‘An Illusionists Reality’ is a selection of short films by three female filmmakers exploring documentary filmmaking by pushing the boundaries of their medium and the act of storytelling. From the Hungarian countryside to the Gaza Strip to animated illustrations of 17th century France, we’re taken through transcendental journeys of dreamlike representations of reality that takes into question the subjectivity of the world around us, and brings to our attention, through the female gaze, important questions about the nature of humanity.

SHORT FILM LINE- UP:

‘The Mirror That Fell To Earth’ by Mavi Phillips

2018 | 18 min. | Hungary / USA 

‘The Mirror that Fell to Earth' transports the Hungarian Busójárás Festival into a fictionalized end of the world. The weeklong fertility festival is a time to act outside of moral standards, where women are chased down and humped by men in furry costume for fertility-magic. The origin story of the festival is further divided between a ceremony to scare away winter and a legend from the Ottoman War. Highlighting this shifting subjectivity of reality and documentary, the film replaces this setting with a fictionalized unknown disaster, the incessant buzzing suggesting technology’s take over, which leaves the fields and women barren and the masked men born out of panic.

‘Home Movies Gaza’ by Basma Alsharif

2013 | 24 min. | France / Palestine

‘Home Movies Gaza’ introduces us to the Gaza Strip as a microcosm for the failure of civilization. In an attempt to describe the everyday of a place that struggles for the most basic of human rights, this video claims a perspective from within the domestic spaces of a territory that is complicated, derelict, and altogether impossible to separate from its political identity.

‘Three of Cups Part II: Hortense’ + ‘Krokodil’ by Jennifer May Reiland

2019 | 7 min. + 1 min. | USA

In seventeenth-century Europe, five orphaned sisters became famous for their beauty, wit, and scandalous lives.  They were the nieces of the powerful Cardinal Mancini, who were brought to Louis XIV’s court from Italy as children. Unlike other noble women, they pursued their own happiness even when this led to public condemnation. They had affairs with kings, left their husbands, bore children by pages, and criss-crossed Europe to seek freedom from interfering men. Most famous of all was Hortense Mancini. She became the first European woman to publish her own memoirs under her own name during her lifetime. This animated film, created by artist Jennifer May Reiland, tells her story in images and Hortense's own words.

 ‘Krokodil’is a very short animation about fear and dread, based on recurrent dreams of crocodiles and Olympics scandals