2021
Official Program
6 hours. 15 countries. 30+ films.
This is the FFF.
SESSION 1-A(MANITA)
Symfaunic (7:37) – UCF School of Visual Arts & Design Class of 2021 (U.S.A.)
Grateful Dean (8:20) – Gabriel Joncas, Kenzo Suzuki, and Guillaume Dubois (Canada)
Kingdom Fungi (2:14) – Kels Dee (U.S.A.)
MycoMythologies: Infrastructures for Each Other (13:08) – Kaitlin Bryson and Saša Spečal (U.S.A. / Slovenia)
Puffballs & Earthstars (5:45) – David Fenster (U.S.A.)
The Berserker and the Troll (8:36) – Alexander VanStone (U.S.A.)
Mushroom Water (2:35) – Roger Horn (U.S.A.)
Darwin’s Balls (5:32) – Erik Nachtrieb (U.S.A.)
SESSION 1-B(OLETUS)
Planet Fungi - Northeast India (50:00) – Catherine Marciniak and Stephen Axford (Australia / India)
SESSION 2-A(MANITA)
The Boat (5:10) – David Robinson & Bryan Michael Mills (U.K.)
Harmonia (4:54) – Yvonne Mullock (Canada)
Fluxus Fungus (9:00) – Tuane Eggers (Brazil)
A Flower (9:34) – Pascal Gaubert (France)
Aura of a Wonderland (13:47) – John David Levy and Sierra Serban (U.S.A.)
Pink Mushroom Playing Synth (WT) (4:40) – Joke Van den Heuvel (Portugal)
Fungos Sanitatem (6:51) – Hamilton Pevec (U.S.A.)
Foraged (0:43) – Cassandra Ablola, Siena McKim, Matthew Meyer, and Jeff Corrigan (U.S.A.)
Life as a Lobster (2:55) – Emma Rose Browne and Andrea Kathleen Hendrickson (U.S.A.)
SESSION 2-B(OLETUS)
Terres Amères (30:42) – Axel Cohen (France)
Between the Trees (22:25) – Christian Lawes (U.K.)
SESSION 3-A(MANITA)
A Mushroom Poem (1:33) – Jessica Fraser (Canada)
Spineless (3:40) – Alison Pouliot (Switzerland)
The Future is Rotten (14:50) – Nancy Dionne (U.S.A.)
Voie Lactée: Le Roquefort, Le Camembert, & Le Valencay (5:40) – Cyprien Nozières (France)
Fungi (3:32) – Folk Music Liberation Front and Staffan Erlandsson (Sweden)
Let Things Rot (7:25) – Mateo Barrenengoa (Chile)
Mushroom Biomusic (8:33) – The Octopus Project (U.S.A.)
Solutions (Tiebreakers) (2:30) – Jennie E. Park (U.S.A.)
The Hat Ballad (5:32) – Nikodem Płaczek (Poland)
SESSION 3-B(OLETUS)
The Mushroom Speaks (89:00) – Marion Neumann (Switzerland)
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Aura of a Wonderland
John David Levy and Sierra Serban
13:47 (U.S.A.)
An experimental short film loosely inspired by the photographic work of Justine Kurland and excerpts from Rebecca Bengal's short story, "The Jeremys". Part trance-state, part dance odyssey - Aura of a Wonderland follows a group of girls who after abandoning their vehicle in an act of rebellion set out on an uncharted hallucinogenic journey of discovery into the freedoms of what bonds each other, and the mysteries of nature to the wilderness of self.
About the Filmmaker
John David Levy is an independent filmmaker with a penchant for working with limited budgets and stolen locations. Leaning toward a bend in genres that intersects somewhere between contemplative, experimental, documentary, and dance cinema.
The Berserker and The Troll
Alexander VanStone
8:36 (U.S.A.)
Thurbrand, a leader living in exile, takes a small scouting party into a mountain wilderness to investigate the disappearance of 12 men over the past year. He is joined by a mysterious sorceress that gives him council during this deadly trial.
