The 7th edition ART EXPERIMENTAL SCREENINGS FILM FESTIVAL FRESH STREAM

The Last Seer is born from a concern: is Justice still just when it stops seeing, listening, and responding? The figure of blind Justice has historically been associated with impartiality. But this short film proposes a symbolic inversion: a form of Justice that is no longer blind in order to be fair, but blind in order to avoid seeing what makes it uncomfortable. A Justice that does not listen, does not speak, protects itself, and turns anyone who dares to question it into a threat. The protagonist represents the one who can still see. He is not a classic hero, but someone isolated by his own lucidity. His persecution expresses the cost of looking directly at what a society, an institution, or a system would rather keep invisible. The Last Seer does not seek to provide a closed answer, but to raise a question: when no one is allowed to question Justice, is it still Justice?

“VICTORIAS” is a retro-surreal comedy following a glamorous 1950s woman whose perfectly styled life spirals into bizarre scenes—chemical factories, TV stages, mutant insects, and atomic dinner parties—all while she smiles behind her iconic sunglasses.

Dogs of Oz (based on a true story) follows Magdalene, a Sloughi dog, on an extraordinary journey across Morocco, guided by chance, instinct, and a pull that feels like fate toward a new home. More than a rescue, it’s a story about what we’re forced to leave behind, what we choose to carry forward, and how destiny finds us the moment we finally let go.

Filmed over a decade in the mountains of Georgia, this poetic documentary blends intimate rural life with meditative text, reflecting on impermanence, memory, and the quiet erosion of time. From vanishing villages to shared meals, it is both a record of what slips away and a reflection on the act of witnessing itself.

In this experimental short film, a brother and sister set out to find their younger brother to warn him about a serious health condition in the family. What follows is a tragicomic journey in which they encounter a series of unusual characters and, through flashbacks, witness the extraordinary life story of Chubby Einstein. The story and voice-over texts were written by myself, while the images were generated using AI (prompted by me). The goal was never to create perfect visuals, but rather to embrace imperfections and glitches—allowing a strange and distinctive visual language to emerge, amplifying the film’s surreal atmosphere. There is much to critique about AI—its potential to dull creativity or mislead with images—but I find it fascinating that, precisely because of its mistakes and glitches, it can open up unexpected worlds and enrich our stories. Not as a replacement for human creativity, but as a tool to collaborate with. Keywords: coming of age, bullying, mental health, dark humor, gender questions, absurdism. Please make sure to watch until the end credits.(they contribute to the story:-) The film can stand on its own very well, but for those who want more, after its completion, a transmedia project emerged that intertwines fiction. reality, and both digital and physical worlds. There is a website that not only shares information but also weaves extra stories and visual narratives into the world of the project. In the online shop, one can purchase unique and rare physical collectible items from the universe of Chubby Einstein, such as photographs taken by the protagonist from space of the Earth, stardust given to him as a farewell gift by the space dog Laika and five toothpicks used by the chicken farmer. The website blends absurdism and satire with a serious approach to various social issues, philosophical questions, and moral dilemmas, such as gender equality, bullying, complex family dynamics, and questions like to what extent we can/should separate an artist (x/v/m) from their work when they misbehave? All images were generated with AI (Adobe Firefly and VEO3), as were the voice-over performances (TTSmaker). The story and all voice-over texts were written by Marten Winters (without the use of AI). Translations were made using Google Translate. Free stock music by Pixabay. More about my work on: www.martenwinters.nl

Portraits of an Unverified Self operates in the unstable interval between identity, play, and technology. The vertical film/installation proposes a succession of figures that do not fix a subject, but rehearse multiple possibilities of presence, recognition, and failure. From the author's own image, mutant figures emerge—visual heteronyms—that oscillate between recognition and estrangement, maintaining a fragile connection to the original body. The self fragments, dissolves, and reappears as a flow and process in permanent instability. By appropriating the ecosystem of smartphones and mobile applications, the work shifts the logic of digital self-exposure to a territory of poetic and speculative deviation. Artificial intelligence emerges as an agent of mutation and not of synthesis, producing images that resist verification and identity coherence. AI functions here as a device of deviation: a playful, ironic, and sometimes disturbing mirror, closer to delirium than to optimization.

fEVER is a moving image song cycle that sees the extended US-Mexican borderlands through the eyes of an immortal who does not recognize the existence of a border but rather a living breathing numinous world, home to an intercultural trade route that has existed for millennia. Within this framing, the film unfolds as a series of songs or postindustrial folktales ruminating on immigration, social inflammation, urban madness, and visionary illumination. Blending aspects of experimental film, music-video, and mythopoetic storytelling, the work has been described as an operatic animated graphic novel. The fluid genre defying aesthetic blends multiple, cultural, historic, and sonic / visual-media references made possible through the director’s ongoing exploration of generative AI as a far-reaching filmmaking toolset. fEVER is presented here as a traditional linear film; however, the work is also performed live as a duo including a cellist and a live cinema performer playing electro-acoustic sound and percussion triggered animation sequences.

She Who Passes Through Time meanders and wanders through spaces, motions, characters, objects, voices and times drifting in an out of form. The film takes as its starting point the Strugatsky brothers’ novel Roadside Picnic on which Tarkovksys Stalker is based, and losely follows the shooting locations of Stalker. The film is organised around the minor character of Monkey - a hairy and mutated little girl, the beloved daughter of the Stalker, working through notions of haunting and the politics of the minor, gender-inflected subject — the one who is absent, the one who mutates, transmigrates.

“35 Days” is an experimental, stop motion animation about what happens when a coalition of strangers answers the call to locate a missing cat during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. Created frame-by-frame using fabric cutouts and thread.

In the silence of space, a flicker of life drifts, weightless, unbound. What seems like an object reveals itself as a living presence, curled in stillness. Slowly it awakens. Subtle movements stir, fragile at first, then growing into gestures of awareness. The being unfurls, reaching outward, daring to touch the edges of the unknown. Yet the awakening is fragile. The world intrudes, sudden and sharp. Hesitant, then insistent, it ventures outward again, pressing against the weight of fear. What begins as a murmur of motion swells into a radiant dance, intense, unbound, unresolved. An open mystery left to the gaze of the beholder.

THE PERPETUAL TAPESTRY is an experimental animation about a collapsing world in transformation, where everything is tied together by the threads in a woven tapestry.​​​

Cellist and composer Justin Wright travels to Svalbard, an archipelago close to the North Pole, to serenade the dying glaciers with the most northerly outdoor cello performances in history.

Three siblings craft a knight-like figure, only to unleash a barrage of arrows upon it. Through the seasons, we observe their lives as they both construct and demolish their lifelike creation.

Prospero, here reimagined as an ancient Japanese king, has lost his kingship due to the schemings of his brother Antonio and the new king Alonso. Banished alongside his young daughter Miranda, he eventually arrives at an island, and takes power over it through defeating the reigning witch-spirit Sycorax. Learning that his usurpers are at sea, Prospero maroons their ship upon his island and begins to plot his revenge. Here Lies Our Tempest is a dark fantasy adaptation of Shakespeare’s final masterpiece The Tempest. Set in ancient Japan, it conveys its story in a rich tapestry of sound and cinematographic visual — all without a single line of dialogue.