Lodz Film School
ul. Targowa 61/63
90-323 Lodz
T +42 27 55 820
info@vnlab.org
Co-financed by the Minister of Science as part of the “Regional Excellence Initiative” program.
Subtotals was awarded with the Golden Apricot for best short film at the Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival.
Congratulations!
Subtotals
Director and screenwriter: Mohammadreza Farzad
Sound design: Hasan Shabankareh
Editing: Amir Adibparvar
Music: Afshin Aziz
Post-production: Hamidreza Fatourehchia
Produced by Łódź Film School, Executive Producer: Road River Films
Producers: Krzysztof Franek, Kuba Mikurda, Stanisław Liguzinski, Afsun Moshiry, Dagna Kidoń
We’re pleased to announce international film festivals, where our production from Film Essay Studio – Subtotals by Mohammadreza Farzad will be presented.
Berlinale, Berlin International Film Festival • Forum Expanded. Germany (2022)
Millenium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival • Poland (2022)
Oberhausen International Short Film Festival • Germany (2022)
New Horizons International Film Festival • Poland (2022)
Golden Apricot International Film Festival • Yerevan. Armenia (2022)
MDOC Melgaço International Documentary Film Festival • Portugal (2022)
DokuFest International Documentary and Short Film Festival • Kosovo (2022)
Melbourne International Film Festival • Australia (2022)
Subtotals (Majmouan) is an essay film about an accounting never being applied to one’s life’s products. Inspired by a short story of the same title by Gregory Burnham and the novel Autoportrait by Édouard Levé, and wholly composed of 8mm home movies of Iranian people, Majmouan is a meditation on the uncertainties of a life that doesn’t hand you any bills.
Subtotals
Director and screenwriter: Mohammadreza Farzad
Sound design: Hasan Shabankareh
Editing: Amir Adibparvar
Music: Afshin Azizi
Post-production: Hamidreza Fatourehchia
Produced by Łódź Film School, Executive Producer: Road River Films
Producers: Krzysztof Franek, Kuba Mikurda, Stanisław Liguzinski, Afsun Moshiry, Dagna Kidoń
After the world premiere at the IFF Berlinale, Subtotals from our Film Essay Studio will be presented at the IFF New Horizons.
Subtotals is a film about the aftermath that can never be applied to one’s life as a product. Inspired by a short story of the same title by Gregory Burnham and Autoportrait by Edouard Leve, composed fully of 8mm home movies of Iranian society.
Subtotals is a meditation on the uncertainties of life that doesn’t hand out any bills.
Screenings:
25.07 4:15 pm
28.07 7:15 pm + filmmakers Q&A
30.07 1:15 pm + filmmakers Q&A
Subtotals | Sumy częściowe | Majmouan
dir. Mohammadrez Farzad
prod. Łódź Film School, Road River Films
After the world premiere at the IFF Berlinale, Subtotals from our Film Essay Studio will be presented at the Millenium Docs Against Gravity festival. Subtotals is a film about the aftermath that can never be applied to one’s life as a product. Inspired by a short story of the same title by Gregory Burnham and Autoportrait by Edouard Leve, composed fully of 8mm home movies of Iranian society, Subtotals is a meditation on the uncertainties of life that doesn’t hand out any bills.
Subtotals will be presented in the best shorts competition.
More information on the festival website.
Subtotals | Sumy częściowe | Majmouan
dir. Mohammadrez Farzad
prod. Łódź Film School, Road River Films
“Subtotals” (Majmouan) is an essay film about an accounting never being applied to one’s life’s products. Inspired by a short story of the same title by Gregory Burnham and the novel “Autoportrait” by Édouard Levé, and wholly composed of 8mm home movies of Iranian people, Majmouan is a meditation on the uncertainties of a life that doesn’t hand you any bills.
The film is shown in the Berlinale interdisciplinary section Forum Expanded, which programme reflects on the medium of film, socio-artistic discourse and a particular sense for the aesthetic.
Subtotals (Majmouan)
Directed by Mohammadreza Farzad
Produced by Lodz Film School Executive Producer Road River Films
Screenings of “Subtotals” at Berlinale 2022
Premiere:
13.02, 14:00 Kino Arsenal 1
Following shows:
14.02, 20:00 Werkstattkino @ silent green
19.02, 14:00 Werkstattkino @ silent green
The film is also available as part of the Berlinale European Film Market for holders of industry accreditation.
The vnLabEssay Film Studio announces a competition for participation in the artistic and research programme of the Studio in 2021-2022.
We invite artists interested in creating essayistic film forms to participate!
In order to participate in the competition you must:
A double seminar led by documentary filmmaker, lecturer and film essayist Eyal Sivan was held in April. The first part was attended by about 180 listeners, while the second part was attended by a working group of 12 people to whom Eyal Sivan offered to make short film abstracts on essay projects they were developing.
Eyal Sivan was born in 1964 in Haifa, Israel and grew up in Jerusalem. After working as a professional photographer in Tel Aviv, he left Israel in 1985 and settled in France. Sivan has directed several acclaimed political documentaries, as well as produced films by other filmmakers. His films, screened and awarded at major festivals around the world, focus on individual stories and social memory. Sivan’s best-known films include “The Specialist – Portrait of a Modern Criminal” (1999), “Route 181 – Fragments of a journey in Palestine Israel” (2003) and “Jaffa, the orange’s clockwork” (2009). Sivan is the founder and artistic director of the Paris-based production company Momento! and the film distribution agency Scalpel, as well as the founder and editor-in-chief of “South Cinema Notebooks” – a journal on cinema and politics published by Sapir Academic College in Israel, where he regularly teaches. In recent years, Sivan has been a lecturer in media production at the School of Arts and Digital Industries (ADI), at the University of East London (UEL), where he co-led the MA program in Film, Video and New Media, and a professor at the Netherlands Film Academy. Sivan currently works with the University of Exeter in the UK and is a member of the editorial board of La Fabrique Editions in Paris.
