The Other Side

The Other Side

Jul 1–Oct 9, 2022

July 1 – October 9, 2022

Featuring: Faezeh Nikoozad, Aki Pao-Chen Chiu, Breech Asher Harani, and Fumiko Kikuchi

The Other Side brings together a small selection of films referencing ideas of transitions and events that foundationally change someone, i.e. “to be on the other side of something.” Works also alludes to ideas of mortality and the spiritual concept of metaphysical selves entering a new plane.

This group of films was selected from Darmstadt Sezession’s 2021 prize shortlist for our collaborative Projection/Projektion grants and screenings programs. This will be the first screening of these films in San Antonio.

About the films:

Asb by Faezeh Nikoozad 

Asb is a film about movement and idleness, escape and anticipation, being left and how one deals with waiting. A woman stands at a window, looking outside. We see a young girl running, holding a veil held above her head. She is the daughter, a witness to her father’s disappearance and her mother’s waiting. The daughter’s reaction is different to her mother’s – she does not stand still, instead she runs away.

Translating Erasure by Aki Pao-Chen Chiu

“After moving alone to London from Taiwan some years ago, the conflicts between my different responsibilities and identities as a daughter, a research student, an artist and a foreigner became apparent. This internal combat intensified after my father’s passing. Erasure as an artistic technique has since been developed in my moving image works as an expression to articulate such an ineffable agony and struggle. It takes place in the disappearance of objects’ outlines or extractions of street lights from their surroundings, leaving a ghostly emptiness in the space.

Presenting this poetic void, Translating Erasure is a moving image series composed of groups of videos, texts and images. Each one- to three-minute moving image work tells a memory about my father. The storylines shift between disconnected time and spaces, representing the fragmental nature of memories. Narrated in different languages (Taiwanese Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien and English), accents and genders, these stories draw an absurd and disjointed profile of the protagonist, portraying my confusion of identities generated by the constant change in scenery, expectations and cultures.

Through articulating personal grief, my moving image practice examines subjects of family, trauma, languages, politics, cultural belonging and the nuances in between.”

BINTANA (Window) by Breech Asher Harani

During the Community Quarantine in the Philippines, 10 Filmmakers and 10 Voice Actors created this short experimental film while confined in their homes, presenting the different situations during this terrible time through the perspective of windows.

I know where you are right now by Fumiko Kikuchi

“My grandpa died on 19th June 2016.

This is how the narrative 1-channel stop-motion animation I know where you are right now begins. The narration voice of the animation is my grandfather’s, which I recorded in 2014. Two years before his death, my grandfather became ill with severe Alzheimer’s. One day, suddenly, but very calmly, he related his experiences in “heaven,” which he said he had gone to twice. From that moment on, he almost always told the same story.

He wanted to go to “heaven”, but at the same time he was afraid of death. Maybe his story helped ease that fear a little. In 2016, he finally went to his “heaven”. Even at the funeral, I had an idea of ​​where he had gone: He lives on in this idea and therefore has an almost limitless presence for me. His story relieves me too, because I know where he is now.”