*Note*: daytime screenings take place at The Dracula’s Ghost Riders Club, while the evening screenings are hosted at the **Scala Cinema, unless otherwise indicated.
Fifth Movement: Politics of Music
10:30 | Introduction to the movement by Artistic Director Stefano Rabolli Pansera
10:40 | Il televisore che piange, Fabio Mauri
1972 · IT · b/n · 3’
A happening conceived and produced for Radiotelevisione Italiana, broadcast on Rai Uno on 22nd March 1972 and later re-presented in recorded form as an artist’s video.
10:43 | Whose Voice Is This?, Dana Iskakova
2024 · DE/KZ/UZ · colour · Ru, Kk, Uz/en · 14’
Through dubbed voices, shifting soundscapes, and soundtracks, the film traces the evolution of sound, speech, and music in Central Asian cinema from the 1960s to the 1990s.
10:56 | Tomorrow, again, Mona Benyamin
2023 · PS · colour · Ar/en · 11’ · In competition
Tomorrow, again stages a dysfunctional news broadcast consisting of different segments which recreate and react to various prominent daily catastrophes from Palestine. Instead of a spoken narrative, the film resorts to exaggerated emotional and physical displays, and utilises fragmented and often conflicting testimonies, doppelgängers, and a surrealist visual language to appeal to notions of truth and fiction, and different temporalities.
11:07 | Bruits, Absalon
1993 · FR · colour · Fr/en · 3′
In a stark, uninterrupted performance, Absalon screams until his voice is exhausted, turning the body into a site of resistance, vulnerability, and confrontation.
11:10 | No Future, Christoph Büchel
2008 · AU · colour · En · 6’
Conceived for the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, Revolutions – Forms That Turn, Christoph Büchel’s No Future brings together four women in their eighties to form a punk band and continuously rehearse the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen (1977)—originally titled No Future—inside the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Situated at a site marked by the arrival of the First Fleet with convicts and marines in 1788 and the beginning of British colonisation of Australia, the work transforms punk’s anthem of rebellion into a meditation on generational reversal, colonial history and endurance.
11:15 | Father land: Wilhelm Reich, Jacques Morali, et al., Jonathan Horowitz
2025 · US · colour · En · 30’ · Swiss premiere
Weaving together clips from Hollywood movies and documentary biographies, Father land: Wilhelm Reich, Jacques Morali, et al. explores the psychology of hyper masculinity as it is manifested in both gay culture of the 1970s and authoritarian political ideologies.
11:45 | La gola, Diego Marcon
2024 · AT/DE/UK/CH · colour · En · 21’
La Gola, translating both to “the throat,” and “gluttony,” is an epistolary melodrama. Over the course of eight letters, Gianni describes the successive dishes of an exquisite banquet to Rossana, while Rossana gives Gianni an account of the progressive decline of her mother’s health. The two characters are played by hyper realistic mannequins, with their eyes modelled and animated in CG.
12:05 | Talk with Diego Marcon
***14:00 | REFLECTION: Marinella Senatore in conversation
A conversation in collaboration with the Kulturstiftung St. Moritz, as part of the «REFLECTION» art project, from late August to October 2026.
15:00 | Jardin Nocturno, Leiko Ikemura
2022 · colour · 5’ · In competition
A large-format video projection composed entirely of close-ups from Leiko Ikemura’s dark abstract paintings transforms the stillness of night into a subtly shifting, dreamlike landscape, where shadow and light pulse in continuous motion, evoking inner worlds of creation, crisis, and renewal through immersive sound and an everevolving horizon of black and color.
15:05 | Talk with Leiko Ikemura
15:30 | Talk with Adam Szymczyk and Ross Birrell
15:50 | Muslim Shaggan, Ross Birrell
2025 · UK · colour · 7’ · In competition
A single take close up film of improvised hand gestures by traditional Gwalior gharana vocalist Muslim Shaggan, filmed during Shaggan’s residency at Cove Park, Scotland.
15:57 | Hand Conduction, Ross Birrell
2021 · UK · b/n · 4’ · Swiss premiere
Film collaboration with Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) recorded over Zoom during Covid-19 lockdown, featuring ‘hand conduction’ by Raymond MacDonald. Commissioned for online 10th Miami Performance Festival International 2021.
16:02 | Quartet, Ross Birrell & David Harding
2012 · MX · colour · Es · 6’
Quartet is a single-channel film consisting of a single-take tracking shot of recitals of music performed by members of the Orquestra Esperanza Azteca de Ciudad Juarez, a youth orchestra founded in 2009 at a time when Juarez was considered the most violent city in the world.
16:09 | Duet, Ross Birrell
2011 · DE · colour · 5’ · European premiere
Duet is a split screen single-channel film edit of a two-channel installation featuring a site-specific performance of lift me up for I am dying: a duet for two violas composed by Ross Birrell, performed by Palestinian and Israeli musicians, Tyme Khleifi (Ramallah) and Avri Levitan (Tel Aviv). Duet was filmed on location in the WWII bomb-damaged Spiegelsaal of the Clärchens Ballhaus, Berlin, 10 July 2011.
16:15 | A Beautiful Living Thing, Ross Birrell
2015 · UK · colour · 13’
Filmed in the remains of the burned out Mackintosh Library and the Glasgow School of Art in late December 2014 and early January 2015, A Beautiful Living Thing features a composition for solo violin devised from Mackintosh’s description of a work of art performed inside the ruined library by Bill Chandler (RSNO).
16:28 | The Passion (Blue), Ross Birrell
2022 · UK · colour · 2’ · World premiere
This audio-visual work in progress consists of multiple layers of the iconic close-up sequences of Renée Jeanne Falconetti from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent classic, The Passion of Jean of Arc (1928), mixed with audio from the historic ‘Jean of Arc’ bell of Notre-Dame de Rouen Cathedral.
16:30 | Break
16:40 | Dhikr, Mengyun Han
2026 · UK/UZ · colour · En, Fa/en · 21’ · World premiere · In competition
Conceived as a sound work, Dhikr transforms the layered acoustics of Uzbek textile workshops—mechanized looms, women’s voices, prayer, and industrial roar, into a cinematic meditation that juxtaposes Soviet machine devotion with Sufi remembrance, revealing maternal lineage, historical erasure, and the haunting rhythms of industrial modernity.
17:00 | Records of love, Binha Haase
2026 · DE · colour · Ar, En, It/en · 14’ · World premiere · In competition
In the experimental film Records of Love, two drag performers and a classical opera singer en travesti transform an abandoned theatre into a stage where Arabic electro, experimental soul, and opera intertwine, exploring queer love, identity, and belonging.
17:15 | La Bouche, Camilo Restrepo
2017 · FR · colour · Sus/en · 19’
A man learns his daughter has been brutally murdered by her husband. Time stands still as he oscillates between the need for solace and his urge for revenge. A musical featuring Guinean percussion master, Mohamed “Red Devil” Bangoura, loosely based on his own story.
17:35 | Talk with Camilo Restrepo
**20:00 | Talk with Ian Rusty Egan and Martin Deeson
Introduction to «Blitzed!» with protagonist Rusty Egan and Martin Deeson
**20:30 | Blitzed!, Bruce Ashley and Michael Donald
2020 · UK · colour · En · 90’
In the 1980s, a generation of trendsetters gathers at London’s Club Blitz to share their love for fashion, music and freedom of self-expression.
22:30 | Prize-Giving Ceremony at The Dracula’s Ghost Riders Club
23:00 | Afterparty with DJ set by Rusty Egan at The Dracula’s Ghost Riders Club
**Venue: Scala Cinema
***Venue: Forum Paracelsus