Festival After Dark
Thu 23 Oct, 21:00 - 22:00
Wildflower Video Bar
Try something a little different with a special festival edition of our fan-favourite ‘After Dark’ series, a visual cine mixtape of enviro shorts, including fiction, animation, documentaries, screen art, film poems, experimental and more.
Enjoy a night of weird, wonderful and boundary-pushing cinema, with an eclectic mix of exciting, playful, and dynamic films, exploring ideas of urban environments and what it means to live in a more-than-human world.
A delectable program packed with premieres; get lost in Kaurna Country with Australian short ‘Blissonance’, feel delighted and devastated by Swiss animated mockumentary ‘Martha’, consider the future of streaming with unique speculative fiction ‘The Lost Season’, be exposed to the foils of luxury housing with ‘Floods Recede To Luxury’ and connect with the Irish backyard in ‘The Residents of 49’.
Blissonance
2023, Australia, Experimental | Worldwide Premiere
In urban Kaurna country, a young man spending time in nature is slowly swallowed by the industrial world. A contemplation on the paradox of finding joy in an environment while being complicit in its disruption. Shot on 16mm film.
The Lost Season
2023, United States, Speculative Fiction | Australian Premiere
Earth is experiencing its final winter and a streaming media company is seeking to capture the soon-to-be-lost season. Realising the assignment is capitalising on the end of the world, one crew member takes a stand. A magnetic and visually-inspired speculative tale on the commodification of ecological tipping points.
Methuselah
2024, United States, Horror | Australian Premiere
Inspired by a childhood memory, filmmaker Nathan Sellers envisions a tree’s perspective on humanity’s abrasive and cruel nature. A haunting animation that unfolds like a slide-show fever dream, vividly illustrating the exploitation of trees and their haunting dual role as silent witnesses and involuntary participants in humanity's long history of violence.
Floods recede to Luxury
2023, United States, Experimental | Australian Premiere
Ten years after Hurricane Sandy submerged New York’s Brooklyn waterfront, luxury developments reemerge in the same high-risk flood zones, seemingly blind to past devastation and future threats. Shot on 16mm and using in-camera layered exposure, the film delivers a visceral warning and speculative vision, exposing the real estate industry’s ruthless ignorance for the sake of profit.
The Residents of 49
2024, Ireland, Poetry | Australian Premiere
On a poetic journey through an overgrown Irish backyard, actor and director Ceara Carney reveals a hidden sanctuary for thriving flora and fauna. A charming and poignant reminder of cohabitation and interdependence in our local ecosystems, celebrating the garden as a subtle archive of colonial history.
Martha
2024, Switzerland, Animation | Australian Premiere
A 1900s-style animated gem recounting the rapid extermination of one of the world’s most abundant bird species. With audio testimony by ‘Martha’, the world’s last passenger pigeon, this mockumentary blends charm, humour, horror, and heartbreak. Clever, funny, yet masterfully devastating.