↩

When We Encounter the World

r. Leonardo Pirondi & Zazie Ray-Trapido
Portugalia, SUA
11'

In 1934, an experiment by an amateur-scientist couple began. Named after a genus of moths, the Automeris Project placed a group of young children in an enclosed forest, leaving them to fend for themselves. On return visits, the couple presented self-made films, accompanied by live music, depicting the outside world.

A quick search for the Automeris moth — the name used by the two amateur scientists in the film to refer to their experiment on a colony of children isolated from the real world — will reveal a creature displaying the pattern of what looks like eyes, each wing mirroring each other. When We Encounter the World is as much about the folly of knowledge and the bizarre couple’s utopian dreams as it is about the act of seeing and the idea of image as mediator: not always a true mediator, not always an innocent one. Leonardo Pirondi and Zazie Ray-Trapido’s montage of (uncertain) archival  footage and newer images blends into itself, mixing the real with the fictional and creating an unexpected take on the Platonic allegory of the cave. With the duo replicating the same process as the scientists, that is, now depicting the world to us, the question arises: are we on the outside or are we inside the cave? (Dora Leu)

Screening date and location

September 28th, 4:00 PM, Cinemateca Eforie

Tickets

Awards & Festivals

Leonardo Pirondi & Zazie Ray-Trapido

Leonardo Pirondi is a Brazilian-Portuguese filmmaker and artist. His filmmaking practice emerges from the fabulation of sociopolitical resonances within culture, myths, history, technology, and image-making. His films have been exhibited in various festivals worldwide, including Toronto, Rotterdam, New York, Viennale, Melbourne, Edinburgh, Guanajuato, Slamdance, True/False, and others.

Zazie Ray-Trapido is a filmmaker and producer based in Los Angeles. Her films expand on traditional formats of documentary and narrative, engaging with analog film techniques, archives, and performance. Her practice investigates relationships between memory, ideology and the environment. Her work has been screened at festivals and venues worldwide. She holds a BFA from Bard College, and a MFA in Film/Video from the California Institute of the Arts.

  • Technical sheet
  • Directing: Leonardo Pirondi & Zazie Ray-Trapido
  • Cast: Zazie Ray-Trapido
  • Screenplay: Leonardo Pirondi, Zazie Ray-Trapido
  • Camera: Leonardo Pirondi, Zazie Ray-Trapido
  • Editor: Leonardo Pirondi, Zazie Ray-Trapido
  • Sound mix: Andrew Kim

Screens

Colonial Follies

All films →

Parallel Botany

Magdalena Bermudez | Duration 11'

Still lives of real fruit meet botanical illustrations of plant galls to expose the paradox of dissection: each time we cut something in two, we merely create a new exterior.

When We Encounter the World

r. Leonardo Pirondi & Zazie Ray-Trapido | Duration 11'

In 1934, an experiment by an amateur-scientist couple began. Named after a genus of moths, the Automeris Project placed a group of young children in an enclosed forest, leaving them to fend for themselves. On return visits, the couple presented self-made films, accompanied by live music, depicting the outside world.

The Mars Project

Louis Rémy | Duration 13'

Through a collection of archived videos found in the depths of YouTube, ordinary people apply to join a space mission team heading to Mars in the year 2022. This announcement from Mars Venture, nearly a decade ago, reveals our society’s interest in the conquest of the red planet and prompts us to question the colonial rhetoric inherent in New Space projects.

Wild Fruits

Bernardo Zanotta | Duration 35' 16"

The 16th century. After a period overseas in the Antarctic France, Jean Aurand finds refuge as a servant in the house of French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, where a series of fantastical events change the lives of these two men forever.

The Third World After the Sun

Analú Laferal & Tiagx Vélez | Duration 19' 50"

A transvestite ritual performed by the artists Analú Laferal and Tiagx Vélez opens a portal and generates an encounter with a European missionary from the fifteenth century who has delved deep into the jungle in order to fight the belief of animals as divine. A transmaterial dream, shrouded by the penumbra cast by cosmic horrors.
Meniu →