Registration required 2 days in advance: https://forms.gle/VEnyaAm9dGuhAgKb8

Official Website: https://www.videotage.org.hk/programme/smifest-madrid-hk-screening

 

Artists & Artworks

Pager Lam. Love is Hurt Trilogy

Sara G. Cortijo. Romeo

Yorki Lee 李若綨. Drowning

Eva Min. It’s Consuelo

Irene Romero. Alors que nous dansons avec la mort

Cyrus Leung 梁釋尹. Exogospel

Saioa Miguel. La Esquina de la Carreter

Nicole Ip 葉嵐. Crevasse 裂縫

Tomás Serrano. Madrid Brutal

Lok-Yi, Ty 池樂兒. My Bathtub is Linked to the Sea 我的浴缸與大海相連

Alejandro Rodríguez. O Que Queda

 

Artwork Statement

Pager Lam | Love is Hurt Trilogy

Love and hurt are integral parts of human relationships and self-identity, as the saying "Hell is other people'' , a quote from the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, has inspired the exploration of society's impact on our inner self. My work explores the complex interplay between love, pain, and life. Drawing inspiration from surrealism, it examines three kinds of basic love that exist in society and relationships: friends, family, and lovers through a collection of experimental animations titled "Bird's Corpse," "Eden," and "The White Mist,"

"Bird's Corpse" explores the conflict between the individual and the collective, highlighting the need to sacrifice innerself to connect with others. "Eden" symbolizes the nurturing ground of life, representing the relationship between parents and children, and expressing emotions related to growth, nurturing, and destruction. "White Mist" depicts the perplexity and helplessness of being unable to attain a connection with a beloved.

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Pager Lam was raised in Hong Kong and deeply influenced by Jan Švankmajer and Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña in her early years. She then studied in Creative Media of City University of Hong Kong and completed her Bachelor of Art degree in 2023. She is interested in exploring surrealism and existentialism. Born with a passion for both visual storytelling and poetry, Pager was fond of expressing her own story in an unique way. Pager's animation style is characterized by its dreamlike features, evoking emotions in the viewer. Her works often challenge conventional narratives, delving into the depths of the human psyche. Through her works, Lam encourages audiences to reflect on their own existence and ponder the meaning of life.

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Sara G. Cortijo | Romeo

María is a 15 years old teenager from Malaga, Kevin, 17. They are a couple, they live in a neighborhood of Malaga and she becomes pregnant. They both decide to go ahead with the pregnancy. Romeo is the name they give their baby.

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Sara G. Cortijo has a degree in Journalism from the University of Malaga. We also studied Textual Interpretation at the School of Dramatic Art in Malaga.

Subsequently, she launched her first project: the play Zenica, of which she is the author, director and one of the protagonists. Zenica premiered in 2016 at the MaF (Málaga Festival), in 2018 it has been on the bill for a month at the Lavapiés El Umbral de Primavera theater (Madrid) and in 2019 for another month on the bill at the Azarte hall in Chueca, Madrid.

In 2020, she launched into the audiovisual world with his first short film: Efecto Halo, which she has written, directed and in which she also acts. In early 2021, she has released her first documentary short, La mujer salvaje, selected at the LA Independent Women Film Awards in Los Angeles, at the Madurai International Documentary & Short Film Festival in India and at Blogos de oro.

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Yorki Lee 李若綨 | Drowning

When ignorance, loneliness, chaos, and craving fill the brain, what does it feel like to be alive? In a sick society, a sick person arises. This person may be you and I. In the story, the interaction between the lonely girl and the plant, the weird delusion, and the incomprehensible desire explore the feeling of being alive. The word “drowning” means the girl couldn’t feel anything in her life, and she gets drowning in her delusion. I used 2D animation to present the inner world of the little girl and describe her mysterious delusion journey.

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Yorki Lee is a Hong Kong-based animator, who enjoys exploring themes of love and loneliness in the works, and hopes that readers can find a corner of their own within the creations.

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Eva Min | It’s Consuelo

A "mockumentary" that traces the meandering life of Consuelo, a former actress of the "destape", from her glory years to her monastic life as an old lady (although still quite shameless).

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Eva Min Pérez is a director based in Madrid, Spain. And works part-time as a crew member.

After she graduated from Audiovisual Communication degree at University CEU Cardenal Herrera (Valencia), Eva moved to study a Master on Film Directing at TAI Arts School (Madrid).

She made her short film debut with "The art of saying goodbye" (2023), which distribution is set to start at the end of the year.

Eva has also directed short documentaries, music videos and advertisements. However her main goal, and what she works for, is to end up directing feature films.

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Irene Romero | Alors que nous dansons avec la mort

The director takes a trip through Super 8 footage in which she reflects on life, death and love.