About the Filmmaker
Alexander VanStone studied filmmaking at George Mason University in Virginia, Växjö University in Sweden, and Vancouver Film School in Canada. His major television crewing credits include Oprah's Next Chapter, Whale Wars, and The Ellen Degeneres Show. He is a student and practitioner of several historical martial arts, knowledge and experience he brought to the making of "The Berserker and The Troll."
Between the Trees
Christian Lawes
22:25 (U.K.)
Between the Trees immerses you in the forest as the hidden complexity of trees and the incredible community they create is revealed. We follow Arne’s journey in the summer of 2020 as he emerges from a lockdown that deprived him from nature. He ventures deep into the Snowdonian rainforest as he explains the fascinating, slow-grown life of the forest, and tries to recapture a lost connection with nature.
About the Filmmaker
Christian Lawes is a multi award-winning science and wildlife filmmaker, with a masters in Directing and Producing Science and Natural History. He is interested in exploring the fascinating complexity of the natural world and to promote care and conservation of nature and wildlife.
The Boat
David Robinson and Bryan Michael Mills
5:10 (U.K.)
A boat navigates a tumultuous sea of mushrooms whilst searching for her lost sister ship.
About the Filmmaker
David Robinson is an Irish artist based in London. For the past 10 years his artwork has combined his passion for photography and food, producing magnificent and highly original Fungi Luminograms in his east-end darkroom .His most recent book (and second for children) titled, 'Penny Bun Helps Save the World' was published in September 2018 by GOST. Bryan Mills is former guitarist of The Divine Comedy. His film score credits include Slow West (2015), Pitch black Heist (2012)and The Ice Skater (2020)
Darwin’s Balls
Erik Nachtrieb
5:32 (U.S.A.)
Re-discovery of an ancient fungus and its strange place in history. Returning from Antarctica Erik discovers a mysterious Beech tree fungus in the mountains of Ushuaia on Tierra del Fuego. Curiosity takes over and he follows the fungus through the history of the indigenous people, Darwin's voyage on the Beagle and into his mouth.
About the Filmmaker
Erik Nachtrieb is an award-winning adventure film and TV producer, specializing in remote environment and expedition content, who's worked on all 7 continents. He's also a plant molecular geneticist and currently CEO of the SetJetters mobile app, which enables people to travel to film locations from their favorite movies.
A Flower
Pascal Gaubert
9:34 (France)
In the shady slopes of the French Tarn gorge, a flower has just bloomed. She is called Ladyslipper.
About the Filmmaker
Pascal Gaubert is a gardener and independant filmmaker specialized in wildlife short films. He is working in a region of Southern France called "Les Cevennes". Its films are used in schools and museums.
Fluxus Fungi
Tuane Eggers
9:00 (Brazil)
Fluxus Fungus is an experimental personal story involving my relationship with fungi, through images that I made, mainly in 35mm, during the last years. The film is an unfolding of my master's research in Visual Arts, entitled The Poetics of Fungi. From these photographs, I created a narrative based on reflections inspired by readings by authors such as Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, Paul Stamets and Peter McCoy.
About the Filmmaker
Tuane Eggers is a journalist and a master in Visual Poetics. Her work in visual arts is focused on photography, with themes related to the flows and the impermanence of life. In her current research in the visual field, she investigates co-creation relationships with fungi.
Foraged!
Cassandra Ablola, Siena McKim, Matthew Meyer, and Jeff Corrigan
0:43 (U.S.A.)
You think you know foraging? Think again! Consumption is subjective.
About the Filmmaker
We are the San Diego Mycological Society, bringing fungi knowledge to the people of southern California and beyond! This is our first video for FFF, but we have done other videos for our society members including cooking and educational videos.
Fungi
Folk Music Liberation Front & Staffan Erlandsson
3:32 (Sweden)
Jamaican singjay star Eek-a-Mouse meets radical electronic folk musician with nyckelharpa in Swedish forest. Song based on Böl-Olles Schottis.
