This Is Not an Olive Tree (2017)

Esto no es un olivo

2017 | Spain | Carlos Arteiro | ★★★

Filmed to mimic the effects of a tree-shaking harvester, Carlos Arteiro's This Is Not an Olive Tree is an interesting but underdeveloped experimental short film that proves stimulating on a formal level, but unengaging on an intellectual one.

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"A theoretical exercise can stem from a physical one: using the camera as if it was the vibrating device placed on the olive trees for the harvest of its fruit, the final result is a series of original and intriguing images. The camera shakes, gets in and out of focus, and we don’t exactly know what is happening. At first this is a strange disorientation, but then you get used to it through the cyclical mechanical noise that joins the images. The words of a peaceful female voice allows you to frame the film: a visual exercise after all can also be free." Festival Scope

Burning Mountains That Spew Flame (2016)

Montañas ardientes que vomitan fuego

2016 | Spain | Helena Girón & Samuel M. Delgado | ★★★

Based on an intriguing, historically rich premise, the slow and sombre Burning Mountains That Spew Flame is a mildly stimulating but underdeveloped experimental short film from the Spanish duo of Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado.

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"Immersing the viewer in the darkest corridors deep in the earth, this film suggests all sorts of underground activities, from the political to the mythical. Adopted by the resistance during the war, one of the longest volcanic tunnels in Europe is also the site of a particular chapter in political history." Festival Scope

Oleg and the Rare Arts (2016)

Oleg y las raras artes

2016 | Spain | Andrés Duque | ★★

Andrés Duque's Oleg and the Rare Arts is a generally unengaging documentary, comprised of dull, rambling, poorly lit monologues interspersed with some rather wonderful piano playing from its decidedly idiosyncratic subject, Oleg Karavaychuk.

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"Karavaychuk played the piano for Stalin as a child prodigy and in the course of his career wrote music for more than 200 films, by Paradjanov and Muratova among others. Filmmaker Andrés Duque is the first foreigner to win his trust. Who’s this man who looks as if he stepped out of a story by Gogol?" Mubi

Zamboanga (2011)

2011 | Spain | Carlos Casas | ★★★★★

Spanish artist and film-maker Carlos Casas's sublimely shot, subtly edited Zamboanga is a really simple yet exquisitely beautiful sunset-shot short film, gorgeously captured in Zamboanga City, Mindanao, Philippines in October 2011.

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"Images and sound captured in Zamboanga City Mindanao, Philippines. During sunset. Part of the Azan series. October 2011." Carlos Casas

See also:

Stotty's 2010s Favourites