Graduation screenings MFA Film: See Through – A collection of intimate stories

Seven filmmakers from Colombia, Sweden, Taiwan, Belgium, Norway and Italy go on a cinematic journey - introducing you to fragments of a relationship, a trip into space, and a parrot named after Prince William.

In a dynamic blend, they investigate stories of memory, grief and moral dilemmas. Their works dwell, imagine, and play with the political and personal, taking on human-animal power structures, representation and judgment, love and tension in everyday life, crossing borders and cultures.

In their work, the group has experimented with modes of filmmaking in different ways, looking through the camera, thinking through making.

In genre, the works span from documentary to fiction, as well as an art installation. The screening and exhibition will be complemented with discussions from the class and special guest speakers.

Save the date and welcome to the graduation screenings and exhibition of the 2023 master in film graduates of HDK-Valand!

More information about the full programme in Facebook event. 

SHORTLIST, PARTICIPATING STUDENTS AND THEIR FILMS:

Ian Cardinali: Over The Shelter
Frida E. Elmström: Capture 
Signe Rosenlund-Hauglid: Extra 
Liesbet De Loof:  Triplette (working title)
Lina Ma. Córdoba. Beltrán: Poloutopia
Shih Yi-Fan: Where the Moon Goes (working title)
Julian McKinney: Mind pops & Madeleine moments
 

PLOTS, ARTIST STATEMENTS AND BIOS:

Over The Shelter 
IAN CARDINALI 
15 min | fiction 

After her space mission, a mother astronaut tries to explain to her son the experience of looking at Earth from outside. Her words merge with the imagination of the child, in order to portray this riveting but incommunicable experience.

Artist statement: Ian Cardinali consistently investigates themes such as nature, reason, and instinct in his work. From his theatrical and filmmaking practice, he draws upon real life experiences, both individual and collective. Film, in his eyes, is a vehicle to communicate glimpses of experience and sparkle thought and reflection. Seemingly effortless, Cardinali mixes different filmic approaches, from archive footage to fiction, to build up films where metaphorical and realistic levels overlap.

In his latest work, based on the book The Overview Effect (1987) by Frank White, he explores the experience of Earth-gazing from space. A shift of perspective, unimaginable until sixty years ago, that leads to a new consciousness regarding our position as human beings and our, allegedly small and fragile, planet.  

Bio: Ian Cardinali (b. Rome, 1996) has a Bachelor in Film from Kent University (UK). Alongside working as an assistant director for fiction projects, he developed his own practice as a filmmaker. At HDK-Valand, Cardinali focused on hybrid works blending fiction and archive footage and dealt with themes such as existentialism, childhood and environment.

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Capture
FRIDA E. ELMSTRÖM
14 min | documentary

Twenty or so cats, a group of penguins watching tourists, a gray parrot named after prince William and a couple of baboons attempting to join the tables at a local café. Capture explores the question of freedom and a field of tension between love and captivity. 

Artist statement: Frida E. Elmström’s interest as a maker revolves around human behaviour and shifting perspectives. She finds grey areas deeply interesting and play with blurring the lines between supposed opposites through humour and exaggerated imagery. While her films are political, they are rooted in the emotive. She aims to offer a point of view that not only looks outwards, but inwards, towards herself and the person watching. 

Capture is a project born out of a feeling of confinement and a search for freedom. Wanting to explore this field she sought out spaces where these topics seemed particularly charged. Quickly she found herself filming animals, both wild and domesticated, together with the humans around them. The result offers a subjective, light hearted but nevertheless charged, exploration on human-animal relationships, and the power dynamics at hand. It looks at a field of ambivalence between ethics and self-gain; between love, freedom and captivity. All the while by capturing, humans and animals alike, on camera. The film doesn’t offer any answers, but a space for individual thinking, within and outside of what’s being shown on the screen. What is freedom and it’s connection to love?

Bio: Frida E. Elmström (b. Stockholm 1991)‘s filmic works covers a wide span from documentary, fiction and animation. In 2020 she received the Guldbagge award for best scenography (About Endlessness). Her interest in human behavior, in-between spaces and play informs her directorial work, such as Mardjuret and Silviana Deluxe 25.

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Extra 
SIGNE ROSENLUND-HAUGLID 
13 min | fiction  

In the aftermath of a mass shooting outside Oslo’s oldest gay bar, two friends and a little sister grapple with questions of what it means to be different. Extra is a playful stream of consciousness, a universe where more is more, where limits are tested and prejudice and stereotypes are challenged.  

Artist Statement: Signe Rosenlund-Hauglid’s films has often portrayed people on the fringe of society. In her work, she often explores otherness and alienation, and what makes us diverge or belong to a crowd. Coming from a background of documentary directing, Rosenlund-Hauglid has worked on several films with anonymous characters, [MD1] both using traditional and hybrid methods in her visual language.

In her latest work, London, Oslo, Rosenlund-Hauglid explores her own identity crisis in the aftermath of a mass shooting outside one of her old safe havens in the summer of 2022. The gay bar, the London pub, constitutes the framework of a conversation between two friends who don’t really listen to each other. In addition, the main character's sister with Down syndrome enters the story, correcting her older sister’s narrative.  London, Oslo is a playful stream of consciousness, a universe where more is more, where limits are tested, and stereotypes and prejudices are challenged. 

Rosenlund-Hauglids MA project at HDK-Valand is her first work of fiction. In her research she works with trauma, representation and how we speak on behalf of others in filmmaking.