The next seminars, hosted by film scholar, film critic and film essayist Catherine Grant, will take place on May 4 and 17.
The organizers received a dizzying number of applications – 270 people from all over the world expressed their desire to participate in the meetings! Thirteen filmmakers from France, India, Iran, Israel, Columbia, Mexico, Serbia, UK, USA and Poland have qualified for the workshop group which will develop their film essay projects over the next ten months in collaboration with guest tutors such as Eyal Sivan, Mark Cousins, Catherine Grant and Johan Grimonprez. The remaining candidates will be able to participate in the seminar as free listeners (with access to the whole seminar day) and observers (with access to the master class). Additionally, they will all have access to a platform where they will be able to publish and comment on each other’s essay and film works. The first seminar, hosted by director, lecturer and theorist Eyal Sivan, will take place on April 6.
(all seminars will take place online and will be held in English, so we encourage applications from all around the world)
Established in 2019, The Essay Film Studio (part of the vnLab of ?ód? Film School) is opening its doors to all the makers and artistic researchers interested in exploring the essayistic forms and methods in their own artistic/research practices.
Rather than focusing on historical inquiries, the Studio aims to research how the free-floating, radically subjective, heterogeneous and non-conclusive form of the essay can aid our practices as filmmakers, artists or practice-based researchers. Employing the hands-on approach we aim to rethink the conditions of production, execution and distribution of film, by exploring ‘the essayistic’ as a method of engagement with the cinematic material. We use the term ‘essayistic’ as a flexible, customisable frame of thinking through making, which allows for defamiliarization of your point-of-view, objects of inquiry and methods through experimentation.
Over the calendar year 2021 (starting from the late February), in the series of bi-weekly seminars, hosted by the most inspiring figures working with the essay form nowadays internationally (such as Eyal Sivan, Mark Cousins, Johan Grimonprez, Catherine Grant, Kevin B. Lee, Matthias Müller or Christoph Girardet), we will explore various essayistic devices and registers and work towards translating those principles into participants’ practices and prospective projects.
Participants of the seminar will gain access to the vast and unique archive of Wytwórnia Filmów O?wiatowych (Educational Film Studio. Officially established in December 1949. Its output includes ca. 5,000 films on various subjects, made by several generations of Polish filmmakers, including Wojciech Jerzy Has, Janusz Nasfeter, Krzysztof Zanussi, Zbigniew Rybczy?ski, Jacek B?awut, Jan Jakub Kolski, Marek Koterski, Bogdan Dziworski or Maciej Drygas). In addition, all participants will be encouraged to apply for a limited number of seed grants (2-3) from the Essay Film Studio that will allow them to work on their own audiovisual essays.
Teaser showreel of the archive:
Every 2021 seminar will consist of two parts – a public masterclass with the invited guest and a hands-on workshop for the core group of Essay Film Studio participants. Therefore, we issue this call offering interested filmmakers/artists/practice-based researchers two modes of participation, each coming with a different set of prerogatives, responsibilities, and requirements:
Free Listeners will be offered an active spot in every masterclass organised by the Studio. They will be invited to the Zoom calls, will be able to ask questions, participate in the discussions, and all closed-off events where our guests will be analysing their works-in-progress and other sensitive materials. Free Listeners will have to commit to attending most of the seminars offered by the Studio. Free Listeners will not have access to the workshop parts of the seminars and will not have to execute and deliver practical assignments.
Number of places: 50
Requirements:
– Brief description of your practice/area of work/interest
– One paragraph on why you want to participate in the activities of the Lab
Together with the Studio coordinators, members will constitute a practice-based research group on the essay form. Members will be active participants of all the seminars. They will be granted access to all the workshops and an opportunity to present experiments and garner feedback from all the invited guests. Members will be expected to attend every seminar (with an exception of the occasional work-related engagements, i.e. work on sets) and execute experiments assigned by our guests.
Number of places: 10-12
Requirements:
– CV
– A motivational letter describing your practice/area of work/study and your interest in investigating the essay form (short samples of previous works are welcome)
– A one-page description of the essayistic project that you’d like to develop in the Studio.
We will notify all the applicants directly through an email. Applicants applying for the members’ spot will automatically be considered for Free Listeners slots if they don’t qualify as members.
The coordinators of the Essay Film Studio are:
Kuba Mikurda – a documentary filmmaker, with a background in philosophy and psychoanalysis, heading the theory department of The ?ód? Film School in Poland
Stanis?aw Liguzi?ski – a film scholar and a teacher at the Master Programme on Research in and Through Cinema at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam
The aim of the Film Essay Studio is to radically expand the research toolkit, to develop new methodologies and new forms of thinking – thinking with images, sounds and montage. The idea is to complement the keyboard, screen and word processor, which in most cases were the only technological equipment of a researcher-humanist, with contemporary technologies of recording, processing and distribution of audiovisual materials. We will attempt to reinvent the form of the film essay, drawing on contemporary forms of audiovisual communication, the genres, languages and conventions of contemporary cinema and the internet.
Kuba Mikurda, jmikurda@vnlab.org