About the Filmmaker
Video produced and directed by FLF + Staffan Erlandsson. Camera and editing: Staffan Erlandsson. Animation: Anna Erlandsson. Crew: Pauli Sudra & Oliver Pasche. Runner: John Voldsta. Fungi footage with kind permission by Steve Axford, Tim Shepherd. Graffiti artists: Marc Alright & Holem.
Fungos Sanitatem
Hamilton Pevec
6:51 (U.S.A.)
Fungos Sanitatem (working title) is a teaser for a feature length documentary that follows five people on their healing journeys with medicinal mushrooms. From spinal cord injuries to brain tumors. First hand testimony takes the viewer into the remarkable world of nearly miraculous healing.
About the Filmmaker
Hamilton Pevec is a mycophile, filmmaker and amateur contemporary ethnomycologist with a passion for medicinal and functional mushrooms. His work explores the ecology of mycology making mushrooms fun, accessible and entertaining.
The Future is Rotten
Nancy Dionne
14:50 (U.S.A.)
A secret culture of foragers spend their lives hunting the Matsutake. Coveted in Japan for its flavor and symbolism, the treasured mushroom can bring up to $1000 kg but its true value lies underground. A genius networker and healer of ruined landscapes, the Matsutake might just be our last, best hope for an American forest system run amuk. The rare fungi appears in troubled and depleted forests, collaborating with trees to help each other grow through a mutual collaboration. Humans continue to be stumped on how to cultivate these rare and valuable mushrooms and voices urging the U.S. Forest Service to change it's fire fighting laws are growing. Characters from Oregon and Northern California invite us into a forest, a mushroom farm and a kitchen to demonstrate what happens when we collaborate and share the greater value found right under our feet - the mushrooms that help to preserve our ecosystem and are still delicious on our plates.
About the Filmmaker
Nancy Dionne is an award winning documentary filmmaker and photojournalist who likes taking people “to a threshold” by producing stories that create connections not yet considered, honoring the intelligence of nature, the human spirit and music. She works as a Producer, is a SF Film Festival and the IDA judge and member of the "CREATOR Program" for Yahoo!JAPAN. Her third film in production is called "Conduction".
Grateful Dean
Gabriel Joncas, Kenzo Suzuki, and Guillaume Dubois
8:20 (Canada)
This portrait film follows Dean Robert, an eccentric self-sufficient mushroom cultivator who lives in an RV. It explores the adventurous and carefree van life, while also acknowledging that this reality can sometimes be deceptive.
About the Filmmaker
Gabriel Joncas is a professional videographer from Québec. In the past years, he worked on french canadian TV (MusiquePlus, Vrak, CBC) and with Cirque du Soleil. He is teaming up with old time friends Guillaume Dubois (music composer) and Kenzo Suzuki (writer) for their debut film "Grateful Dean".
Harmonia
Yvonne Mullock
4:54 (Canada)
Harmonia is a short dream-like video that centres on a conjoined costume for two siblings. Hand-dyed with foraged fungi, this garment is made for a picnic experience based in togetherness. Functioning as a jacket-cum-picnic-blanket, Harmonia considers loss, materiality and potential of objects that motivates us into action.
About the Filmmaker
Yvonne Mullock is a graduate from Glasgow School of Art and is currently based in Mohkinstsis/ Calgary, Alberta, Treaty 7 Territory. Over the past nineteen years she has participated in artist-in-residence programmes within Scotland, England, Canada, and the United States and has shown group and solo exhibitions in Oregon, Calgary, Toronto, Fogo Island, Kentucky and Glasgow. Mullock has received grants and awards from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts and Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers. Her work is featured in private and public collections in Canada and the UK.
The Hat Ballad
Nikodem Płaczek
8:38 (Poland)
Formerly immeasurable and uninhabited space is beginning to be filled with life, which with the passage of time multiply and form its structures. However, not everything is developing at the same pace. A film was manufactured using vintage projector, stain glass paint and pearls among trash.
About the Filmmaker
Nikodem Płaczek - a Łódź-Silesian creator born in the 1999. A student of the National Film School in Łódź in the field of Animation. A graduate of the Fine Art School in Katowice. In his films, he uses mixed techniques, textures, light, and recycled elements.
