Guided by thousands of flickering candles and the light of the silvery moon, you’ll wander along the Cemetery’s winding paths and have chance encounters with musicians, performers, moving images, and storytellers. This year’s theme – lovesick – celebrates the pleasures and pains of romance, and the impermanence of all the things that we hold dear.
The creative team for Nightfall includes Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, Death of Classical, Morbid Anatomy, The Moth, Pioneer Works, and Rooftop Films.
The Films
Love Tapes
Wendy Clarke | USA | 3
A selection of lovesick stories from Wendy Clarke's Love Tapes (1977-2011) — a collection of video recordings of 2,500 people from diverse backgrounds who share their personal feelings about love.
Hi Stranger
Kirsten Lepore | USA | 3
I made this film especially for you. I needed to check in with you. I needed to tell you how I feel.
Serpentine
Bronwyn Maloney | USA | 3
In the midst of reflective fantasy, a young woman's inner thoughts arouse a surreal exploration of sensuality, self-esteem, and deeply rooted fears. Her arrival is one of strength, beauty, and greater character.
True Love in Pueblo Textil
Horatio Baltz | Cuba, US | 5
Nine-year-old Maribel explains to us how it feels to be stricken with the world's oldest affliction: love.
Magda
Chel White | USA | 4
A first love is corrupted as a man recalls his affair with a beautiful circus contortionist in this stop-motion animation of wooden manikins. At its heart, Magda is an off-center parable about lost innocence and the corruptibility of human nature. Visually, the film explores the use of extreme telephoto lenses, creating enigmatic scenes that reveal themselves over time, and ghostly figures drifting in-and-out of focus. Magda is filmmaker Chel White’s third adaptation of a story by radio artist and writer Joe Frank.
Hildegarde’s Piano
Alexander W. Lewis | US | 3
Hildegarde’s piano belonged to her late husband - a music lover and an amateur pianist. At 93 and no longer able to take care of herself, Hildegarde must leave the New York City apartment they had lived in for the past 55 years. She cannot take the piano with her. In this mostly visual piece, Hildegarde watches as piano movers meticulously disassemble and remove this beloved object, confronting her with change and loss.
ROW-cub
Neena Pathak | USA | 4
A broken-hearted granddaughter's search for understanding. Aaji (Grandma) is in her 90s, proficient in English but more comfortable in Marathi, and hard-of-hearing. Mithu is in her 30s, okay at Marathi (but speaks in a stilted, error-filled, and somewhat childlike way common to many second-generation immigrants), and heartbroken. The piece explores how bearing witness to each other in a family context can be hard and fraught, even when it might be worth it.
Howard
Julia Pott | UK | 4
Do you remember when we met? You were brilliant, witty, gorgeous to look at...something's changed.
The Darkest Truth About Love
Hannah Jacobs | UK | 2
Animation for The School of Life based on a short piece of writing by Alain De Botton.
Paradise
Ton Meijdam, Thom Snels, Béla Zsigmond | Netherlands | 3
"Paradise" explores the religious themes of corruption, temptation and debauchery of the Fallen World in Bosch's painting - in a seething mass of chaotic severity. The creatures that populate the indoor playground embody the excesses of the 21st century Western civilization - from a horny Hello Kitty to a coke hunting penis-snake. From an incarnate spybot into headless fried chickens. Consumerism, selfishness, escapism, the lure of eroticism, vanity and decadence. All characters are metaphors for our society where loners swarm their digital dream world.
