Turning to Birds, a short film co-produced by the Visual Methodologies Collective and the Zikzira Physical Theatre won the AFI award for best experimental short film at a film festival in Cannes this month.
The short film, shot during the lockdown in Brazil, Belgium, and the United Kingdom, is based on texts co-authored by the Visual Methodologies collective and AI as part of the AUAS Climate Futures Program. Zikzira directors Fernanda Lippi and Andre Semenza then adapted the texts for the film.
Turning to Birds is a series of diary entries co-authored with algorithms, decrypted by a group of international artists, and molded into narratives and imagined experiences. They serve as postcards from a not-too-distant future, depicting life in a world ravaged by climate change.
Founded in 1999 by Fernanda Lippi and Andre Semenza, the critically acclaimed Anglo-Brazilian company has produced site-specific and stage performances, urban interventions, and films including the award-winning Ashes of God and Sea Without Shore.
Queen Angelique Monet Gureje-Thompson presented the award for best experimental short to Andre Semenza of Zikzira at the Cannes Film Festival. The AFI festival was founded in 2012 to promote tolerance and world peace for our world’s underrepresented people.
The short film Turning to Birds is currently on display at the AUAS FLOOR exhibition space as part of the ‘All Gone: Invoking Climate Futures‘ exhibition until June 30.
Source: Visual Methodologies