Kingdom Fungi
Kels Dee
2:14 (U.S.A.)
A long time ago, a bifurcation occurred in human consciousness, when the understanding of power as a responsibility to nurture and regenerate life was replaced with a new idea of power: power is for domination and destruction. The former engendered a partnership based model for human civilization, promoting balance and harmony. The latter is the paradigm that humanity still exists in today, manifesting primarily as patriarchy. To return to partnership, we must bring our awareness to the light side of chaos and to the dark side of order.
About the Filmmaker
Kels Dee loves the woods! Her soul is the wind that flows through the trees. She always looks forward to exploring the woods, too, for the fungi that live and create there help Kels appreciate the ancient mysteries of the universe.
Let Things Rot
Mateo Barrenengoa
7:25 (Chile)
This short film is a journey into the forest with Chilean mycologist Giuliana Furci who reflects on how the so called end of a life in fact leads to new beginnings. Filmed in Chile's striking Araucanía Region landscape, the short presents the wonderful Fungi Kingdom through a poetic perspective that reflects on the importance of allowing for natural cycles of degeneration to unfold. The film encourages viewers to perceive death as the start of something new and as a beautiful part of life's cycle. It features an original soundtrack composed by Enrique Barrenengoa and Elisabetta Monacelli and is narrated by Andy Thorstenson.
About the Filmmaker
During the last 14 years Mateo has been in nature filming and photographing various aspects of the natural and cultural heritage of Chile and the world. As a son of a photographer, he grew up around footgraphy but focused much of his work around the conservation of nature and indigenous cultures. Through his documentaries he seeks to be a contribution in the important moment that we live as a society on the planet.
Life as a Lobster
Emma Rose Browne and Andrea Kathleen Hendrickson
2:55 (U.S.A.)
"Life as a Lobster" features a mushroom who is amidst an existential identity crisis. She loves her forest home, but has always dreamed of joining her sea-faring family. Join on an adventurous tale of a heroine who finds her true self in this coming-of-age mycological adventure.
About the Filmmaker
Emma Rose Browne is a filmmaker based in Portland, OR who specializes in visual storytelling for climate change solutions. She's a passionate mushroom forager and protector of the environment, as well as a musician. Andrea Kathleen Hendrickson is an artist based in Portland, OR who focuses on painting, music, and multimedia projects. She believes in the importance of protecting the earth and loves spending time in nature.
Mushroom Biomusic: Yellow Oyster
The Octopus Project
8:33 (U.S.A.)
Over the past year, the filmmakers have been collecting biodata from various mushrooms via a MIDI Biodata Sonification Device that turns fungi data into MIDI information, which is then used to make music and control visuals. The Yellow Oyster video comes from a recent live mushroom audio/visual performance with various mushrooms providing the source material in real time — creating an ambient and meditative experience.
About the Filmmaker
The Octopus Project has been releasing joyous party music since 2002, following a musical path that veers through blown-out rock’n’roll, vibrant electronics, surreal pop and expansive psych landscapes. Based in Austin, TX, the group of multi-instrumentalists has released six studio albums, starting with 2002’s Identification Parade. Touring clubs and festivals worldwide (Lollapalooza, Coachella, All Tomorrow's Parties) both on their own and as handpicked support for artists as diverse as DEVO and Aesop Rock, they’ve earned a reputation for explosive live shows and immersive audio-visual experiments. Also active as composers for video games and film, they were awarded the Special Jury Award for Musical Score at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival for their work on the film Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter.
A Mushroom Poem
Jessica Fraser
1:33 (Canada)
A mushroom wonders, "What if I could fly?" But it would feel lonely high up in the sky. A mushroom thinks back to its life on the ground. It feels right at home with its friends all around.
About the Filmmaker
Jessica is a film studies student at the University of British Columbia. She is a filmmaker, dance teacher, and a member of the UBC Film Society.