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Irene Romero was born in Seville in 1995. After finishing her high school years she started a degree in audiovisual communication. During these years she wrote the screenplay for the short film Carlos, winner of Best Actor award at Comcorto.

Afterwards she continues studying cinema in UC3M as a screenwriter. After a year working at the script development department of Isla Audiovisual she continues her studies as director in TAI School of Arts. During that year she directed two short films: Alors que nous dansons avec la mort and La grieta.

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Cyrus Leung 梁釋尹 | Exogospel

On September 7, 1957, astrojournalist Zula N*** was sent on an expedition to Hermetia 7-c. Contact had been lost after a disruption in transmission and she never returned. There are no further encounters until the retrieval of the documentary tape in the Pacific Ocean on July 14, 2023.

The following transcription was roughly translated from Hermetian after deciphering from the audio file:

“link has been severed…

the Alchemists were not supposed to get this far…

someone make sure that oblivious earth person never spread the disease to whatever system the tape landed”

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Cyrus Leung is an animation and audio graduate from the City University of Hong Kong Creative Media. Greatly influenced by science and folk culture, her work ranges from hand-drawn animation, illustration, graphic design, circuit bending and installation. Apart from visual arts, she is also a multi-instrumentalist, composer and sound designer, actively bringing world music, analog sounds, experimental sonic art and fusion genres together with audiovisuals.

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Saioa Miguel | La Esquina de la Carreter

This short documentary is a road movie about the national roads of Spain and about the people who live on both sides. As well as the trip of the director to the town of her childhood through neon lights, clubs, hostels and other establishments, which survives thanks to lost travelers or truckers. This documentary shows us a part of Spain which is going to disappear because of the migration to the cities, new technology and finally, our capitalist and consumerist lifestyles.

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Saioa Miguel (Bilbao, 1994). Diploma in Film and TV Series Direction at the TAI School of Arts. Specialized in Documentary and Experimental Cinema at the Bilbao Film Creation School (ECCBI). Likewise, she obtained a scholarship from the Fundación Contemporánea in La Fábrica to complete a master's degree in Cultural Project Management. Thanks to which she worked at the NotodoFilmFest Festival and currently, she have a research project underway on the archive of the Círculo de Bellas Artes (CBA) in Madrid. She works a lot with 16mm film and 35mm photography. She also makes analog collages and have just published a book Relatos y Delirios where she publishes several of them. She is interested in topics related to everyday life, the body as a domestic-home concept, femininity and the dualism between the rural and the city. Currently, she works at Tabakalera de Donosti, at La Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola and is working on her next short film called Maddi. The documentary La esquina de la carretera was born from a personal experience in her childhood, when she was traveling at night on the way to her town in Izagre (Castilla y León) and she observed, enthralled, the neon lights of the different establishments on the national highways. She is interested in ephemeral, fleeting and decadent things. As well as the phenomenon of “Empty Spain'' and the road movie genre. From these ingredients, this documentary was born.

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Nicole Ip 葉嵐 | Crevasse 裂縫

A deep wide crack, in splits and lines. It spreads.

The city hides in plain sight, hypnotising people with the spectacle. This story unfolds in parts, to roam in the Young Woman’s distress while immersing in the forest’s uneasiness in anticipation of a city awakening.

Although this film is captured in Hong Kong, the general urban landscape more or less leads to the same condition: a high-strung rhythmic operation that eventually is reduced to quiet chaos. Trapped in the city lights, another place for existence emerges: the forest. I began to think of the city as a creature, sound asleep. Every breath it takes sucks the life out of nature, and exhales into the city. There is something masochistic about this, that as city people we can’t fathom a world without progression, without constant movement.

A deep wide crack, in splits and lines. It rumbles.

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Nicole Ip is a Hong Kong based filmmaker with an interest in engaging the moving image and text. Her work is concerned with the city, nature and finding fiction within the non-fiction. A recent graduate of the BA School of Creative Media programme at City University of Hong Kong, her experimental film CREVASSE (2023) received the Louis Koo Creative Media Award.

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Tomás Serrano | Madrid Brutal

Negative, chemicals and brutalist architecture. These are the ingredients of Madrid Brutal, a portrait of the capital's past through the methodology of street photography applied to the moving image.

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Currently assistant director in the series La Promesa, produced by Bambú Producciones and broadcast on Spanish Television. Director of the short films La Azulejera (2021), Farol (2022), Madrid Brutal (2022) and SEO (2023, in post-production). Graduated in Audiovisual Communication from the University of Granada, specialized in actor directing in Filmosofía and Master in Film and Series Direction at the TAI School of Arts.