Bio: Signe Rosenlund-Hauglid (b. Harstad 1995) is a journalist and filmmaker. Her work often addresses currents and debates that reflect the present, as with her latest film Not That Kind of Guy. In 2022 she received Høstutstillingsprisen at the Norwegian National Art Exhibition (BBQ & Apocalypse). Rosenlund-Hauglid has formerly written for VG and Morgenbladet. 

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Triplette (working title)
LIESBET DE LOOF 
4 min | art installation

Where do you go my love?
A multiscreen experiment on the perception of visual and psychological spaces.

Artist statement and project description: Liesbet De Loof’s interest in film is grounded in her main practice, cinematography. She focusses on ‘how’ we can tell a story and applies an open approach to create the most appropriate visual language for every project, so the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ become a true unit. As a filmmaker she is intrigued by neuroaesthetics and spatial reasoning. She experiments with spaces, light and movement to expose a medium and the spectator, while walking the line between empirical observations and analytical and sensorial thinking. Her current research project revolves around biases in visual understanding, based on our native reading and writing direction and the perception of visual and psychological spaces.

Bio: Liesbet De Loof (b. Gent, 1984) is a cinematographer based in Sweden. She has a bachelor in audiovisual technology and worked as a lighting technician for fiction before continuing in cinematography. She has photographed about twenty fiction shorts and a feature film and is currently finishing an MFA in film at HDK-Valand.

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Poloutopia
LINA MA. CÓRDOBA. BELTRÁN 
14 min | documentary

The film proposes a trip from the inside to the outside, from the individual to the collective, from a safe space to other places through the bike and finding bike polo, a mixed-gender sport. The filmmaker narrates the story as if it were a conversation between herself and her mother, who has passed. Her thoughts are reflected in life experiences, traveling, biking, polo, and friend(s)/community.

Artist statement and project description: Lina Cordoba Beltran’s  interest in filmmaking started when she found an intense connection with biking. It led her to discover social activism, feminism, bike polo, and solo traveling. She refers to herself as an afro-decolonial feminist. Her artistic research is focused on the intersection of decolonial feminist practices and collective filmmaking. She sees filmmaking as a tool for social change and for creating alternative ways to share knowledge through collaborative practices. 

Beltran explores her artistic and visual interest though sensorial filmmaking by playing with images and music at a rhythmic pace. She sees filmmaking as a tool for social change. She is interested in developing methodologies for collaborative filmmaking, expanding her research within the bike polo community, and her social project Rakas Bike Polo. As a feminist, Lina is interested in exploring afro feminist and intersectional theories in practice to incorporate them into her methodologies.

Bio: Lina Ma. Córdoba. Beltrán (b. Bogotá 1989) Afro Decolonial feminist. As a maker, she sees filmmaking as a tool for social change. Her artistic research is focused on the intersection of decolonial feminist practices and collaborative filmmaking.  Her interests are activism, feminism, biking, bike polo, and solo traveling.

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Where the Moon Goes (working title)
SHIH YI-FAN
15 min |  fiction 

A young woman goes on nightly trips, in search of someone who’s impossible to find. This film uses symbols to explore spiritualism, post-memory, and discusses what death is in Swedish and Taiwanese culture.

Artist statement & project description: Shih Yi-Fan’s films often explore bonds between human and nature and portray multiple realities, such as animism, memory of places and spirituality. Coming from a background of documentary directing, Shih is often inspired by real-life stories and uses the language of cinema to explore boundaries between gray zones, imagination and multiple realities. In her latest work, Where the Moon Goes, her MA project at HDK-Valand, Shih explores spirituality, death, and post-memory through a personal story. She also touches upon funeral customs in Taiwanese and Swedish culture, and what mourning and burial process can mean to different people.

Bio: Shih Yi-Fan (b. Taipei 1990) is a filmmaker from Taiwan, based in Sweden. Her filmic works focus on questions within today’s political environment through the lens of animism and non-anthropocentrism. 

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Mind pops & Madeleine moments
JULIAN MCKINNEY 

Marcel Proust coined the term “involuntary memory”, the curious phenomenon of a memory triggered by a smell, a taste, or even a sound. A Madeleine moment – or Proust effect – is when this occurs.

Smell-memory-emotion-thought-expression. That’s how it usually works. The smell of buttered crumpets leads you to write a poem about lost childhood. For those of us with anosmia – a complete loss of smell – other tactics are necessary and a logic in reverse develops. If you’ve had a sense of smell and lost it, those memories are still there, but inaccessible – like orphaned flashbacks. So, you start with expressions of smell – words, poems, sayings – and trace backwards, like a semantic detective on the hunt for olfactory records.

Artist Statement: Marcel Proust coined the term “involuntary memory”, the curious phenomenon of a memory triggered by a smell, a taste, or even a sound. A Madeleine moment – or Proust effect – is when this occurs. Smell-memory-emotion-thought-expression. That’s how it usually works. The smell of buttered crumpets leads you to write a poem about lost childhood. For those of us with anosmia – a complete loss of smell – other tactics are necessary and a logic in reverse develops. If you’ve had a sense of smell and lost it, those memories are still there, but inaccessible – like orphaned flashbacks. So, you start with expressions of smell – words, poems, sayings – and trace backwards, like a semantic detective on the hunt for olfactory records.

Bio: Julian McKinney (b. Lund, 1976) is a filmmaker based in Gothenburg, Sweden. His background in film includes working as a curator, festival organizer, translator, reviewer, dramaturg and teacher.