The Mushroom Speaks
Marion Neumann
89:00 (Switzerland)
Originating in space, present at the very dawn of life on Earth, fungi know how to interact with their environment. As recyclers they are experts in sustainability, transforming fossil fuels without generating waste. As parasites with metamorphic capacities, they engender diseases that are central to the health of all other living beings. And by communicating symbiotically with plants to survive, fungi inspire me to think about my own relationships differently. At the heart of this project is my intention to create an awareness of the unique skills and qualities that the study of mycology can offer. Whether it‘s the meaning of a deep experience of nature, cultivating healthy food, revitalizing land or making connections between people, exploring the capacities of fungi allows me to experience the fertility of life and death. From traditional gathering to mushroom cultivation, from art to activism, from citizen science to the hard sciences: a rapidly expanding myco-culture is myceliating around the world. To me, making a film is first of all an experience of sharing. I’m looking for complicity during those unique encounters. My ethos as an artist is largely influenced by ideas found in deep ecology in which all beings are seen as having an inherent value, awareness, and intelligence. Sharing intelligence might be the only way to create a future when living within the endangered ecosystems of our time in which man-made disturbances exceed all other geological forces. Our era is one of unprecedented change and during this Great Acceleration, it will become increasingly necessary for all of us to move towards the fringes. What will we choose to do at those edges?
About the Filmmaker
Driven by her love of curious encounters, Marion Neumann is an intuiti- ve fi lmmaker. Her work is rooted in personal experience, navigating bet- ween documentary and experimental approaches, weaving narratives between science, poetry, and contemporary social issues. Her work aspi- res to create a sense of wonder to refl ect on ways of being in this world. THE MUSHROOM SPEAKS is her 2nd feature fi lm. As a cinematographer her illustrious collaborators include Jiska Rickels, Pauline Julier, Michel Fav- re, Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel. Based in Geneva, she co-foun- ded an artist collective and continues to work with fungi.
Mushroom Water
Roger Horn
2:35 (Germany, Switzerland, and Zimbabwe)
For health. for Healing. For Hallucinating. Based on real events.
About the Filmmaker
Roger Horn is an artist and professor in the Visual & Media Anthropology MA program at HMKW Berlin. His films have screened widely at festival such as the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, and the 21st, 22nd, & 24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festivals.
MycoMythologies: Infrastructures for Each Other
Kaitlin Bryson and Saša Spečal
13:08 (U.S.A. and Slovenia)
MycoMythologies: Infrastructures for Each Other summons human, mycelial and computer-vision-agencies to join together in a performance of entanglement, providing understanding that the practices of human and other-than-human infrastructures are made with and informed by one another. Working with the AI network of styleGAN - trained on datasets of human faces, mycelium, roots, rivers, pipelines, roadways and extraction facilities - infrastructures in the latent space are generated to enfold and erode into each other. Becoming infrastructures for each other. The video essay is an attempt at polyphonic montage that allows the digital image to be formed with agency of multiple human and non-human forces while revealing its constitutive parts - the pixels. The infrastructure that enables humans to generate and see digital images is exposed with pixel sorting flow , hinting at the fact that digital images are one of the tools that enables human beings to see beyond our species, thus its production should be questioned constantly.
About the Filmmaker
Kaitlin Bryson is an ecological artist concerned with environmental and social justice. Her art practice and activism are focused on biological and metaphysical applications of healing, responding to the pervasive persistence of harm in the world. Bryson primarily works with fungi as resource, metaphor and collaborators for her artworks. Saša Spačal is a postmedia artist working at the intersection of living systems research, contemporary and sound art. Her work focuses primarily on the posthuman condition, where human beings exist and act as one of many elements in the ecosystem and not as sovereigns.
Pink Mushroom Playing Synth (WT)
Joke Van den Heuvel
4:40 (Portugal)
Based on the stories of “The Camille Stories: Children of Compost” by Donna Haraway, a new science fiction story is told representing 4 symbionts. The Pink Mushroom symbolizes hope on earth, resisting the apocalyptic thinking of having to flee to another planet.