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Lok-Yi, Ty 池樂兒 | My Bathtub is Linked to the Sea 我的浴缸與大海相連

My Bathtub is Linked to the Sea is a short experimental work that deals with the idea and experience of anxiety. Like an uncontrollable and inexplicable loop, anxiety often entails short but repeated episodes of intense fear. This feeling of terror comes as a series of unexpected attacks that enslaves the mind of the one who is going through it. My Bathtub is Linked to the Sea attempts to visualize and express this sense of circular entrapment. Through the protagonist’s monologue and her journey of deteriorating perceptions, the work explores the dark state that haunts those who are under the spell of psychological disorders.

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Lok Yi, Ty is a Hong Kong-based artist and animator who likes to fuse abstraction, representation and storytelling in her works. A recent graduate of the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong, her animation MY BATHTUB IS LINKED TO THE SEA received the Louis Koo Creative Media Awards in 2022. Her works have been shown at FILE festival, Videofromes, Image Forum Festival as well as other international art and film festivals.

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Alejandro Rodríguez | O Que Queda

Through the gallery of a cell phone, the documentary reflects on the relationships between memory and the archive that we generate every day.

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Alejandro Rodríguez was born in Galicia in 1995.

He studied a degree in Audiovisual Communication at the University of Vigo and later moved to Madrid to take a Master’s degree in Film and TV Series Directing at the TAI School of Arts. He currently lives in the capital, where he combines his projects as a director with other jobs in the directing department, and also with his work as a member of the board of CREA, Galician Association of professionals in directing and filmmaking.

He directed his first short film in 2016, titled Fume, with which he got his first recognitions and with which he laid the foundations for his following projects. In the following years he directed other smaller pieces until, in 2021, as a final project of the Master, he directed the short film Nido (Nest) and the documentary piece O que queda (What Remains).

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Co-organized by: SMIFest Madrid, Videotage

In collaboration with: School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, TAI School of the Arts - Madrid

Supported by: Hong Kong Arts Development Council*

*Videotage is financially supported by HKADC. Hong Kong Arts Development Council fully supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council.

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VISITOR ARRANGEMENTS

1. All visitors entering the University Campus must be pre-registered via the University's Visitor Registration System (VRS). The VRS can be accessed via Office Admin under AIMS by departmental staff who has the VRS access privilege.

2. Once the visitor's information has been submitted via the VRS, an email attached with a specific QR code from "CityU-Visitor Registration System" will be sent to the visitor.  The visitor must show the QR code and may need to present his/her personal ID to the security staff at campus entrance on the day of the visit. After confirmation, the visitor will be given a label which is valid for the day.

3. For guests who haven’t received the above email with the QR code, please check your spam or junk email folder in case the email has been accidentally marked as spam.

4. One single email address cannot be shared with multiple visitors for registration on the same day.

5. Please refer to the Personal Information Collection Statement (PICS) for Visitor Registration System on our university's webpage: https://www.cityu.edu.hk/fmo/download/Personal%20Information%20Collection%20Statement_VRS.pdf

6. For visits on Saturdays, Sundays or public holidays, please online register at least 2 working days prior to your visit by 5pm.

7. No eating or drinking inside the gallery, multimedia theatre and cinema studio.

8. The Presenter reserves the right to amend the visit requirements without prior notice and refuses any person from entering the venue. In the event of any discrepancy between the English and Chinese versions of this statement, the English version shall prevail.

訪客參觀安排

1. 所有訪客必須透過有登記權限的部門員工，經城大的訪客登記系統(VRS)預先登記進入校園。

2. 成功登記者，一封附有特定QR碼的電子郵件會由「CityU-Visitor Registration System」發送給來訪者。訪客必須在探訪當天向校園出入口的保安人員出示二維碼並可能須出示個人身份證件。經確認後，訪客將獲得一個當日有效的標貼進入校園。

3. 若 閣下沒有收到上述帶有二維碼的郵件，請檢查你的垃圾郵件文件夾，以防郵件被送到那裏而不是你的收件箱。

4. 登記者不能使用相同的電郵地址為多於一位訪客登記同日參加。

5. 有關訪客登記系統的個人資料收集聲明(PICS)詳情，請參閱 https://www.cityu.edu.hk/fmo/download/Personal%20Information%20Collection%20Statement_VRS.pdf  (只設英文版本) 。

6. 如要在周六、周日或公眾假期參觀，請於到訪日前至少2個工作天的下午5時前網上登記預約。

7. 展覽畫廊、多媒體劇院及工作室內禁止飲食。

8. 主辦者保留隨時修改參觀要求及拒絕任何人士進入會場的權利。倘本聲明的英文本與中文本有任何差異的地方，則以英文本為準。