera with blitzed eyes and exclaimed “I dunno what it’s really about.” 

Samba Infinito – Leonardo Martinelli, Brazil/France

Set during Rio’s Carnival, Leonardo Martinelli’s film meditates on the capacity for experiences of loss to act as a vehicle for community. Protagonist Angelo, a streetsweeper, is provided such empathy by actor Alexandre Amador that the performance almost distracts from Martinelli’s playful experiments with aspect ratio, which lead viewers through dreamscapes like small tunnels. The soft, almost mumblecore scripting is balanced by electric views of house parties and active street corners. In  Martinelli’s brief director’s statement—recorded as he hurried through an airport—he explains that Samba Infinito is a film concerned with liminal spaces of the mind. This concern really bleeds through in the film’s musical conclusion, where the movement of the streets comes to a  head with Angelo’s lingering grief. 

I look forward to seeing more from MODES at VIFFs to come. The breadth of talent and intellectual density displayed here is deserving of more recognition, and I left the Cinematheque giddy to share what I had seen. Finally, I would like to thank the almost eight-hundred volunteers who helped make VIFF 44 such a success. It’s a lovely festival, and lower mainland cinephiles should continue to show up with support. 

^{_iMacdonald, Christopher, et al., editors. Douglas & McIntyre, 2010, p. 186.}