RIFF 8th edition

We have chosen the film SOMBER TIDES because it has a great reflection on survival against nature. And because it has been made with fantastic production design, music and emotional dance, in a great visual location. The selection of black and white colors reminds us of the essential conflict of living or not living, of bringing oil to nature, and the affected birds are there as a metaphor for the affectation of the world before extinction. It is a very beautiful and effective way to make art and essential reflection.

We chose this film because it is a strong piece, artistically strong, and very efficiently told. There are essential questions in it: Can one escape from humanity? From what do you escape? From violence, from siege, from oneself?

The different layers and ways to interpret the violence experienced are of great depth in the perceptive eyes of the creators of this work. The metaphors generated with the red thread to link the woman, to keep her under control and return her home, are painful, but very significant in the history of relationships built as a couple throughout human history.

“The good and correct things are circular”, this is the imprint that this film transmits to us at the beginning of this film, and it transmits it with a great sense of humor. With a very particular way of telling stories, with great shots, suggestive sounds and daring close-ups. In much of the film CIRCOLOGY we see a kind of fanaticism for the circle, a wheel of life, a ritual of daily habits, and a small community turned into a “Circular Society”. But chaos comes, a breaking of the circle comes, the wind turbine breaks, and then everything changes to be a nightmare. With this great way of telling a story and getting our attention through body movement and camera movement, we have been attracted to give this well-deserved award.

We have chosen REVEALING THE INVISIBLE because it is a great documentary, made as fiction, because it presents unlikely, sometimes surreal situations, combining true history and the imaginative situations of what could have happened, in addition to showing dance performances of great value. The story is about a great dancer of Chinese origin, born in Canada: Tony Chong. A connection with the past through a black telephone is proposed with some humor. There is an endless race of life as being an action movie. His past was not revealed to him, he has to imagine it, and the film recreates it using the sensation of OUTSIDERNESS that the dancer has experienced throughout all his life in Vancouver. This documentary proposes a marvelous entertaining and effective way to speculate on one's own past.

We reward this film because of its great ability to make a memorable story with great skill in visual management and attractive choreography of all the elements we see on the screen, as well as having good dance practice. FU LE has a great mastery in choosing all the visual elements and their movement. Furthermore, the topics showed are of relevant importance: Love, memory, the antagonism between the fire of “the old” with the brilliance of “the new”. URBAN GENESIS really lets us see how modernity is shaking up the world of our ancient memories. Memory is human and a right we have to remember part of our origin.