Sustainability

UNC Greensboro

FILM COMPETITION

12th Annual UNCG International Sustainability Shorts Film Competition




An annual short film competition held in the Spring semester that incorporates and addresses the elements of UNCG's definition of sustainability: social equity, the environment, the economy, and aesthetics. As part of the annual UNCG Sustainability Film & Discussion Series, the competition is an opportunity to share new artistic works in the international community that addresses the urgency of the climate crisis and acknowledges the power of film to connect, communicate, and convince.


This year's films are judged by T'Shari White, a PhD candidate in UNCG's Department of Geography, Environment, and Sustainability. And by Jean Michel Rolland, a long time musician, painter, and filmmaker (and previous competition winner) based in France.


Winners receive a cash prize ($300, $200, $100) and will be announced on the website in early May. Vote for the Audience Choice Award here.


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MOTHER NATURE
Maisha Maene


MOTHER NATURE by Maisha Maene

Viewing Password: MotherNature@2020


Disgusted by the already deplorable behavior of the human being towards his nature (environment), NURU, a woman citizen of the planet with an overflowing imagination, decides to paint the engine oil which she uses as metaphor to pass a message to the future generation.


Maisha Maene is an Afro-Futurist RD Congolese filmmaker and photographer. He participates in several workshops and cinema masterclasses at the Yole! Africa and R. P.D.FI (Film Production and Diffusion Network) in Goma.


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Total Eclipse
Robert Ladislas Derr


Total Eclipse by Robert Ladislas Derr

Parental advisory: This video contains nudity.


Very good indicators of climate change, most glaciers have shrunk by 50 percent over the last 100 years. At Mt. Hood, Oregon I position myself between two trees and slowly raise as my posterior eclipses the mountain. The relationship between humans and the environment is complicated and imbalanced. How do we work with nature when technology and society requires its exploitation?


Robert Ladislas Derr is a visual artist making performances from live to intervention, videos, photographs, and multimedia installations. He has exhibited and performed widely at venues, including the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (US), Canberra Contemporary Art Space (Australia), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (Germany), Wexner Center for the Arts (US), LIVE Performance Art Biennale (Canada), and Irish Film Institute (Ireland). Derr earned his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati.


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Fragility of Nature (2014)
Abdoul-Ganiou Dermani


Fragility of Nature by Abdoul-Ganiou Dermani

This video explores the way we treat nature in all its forms: humans, animals, and environment.


Abdoul-Ganiou Dermani is a Togolese visual artist based in Stuttgart, Germany.


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1850
Natasha Jensen


1850 by Natasha Jensen

Viewing Password: 1850


I am examining the garden as an active site of power. Through historical archives and the history of classification, we are able to unearth the colonial and ecological issues found within, to draw attention to an ideological struggle that is taking place in these seemingly passive spaces. The garden is both a natural and unnatural space when we consider the amount of human intervention and cultivation that takes place within.


Natasha Jensen is an interdisciplinary artist from Moh’kins’tsis/Calgary, Treaty 7 territory in the Southern Alberta region, Canada. Jensen completed her BFA at Alberta University of the Arts (formerly Alberta College of Art and Design) in 2013 and currently resides in Edinburgh, Scotland after completing their MA in Contemporary Art Practice at the Edinburgh College of Art. Natasha has exhibited in online exhibitions, galleries, and festivals in Canada and the UK.


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The Dreaming Biome
Jeremy Newman


The Dreaming Biome by Jeremy Newman

This experimental film immerses viewers in a nature dream. Viewers watch plant and animal life in an ecosystem that appears natural, but doesn't physically exist. Some of these elements, juxtaposed via editing, are miles apart in actuality. The editing also imparts a visual rhythm that echoes breathing. The visuals are familiar, yet strange. They are arrived at by various editing techniques. Ultimately, the experience is aesthetic and made visceral by digital manipulations. The surreal visuals highlight the beauty and wonder of nature, but they're haunting. A glove floating in water is a key image, literally pollution and symbolic of drowning. In this film, there is life, and these living things are already ghosts.


