craft films index

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Baby Homunculus (2024)

Anja Kuzmić

In this project, I wanted to explore the concept of an alchemical homunculus - an artificially created “little man”. Through crafting articulated puppets of two fantastical genderqueer figures, I worked through ideas about abject embodiment, reproduction and preservation of life through memory. I wanted to craft a cyclical creation myth in which I embedded some of my own desire for a liberated queer body into my puppets, which in turn kept it safe. Through this process, I envision a strange queering of biofuturity through the life-affirming acts of identity creation and art-making.

Carlos Hernández Serrano & Nicole Ucedo

Building Something Out of Something (2024)

"Building Something Out of Something", by Carlos Hernández Serrano and Nicole Ucedo, documents a small part of Carlos’s family’s journey building an adobe house. The film was shot in his homeland of Zurumuato, Michoacán, México where this once ubiquitous building technique has given way to more commoditized construction methods that forego the vernacular connections associated with the materials depicted in the film -- hay, dung, water, and clay. The film was shot on Super 8 and eco-processed with caffenol. Carlos recorded the music on traditional Mexican string instruments that mimic the percussive intensity, rhythm, and repetition involved with natural building.

Rhesa Paul

Easement (Iteration 003) (2024)

Easement is a process video expressing the ongoing care of a deconstructed basket, memories of St. Vincent, and how extended care expresses intentionality. Rhesa explores her connections to her West Indian roots through various iterations of collecting and reworking source materials as studies and acts of notation. Easement is the state of being at ease, and the art of basketry calls for the makers to pace themselves in thought and craftsmanship. Aesthetic utility extends across time and geographic boundaries, where incessant intertwining and reworking mirrors one's arrival to new and old places.

Penny McGovern

Fabric Film (2023)

The crafts of filmmaking and sewing merge together in this self-reflexive work, an ambient consideration of method and process.

Sara Bonaventura

Between a structuralist loop and a quote, this analogue short is a tribute to Donna Haraway and her seminal "Staying with the trouble", evoking women labour in the knitted content of the textual image: the frame depicts women hands knitting and is manipulated and scratched with knitting needles by my own hands. The nature of matter itself is a problem for women (for feminist theory). Thus this is a non-camera film, realized with anonymous found footage, which I hope suggests that knowledge is indeed an embroidered fragmented dynamic multi-layered and embedded quilt, as much as matter. Hand processed by Sara Bonaventura during a workshop with Peter Lichter at Analogica.

It matters (2024)

A poetic and immersive voyage into the growing world of plants to rediscover love and explore how we can re-entangle ourselves with nature's sentience and beauty.

Ruxandra Mitache & Somina Nastac

Kiss Me (2023)

mockumentary (2023)

If interested, contact: 
kuzmicanja@gmail.com

If interested, contact: 
@carlos_cuari on instagram or thecarlosone@gmail.com

If interested, contact: 
rhesapaulstudio@gmail.com

If interested, contact: 
Email: pennymcgov@gmail.com Instagram: @pennymcgovern

If interested, contact: 
bonaventura.sara@gmail.com or IG: @bonaventurasara

If interested, contact: 
murmurcontemporary@gmail.com

Sana Serkebaeva

‘Mockumentary’ is based on the artefacts that were recently found in South Kazakhstan. The video presents a fragmented and distorted process of creating these ceramic plates in different forms and materials. Linearity of time and acts of self-mythologizing, past and future, preservation, destruction. The video is part of the project on the history of the Kazakh language and is made from footage that was gathered over the past 4 years.

If interested, contact: 
@sanaserkebaeva (IG) or through email sana.serkebaeva@gmail.com

Lucas Kane

Tejiendo La Tela Blanca // Weaving White Cloth (2019)

This quiet short explores the tradition of backstrap weaving as typically done by the men of the indigenous communities in and round the southern city of Cañar. The film follows Francisco Zaruma as he guides us step by step through the process of weaving a simple band of white cloth. Intercut between these instructions are the rhythmic day to day scenes of life around his house and village.

If interested, contact: 
Lucas.r.kane@gmail.com

Caroline Rumley

The Whole Speaks (2018)

An impression of Nelms Creekmur, a modern-day Atlanta-based blacksmith and wordsmith, and of the creative process itself.

If interested, contact: 
cerumley@gmail.com

Yuula Benivolski

You May Laugh at Me a Little (WIP)

Al-Khalil (Hebron) is renowned for its centuries-old glass and ceramics industry. Each family in the business had their own traditional recipe, passed
down through generations and rooted in their natural surroundings. Since Israel’s apartheid wall carved up Palestine twenty years ago, glassworkers have
been forced to abandon these recipes and instead rely on melting down recycled glass collected throughout the city.

Abu Waheed (Yaqoub Al-Natsheh) has worked in the family shop since childhood. The Al-Natsheh family’s glassmaking history dates back to the 13th
century, when glass factories dominated Hebron's old city. Today the only shop still standing is Abu Waheed’s.

If interested, contact: 
yuula.benivolski@gmail.com