The video work came to life at Movimento (PT), a collective making specified on play, non-competitive work processes, co-creation, collaboration and sharing.
About the Filmmaker
Joke Van den Heuvel (www.jokevandenheuvel.com), a visual artist living and working between Belgium and Portugal, engages in nonlinear storytelling through a practice of collecting and registering with a need to ask what else is going on – everywhere, inside and outside in contrast to a progress thinking society through the means of a multitude of objects, daily registration and thoughts: the overlooked details … or a world of plants and fungi.
Planet Fungi - Northeast India
Catherine Marciniak and Stephen Axford - Planet Fungi
50:00 (Australia and India)
In the ultimate armchair travel adventure, the hero of fungi lovers across the globe, photographer Stephen Axford, is on the hunt for the answers we all want to know. What fungi is edible? What fungi is poisonous? And, why do scientists now think fungi is absolutely essential to life on this planet? Stephen Axfords’s images of mushrooms have been featured in leading science and nature magazines across the globe. His exquisite time-lapses of fungi growing are showcased in the award-winning documentaries Planet Earth 2, Fantastic Fungi, Hostile Planet, Our Planet and The Kingdom – How Fungi Made The Earth. Teamed up with filmmaker partner Catherine Marciniak, they join a global team of scientists and conservationists on a mission to document and conserve the wild fungi in some of the richest and most biodiverse places on the planet, jungles that are continually threatened with habitat destruction and now climate change. The fungi safari in northeast India is part of that mission. In this documentary, he is in north east India at the invitation of the not for profit organisation, Balipara Foundation. One of their projects is mapping the biodiversity of the forests of the Eastern Himalayas and they’ve just added fungi to the list. However, the real heroes and experts of “Planet Fungi – north east India” are the tribal people who have lived on the edge of the forest fringe for generations. They take Axford and the audience on a journey into the extraordinary, beautiful and sometimes bizarre world of fungi. They share their knowledge of the fungi that kills, the fungi they eat, the fungi that is used for medicine and the fungi that is important to feed the jungle. We discover 34 species of fungi that are possibly new to science, including an extremely bright, luminous mushroom … which is very exciting. In “Planet Fungi – north east India” you’ll discover that world of mushrooms that is truly magical, and their variety and beauty will blow your mind
About the Filmmaker
Presenter, photographer and time-lapse videographer Stephen Axford's images of mushrooms have featured in leading science and nature magazines across the globe, and in many documentaries including Planet earth 2, Fantastic Fungi, Hostile Planet, Our Planet and The Kingdom; how fungi made the earth. He even has a mushroom named after him – Panaeolus axfordii. He has been invited to document the fungi in Nepal, India, China, Myanmar and Chile, and of course it is a constant obsession in the fungi hotspot of his home on the NSW North coast. Catherine Marciniak has had a successful international career as a documentary director and cinematographer. Credits include ‘Steel City’, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, the ‘Life Series’, ‘Hospital-an unhealthy business, ‘Dino Stampede’ and 'Beyond the Royal Veil'. Over the past decade, Catherine has worked as a Senior Features Reporter at Australia's public broadcaster the ABC. She has won many awards for her documentaries and was a Finalist in the Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism in 2019.
Puffballs & Earthstars
David Fenster
5:45 (U.S.A.)
A sonic, visual, celebration of some of the puffballs and earthstars I've loved and assisted in spore dispersement.
About the Filmmaker
David Fenster's films link the cultural and historical with the ecological and mystical — celebrating the specificity of a particular place. His work has shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, the New York Times, HBO, the Hammer Museum, and many other museums, festivals and media outlets.
Solutions (Tie Breaker)
Jennie E. Park
2:30 (U.S.A.)