Jeremy Newman has directed numerous documentary and experimental videos. His work is frequently shown at film festivals and has also aired on several PBS stations. He is Associate Professor of Communications at Stockton University. Newman earned an MFA in Media Arts from The Ohio State University.


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An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language
Izzy Catterall


An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language by Izzy Catterall

My vision for this film was to create an urgency for change in physical actions as well as perception regarding the worldwide issues of climate change and animal abuse. By bringing footage of humans closely together with footage of animals, I hope that this film can bridge the gap between animals and humans not only in terms of hierarchy, but also in terms of how people tend to view them as a food/product rather than a sentient being - often referred to as speciesism.


Izzy Catterall is a a recently graduated freelance contemporary dancer from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London.


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Prossimo (Forthcoming)
Emanuele Dainotti


Prossimo (Forthcoming) by Emanuele Dainotti

Viewing Password: spillover


A spillover event occurs when a reservoir population with a high prevalence of pathogens comes into contact with a new host population.


Emanuele Dainotti (b. 1987 in Milano, Italy. Lives and works in Antwerpen, Belgium) is an artist and filmmaker.


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#SOMOSAMAZONIA
Joao Inacio


#SOMOSAMAZONIA by Joao Inacio

Viewing Password: amazon123@


Does the Brazilian Acre state exist? So many tell jokes without knowing the risks and tensions faced by this Brazilian state that has in itself one of the largest and most threatened heritage of humanity... the Amazon. Does the world understand the importance of for the environment?


Joao Inacio is filmmaker and script writer. His films have been screened and awarded prizes in Brazil and abroad. Producer of several types of films, his documentaries with themes related to the defense of the environment stand out.


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Chronoscope
Sara Bonaventura


Viewing Password: aguapotable


“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” R. Buckminster Fuller The main trigger concept is growth that incorporates degrowth (or vice versa). Chronoscope is apparently an entropic way to see the past, but what if the past tells us more about the future than we usually think? Past and future are interconnected in this fleeting present. Ephemeralization is not the answer maybe, but this ephemeral symbol, the butterfly, stands for self-organizing, self-regulated, self-sufficient – but never fixed or rigid – systems in nature. It is a symbol of permanent metamorphosis. The split-screen reveals two complementary visions: a chiastic structure, between a flashback and a flash-forward, that resembles the cyclical pattern of life.


Sara Bonaventura is an Italian visual artist and educator. She works at the intersection between visual and media arts, lens based and new media. Her video works have been screened worldwide; at the NYC Anthology Film Archives, the San Francisco Independent Short Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Miami New Media Festival, at Rome MACRO Museum, the Cinemateca do MAM in Rio for Dobra Festival, the Boston Cyber Arts Gallery and more. She won the Veneto Region Award at the 10th LFF and a merit for the Sino per NIIO Illumination Art Prizes; she has been selected for several residencies, ie by Joan Jonas at Fundacion Botin (ES).


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Selfie
Nayra Sanz Fuentes


Selfie by Nayra Sanz Fuentes

Viewing Password: EIFLES


This conceptual and sensory miniature rethinks the concept of the social (self) portrait by playing with the distortions of a Big Brother impassively watching over us. A technological state of permanent control, of mechanization of a daily life ruled by a human-made inventiveness that has ended up taking control of our lives.


Nayra Sanz Fuentes is a director, screenwriter, editor and producer. Her filmography includes one feature film and eight fiction and non-fiction short films that have been exhibited in cultural centers, universities and festivals such as IDFA, Busan, Málaga or Alcances. In them she reflects on the construction of our contemporary societies in relation to the pulse that is maintained between nature, man and machine. She is a programmer at the MiradasDoc festival and the DOCMA Cycle, among others. As a teacher, she has taught courses in centers such as the LENS school, LAV Master or San Antonio de Los Baños.


