LOADING
Directed by Various | 95 minutes | Unrated |
12:45pm Saturday, 16 May | Balam Balam Place - Cinema 1 | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes
A selection of Australian shorts exploring the daily dealings with DOOM on this wretched Earth – listless living, capitalism’s cravings, monstrous horrors we can’t begin to describe – and the reprieve that can be found from it, creating art and film to fight against it all. From eerie, spiralling horror to tactile celluloid documentary, living, working and creating in Australia while dealing with mundane, enormous evil is explored through spellbinding images and unique, personal stories.
Beginning with the 2003 short I THOUGHT I WASN’T by fearless punk filmmaker Kim Miles, who’s been creating experimental cinema since the early 2000s in a variety of forms and styles outside the industrial system with uncompromised vision, the program builds off the still-vital rage and melancholy of Miles’ early work to reach the anxieties and mysteries of today’s moment.
I THOUGHT I WASN'T (2003, dir. Kim Miles, 5 mins)
A middle finger to Work for the Dole. A loving embrace to life lived on the fringe with community, making art and trying to thrive despite it all.
I LOVE TO RUN (2026, dir. Noah Jordan, 10 mins)
When a wannabe running influencer's career is interrupted by an insidious call to something greater, he loses himself to curiosity and ambition.
THE SILVER CURTAIN (2025, dir. Camille Perry, 23 mins)
A 16mm film that examines photography through the perspective of a film lab technician, reflecting on the material and psychological act of memory preservation. Set against the legacy of Kodak in Naarm/Melbourne, the film explores the tension between remembering and forgetting, and the ecological costs of image-making. What is lost in the pursuit of memory, and what must the Earth surrender so we can remember?
MYSTIC PARK (2025, dir. John Hewison, 16 mins)
A Porsche driver is stranded in a small country town when his car breaks down. Unable to leave, he finds himself at the whim of the local colours. A conspiracy is brewing.
QUANTUM SUICIDE (2025, dir. Owen Lawie, 31 mins)
A car crash flings people into new planes of the mind, the universe and existence, leaving them victim to unfathomable feeders of conscious experience. Evolving digital grain guides us through this nightmare phantasmagoria.
ONE BAD DAY (2025, dir. Hector Hennessey, Bianca Pritchard, 9 mins)
A puppet tries to find solace as a working artist after a particularly taxing day. Overbearing directors, freaks on the train, myki inspectors, doomscrolling, it’s all there, all made of felt, and not without hope.
CONTENT WARNING: Flashing lights.
Country: Australia
Year: 2003, 2025, 2026
Language: English