BIEFF is the first showcase of avant-garde cinema and visual art in Romania, a non-commercial event with educational purpose, aimed at bringing in front of the audience highly innovative films and filmmakers with strong personal views on contemporary reality, which also daringly explore the boundaries of cinematic language. A cinema of total creative freedom and lack of compromise.

BIEFF is also the first event in Romania dedicated to promoting the border area between cinema and visual art, offering increased visibility to cutting edge visual artists, whose work is mainly accessible in museums and in the art gallery circuit and rarely on cinema screen. We do this because we believe this border area is an extremely rich, creatively nourishing territory, from where unique artistic voices have constantly emerged over the years, such as Peter Greenaway, David Lynch, Derek Jarman, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage etc.

BIEFF presents on one side an INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL SHORT FILM COMPETITION, consisting of some of the most intriguing and innovative visual experiments from the last few years, titles awarded and screened in prestigious festivals, museums and galleries all over the world, such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Centre Pompidou etc.

The much-awaited Terry Gilliam‘s ZERO THEOREM will be screened here, in the opening of the festival:

photo thezerotheorem-movie.com

Here are some of the films that will be screened:

Winner of a Special Jury Mention at Cannes 2013, 37º4 S speaks about growing-up and the illusions first love entails, as well as about the notion of home and uprooting. In a lyrical cinematographic style with documentary elements, the story is set on a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean, inhabited by only 270 people. Two of them, the teenagers Nick and Anne, have been together for as long as they can remember. But Anne has to leave now for boarding school in London, which shakes the boy’s entire world. Her decision makes his present time blend with beautiful memories of the past and questions without answer related to an uncertain future.

photo bieff.ro

World premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week 2013, the conceptual experiment BUTTER LAMP is an intriguing investigation on cultural identity issues. Starting from a practice still popular in China, at the border between fiction and documentary, the film witnesses a photo shoot, where a photographer takes family pictures of several Tibetans, including a large nomadic family, against landmark backgrounds: the Great Wall of China, Disneyland, Beijing’s Olympic Stadium, a Hawaiian beach etc. Cleverly exploring the visual relation between foreground and background, BUTTER LAMP gets a significant socio-political charge. It becomes a subtle commentary on the abusive assimilation of Tibetan culture by China and the Western world, the Tibetans being forced to fight from a peripheral position to preserve their identity.

DA VINCI is an exceptional, cinematic take on the amazing world of the modern operating theatre, in which the patient seems to have only a small part as all eyes are on the monitor. The final part of YURI ANCARANI’s trilogy is set in an operating theatre where a fabulous journey through the human body is undertaken by robot arms, with the surgeon at the joystick. Science fiction-like, it is reminiscent of Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage. ANCARANI captures the whole operation with minute precision, beautifully lit, like a dazzling choreography, accompanied by an exciting soundtrack.

photo hotdocs.ca

A surrealist haute-couture fantasy, bearing the unmistakable signature of the director of ATTENBERG, THE CAPSULE is a fascinating allegorical exploration of the feminine mystery. Reminiscent of Jan Švankmajer, Pina Bausch and Maya Deren, the movie tells the story of a gothic matron and her seven young disciples, as they are initiated in the essence of femininity through a ritualistic danse macabre. An intelligent play on genre film conventions (horror, melodrama, fetish cinema), this seductive insight into feminine nature masterfully combines animation, choreography and live-action, in a thought-provoking dialogue between cinema, fashion and visual art.

photo yatzer.com

texts by Diana Mereoiu, Rotterdam Film Festival, via bieff.ro