Under what conditions will something contradict itself, become fractured, replicate the oppositional framework in which it is nested, or — alternatively — embrace its other side or half, or become whole or integrated? One view of “difference” entails incompatibility, and the other, integration. Litmus paper’s color-changing ability comes from lichens, which are symbiotic fungi-algae associations that extend their intrinsic mutualism outward. Thousands of lichen species proliferate on many surfaces in a nonparasitic manner, using the surfaces as substrates and serving as substrates for other organisms. Biologist Scott Gilbert noted, “We are all lichens,” meaning human bodies are also associations of co-functioning organisms, rather than entities siloed apart from nature or each other. Here, clouds of lichen anchor and buoy the test and dream of democracy; the color break in the ties indicates not a “winner,” but the deconstruction of the oppositional, violent logic of “other” itself. Seeing ourselves reflected in all that appears “other,” we are compelled to engage with all that surrounds us with care and responsibility, rather than fear or exploitation. As lichens are incredibly diverse, so are we; like lichens, we have the potential and power to ground and express our differences through mutualism, rather than separatism or suppression.
About the Filmmaker
Jennie E. Park is an artist, writer and curator interested in interdisciplinarity, integrated approaches to healing and honesty, and structural social change. (In)vulnerability and (in)visibility, and world-generating dynamics of entanglement and of truthful paradox, recur as practices, tools or obstacles she explores in relation to her work. She is currently an MFA student in Art and Creative Writing with a concentration in Integrated Media at California Institute of the Arts, and has written for Los Angeles-based Artillery Magazine and other arts publications.
SPINELESS
Alison Pouliot
3:40 (Switzerland)
SPINELESS spotlights myriad tiny spineless lives and their intimate alliances with fungi. From gastropod politics to blowfly banquets, fungi provide the stage for endless arthropod antics. The foundation of forest life, fungi offer invertebrates haunts and hideouts, fodder and feasts, albeit with the occasional skirmish and showdown. The forest floor thrums with frenzied enterprise, but when the ruckus gets too much, a forest elder has the final word.
About the Filmmaker
Alison Pouliot is an ecologist and photographer with a special interest in forgotten corners and lifeforms; the fungal, the spineless and those that slip between the cracks. Author of The Allure of Fungi and Wild Mushrooming, Alison’s research spans both northern and southern hemispheres where she is actively involved in fungal research, awareness and conservation.
Symfaunic
UCF School of Visual Arts and Design
7:37 (U.S.A.)
A young faun named Clove challenges the harmony of her forest glade when her new taste in music clashes with her brother’s teachings. The way her radical new style affects the forest around them goes at odds with everything Cornelius knows of tradition and stability, and he must choose between her happiness and his role in keeping the sanctity of their home.
About the Filmmaker
The Symfaunic Team is a group of 13 up-and-coming student animators from the University of Central Florida. Led by directors Erin Bergin and Darby Kate Snyder, our team worked for two years to produce and develop this heartfelt story about family, fauns, flowers, and psychedelic fungi. We came together through the tribulations of learning new software to enter into the world of digital media, found a way to translate our illustrative story into a 3D medium, and worked for months with our composer to develop a unique and sweeping score to bring our film to life.
Terres Amères
Axel Cohen
30:42 (France)
"Terres Amères" is a film on mushrooms and their abilities to revitalize desolated lands. The film also questions the industrial mindset and its capacity to work with natural elements such as fungi.
About the Filmmaker
Born in France but raised in California until I was 11, I always dreamed of working in the film industry. I started my career as a Paris-based editor working for different French artists. A few years and ideas later, I wanted to have a shot at filmmaking. That's when I've been accepted into Luc Besson's film school and started making films of my own.
Voie Lactée: Le Roquefort, Le Camembert, & Le Valencay
Cyprien Nozières
5:40 (France)
Over the course of several thousand years mankind has appropriated its environment. It has been coagulated, fermented, drained and matured… Made into product. The series of 10 short films Voie Lactée uses different forms of cheese to showcase the conflicts between human modernity and nature. (3 of these short films will be playing in the FFF).
About the Filmmaker
After studying Fine Arts in Marseille and Poitiers, Cyprien moved to Paris. He works as director of music videos, animator / operator compositing for feathure-lenght and regularly collaborates with contemporary artists Winshluss and Alain Bublex. Good night little tomato is his first film.
