FRIDAY, SEPT 12 / 18:00 / CINEMA ELVIRE POPESCO
Born in the rift between reality and the intangible, existence and disappearance, the films in the Motion Signals program see movement as a mode of knowledge or a ritual of transformation. Bodies drift through oceans, unravel in dreams, and pulse against ever-shifting landscapes, hovering between obsessive control and complete surrender. They emerge on screen like primordial memories, suspended between clear meaning and inscrutable mystery.
* Some of the short films have a strobing effect that may affect photo-sensible viewers.
BALEINES
8’23”, 2025, BE
D: Sylvain Dufayard
A camera moves between the bodies of four women, who maintain a strange verticality despite their immersion in the ocean. Like sleeping whales, they let themselves drift gently, without fear or restraint, their faces clinging to the surface of the water.
HUN TUN
14’58”, 2024, CZ
D: Magdalena Hejzlarová
A young woman measures her strength against the king of chaos himself. The more she wants to win, the less she succeeds. Through a mythological story, the author looks back to the time when she discovered that there are things in life she will never control.
ÎLE TÊTE NUE
9’23”, 2025, FR
D: Aitor Ibáñez
C: Francesca Lattuada
A hill emerges, a stone unfurls: since the film is projected digitally, we'll say it's a nursery counting rhyme, we're trying to count beyond one. It's not sure that we'll succeed.
ELLEX / ELLEY
11’26”, 2025, CA
D: Valeria Galluccio
C: Valeria Galluccio
ElleX, an androgynous being with a slender body, moving through a suspended world beneath a shower of bright comets. As the ground tilts, her body releases glowing pearls, a hidden vital substance. Unbalanced, ElleX embarks on a pilgrimage through the confined space of her world, with the pearls transforming into ElleY, her clone. The two replicas engage in an intense sensory exchange, sharing energy and pleasure, transforming into luminous flowers on a white canvas. At the end of their dance, they reveal their essence of light and vital energy.
NOTHING EXISTS UNTIL IT MOVES
8’59”, 2025, IE
D: Hutchinson | Kemp
Nothing Exists Until It Moves uses a computer vision technique called frame differencing to extract and emphasise all movement within a moving image. A body encounters an unseen environment, revealed only through its disturbance. The earth shifts, stones scatter, and bushes tremble toward consciousness, unveiling the subtle violence of existence.
THALAMUS
20’, 2025, PL
D: Natalia Lis
Thalamus invites the viewer on a journey through the terrain of the dream—where the self dissolves into something older, deeper, and collectively known. Emerging from a laboratory process, the film explores the language of movement as a means to access what lies beneath thought—where images surface before understanding, and symbols emerge like traces of forgotten origins.
The film takes its name from a central brain structure that relays sensory information and helps regulate sleep, consciousness, and alertness. It is a neural gateway—where perception becomes experience, and sensation turns into meaning. Thalamus mirrors this function, acting as a cinematic threshold between what is known and what is intuited.
THE CHILDREN OF ORPHEUS
8’18”, 2025, UK
D: Derkan Doğan
An experimental short film exploring the chaotic and unifying synthesis of music, sound, and dance within London's busy and maddening cityscape.