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Anthropogenic Horizon
Brandon Bauer


Anthropogenic Horizon is a single-channel video work exploring the concept of the Great Acceleration and the atomic origins of the Anthropocene. The video combines footage of the Operation Dominic nuclear test (Christmas Island, 1962) and the Ilulissat Glacier Calving Event (Western Greenland, 2008) to create a metaphorical anthropogenic landscape. This work was part of the installation “Fragments of the Acceleration” which was developed through a combination of archival research, research into scientific, historical, and cultural perspectives of the Great Acceleration, the Anthropocene, and the climate crisis, as well as an exploration of contemporary perspectives of the climate crisis as represented in broadcast media. The larger installation references the history of the Great Acceleration, the development of climate science, and speaks to the political urgency of our present moment.


Brandon Bauer, MFA, is an associate professor of art at St. Norbert College in De Pere, WI, U.S.A. He uses art as a space for ethical inquiry exploring issues relating to terrorism, nuclear abolition, and the climate crisis by examining critical histories embedded in media ephemera. His work utilizes photography, video, digital graphics, and installation. Brandon’s work has been exhibited and screened internationally including at the Aces(s) electronic media festival, Pau, France; the European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck, Germany; the Carnival of e-Creativity, Shillong, India. He has published in journals such as Media-N, Hz, and Arts & International Affairs.


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Do Worry, Kyoko (The Spaceship Cannot Withstand)
Kenji Kojima


Albert Einstein once predicted, "If the Bee Disappeared Off the Face of the Earth, Man Would Only Have Four Years Left to Live." The artwork "Do Worry, Kyoko (The Spaceship Cannot Withstand)" shot 3 short videos of bees in Central Park, New York. Computer algorithm created musical notes from pixel data (binary = 0, 1) of the video images and played by computer piano. Sustainability is not only one region issue. It must be considered global. The algorithm rewrote the original binary data to ASCII. It was assigned to 128 European characters and symbols. They were read by the OS's speech function of three languages, Kyoko in Japanese, Audrey in French, and Anna in German. The alphabet was read in their European languages, and non-European languages follow the English pronunciation. The numbers were read in their own languages. Some symbols could not be read.


Kenji Kojima is a visual artist. He has been experimenting with the relationships between perception and cognition, technology, music, and visual art using computer technologies. He was born in Japan and moved to New York in 1980. He painted contemporary tempera paintings that were medieval art materials and techniques. A personal computer was improved rapidly during the ’80s. In the early 90's he switched his artwork to digital. He studied computer programming by himself. His early digital works were archived in the New Museum - Rhizome, New York. He developed the application "RGB MusicLab" which converted music from a still image in 2007. He has created an interdisciplinary artwork “Techno Synesthesia” series exploring the relationship between visual and audio sensibilities. The project "Techno Synesthesia" has been exhibited in New York, and media art festivals worldwide, including Europe, Brazil, Middle East, India, Asia, and online art exhibitions.


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Water Yoke Contemporary
Andrej Polukord

During my stay in NAC (Nida Art Colony) as a resident in December 2020, there was an tap-water accident - the water supply were canceled for a while. One option was a store 2 km away. I made quite primitive tool for carrying drinking water from local supermarket towards my apartment - Water Yoke. I tried to understand on where from and how water would be brought in the contemporary world of capitals.


Andrej Polukord is an artist based in Vienna and Vilnius. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and co-recipient of the 2016 Kunsthalle Prize Vienna, draws on painting, installation, performance, and video art to create unpredictable environments and absurd situations that produce double meanings and ambiguity: “What especially interests me is creating a feeling of surprise and unpredictability. Equally important to me are double meanings and ambiguities, which above all play a crucial role in my performances. The absurd liberates us from the seriousness that otherwise always sets the tone in our life. And performance should have a close relationship to life; that’s the only way to make it very emotional and understandable.” Polukord usually finds creative inspiration in the objects around him and observed situations. They become a point of departure for staging surprising actions or creating extraordinary objects intended to shake spectators out of the rut of traditional thinking and direct their attention to the hidden sense of events and ambiguity of the world.


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DIJAMEH
Amirali Mirderikvand


DIJAMEH by Amirali Mirderikvand

A young man is looking at his grandfather photo in an old home and remembers action of grandfather in past.