Close-ups (the Near) off-beats (the far out)

Join us this Friday at 21h for films in the garden 🎞 close-up (the near) off beat (the far out) // a microscopic film festival

As the night slowly falls, cellular beings come swaying into the yard during this serie of microscopic films. Join us for a hypnotic seance, in which atomic characters trip and bop in a kinetic, connecting dance.

Fun fact: The films ‘a body called life’ and ‘many’ both spring from an encounter with the same self-thought biologist: two different pictures of the same exceptional person

The films:

Many (work-in-proces) - Rob Jacobs & Cem Weiss
15 min

Over a century ago, a queer writer wrote a book on the interconnectedness of all beings. The word "one" appears about 4000 times over 40 pages. Fifty years ago, a choir picked up the book and sung it from start to finish. It took them about six hours. Today a young micro-biologist is looking through their window and sees that all being are interconnected still, so they get up and join the protest outside.

A Body Called Life - Spencer MacDonald
15 min | 2024

A self-isolated young human known as "James" delves into the hidden world of microscopic organisms, forging a tender connection with these nearly invisible creatures and developing a massive online following, as he seeks to understand his own place in the cosmos and accept the scars of his past.

Reclamining Vision - Marjolijn Dijkman en Toril Johannessen
25 min | 2019

Captured through a light microscope, ‘Reclaiming Vision’ features a diverse cast of microorganisms, sampled from the brackish waters of the inner Oslo Fjord, alongside algae, cultivated at the University of Oslo. The film reveals various processes in the water that are hidden to the naked human eye. By investigating the brackish water, its inhabitants, its properties, and the traces left by human activities, the film is a reflection upon the relationship we humans have with our surroundings, especially through what we cannot see.

Asphere (work-in-proces) - Maika Garnica, Aiko Devriendt and Thijs Paijmans
2 min

This work in progress is a test on working with afterimages and latent images that only exist in between.
Asphere is neither spherical nor flat; it is a kind of in-between space. A space between Maika Garnica, Aiko Devriendt and Thijs Paijmans, and the public, the intangible place in space and time in which all sorts of things emerge and happen during the creation and performance of their work. The space acts as a carrier of sound and light, which together form images.