FOCUS: ALINA MANOLACHE

Wild creatures, 2022, 8 min, în premieră

Regizoare: Alina Manolache

Realizat în cadrul programului Slon AiR

The work stems from a carte blanche / an invitation to respond to the landscapes and people of a small Carpathian village. During her research, the director discovered that many of the villagers experienced vivid dreams about wild animals. Drawing from these dreams and personal stories, the film constructs an atmospheric space between the diurnal and nocturnal, the natural and artificial, the ancient and futuristic. It is a film of textures, a free composition where humans, wild creatures, dreamscapes, and natural landscapes coalesce.

Three Dialogues About The Future, 2022, 13 min 

Regizoare: Alina Manolache

Prezenat în selecția Festivalului Internațional de Film Vienna Shorts 

What can artificial intelligence teach us, perhaps about ourselves? Three Dialogues About the Future shifts the focus and lets the robots do the talking, exploring their learning processes and how they understand and relate to humanity. But in the three pairs’ dialogues, behind algorithmic coldness, lies hidden warmth and tenderness. What does it mean to be human? For once, to be watched by artificial intelligence does not come with a sense of surveillance or danger, but, rather, it feels like a gesture of mutual affection. (Dora Leu)

I am Here, 2020, 14 min 

Regizoare: Alina Manolache

Prezenat în cadrul Festivalului Internațional de Film de la Jihlava

Alina Manolache’s film starts as an effort to map a series of landscapes both familiar and strange to the audience, vistas from a world that is apparently asleep, as seen in the midst of a global crisis. Recorded by the mechanical eye of utility cameras, these views appear, at first, as dystopian visions of the world, foretelling a bleak post-human future. This impression is then overruled by additional footage, showing a series of buildings which are illuminated in the dark by the warm lights of the windows, juxtaposed by a choral musical piece - „I see life/ With all its energy/ The city streets/ The rush of time/ This is my world/ It's where I like to be”. I AM HERE is a visual poem that has the value of a manifesto, a declaration of love composed out of messages spoken in a plurality of voices and languages, out of casual human gestures that briefly appear on screen, of the gentle breeze that we can feel even if it cannot reach us. (Oana Ghera)

2020: A Covid Space Odyssey, 2020, 15 min (The Guardian)

Regizori / Producători: Alina Manolache, Vladimir Potop

Distribuție: Jessica Meir, Andrew Morgan, Oleg Skripochka, Christina Koch

Our latest Guardian documentary is an evocative meditation on isolation and human fragility. It pieces together glimpses of the astronaut Jessica Meir’s seven-month mission on the International Space Station (Expedition 62, from September 2019-April 2020), from the euphoria of her first spacewalk to the surprise of witnessing the global pandemic unfold on Earth. (The Guardian)

End of Summer, 2016, 21 min 

Regizoare: Alina Manolache

Distribuție: Lucian Ciocan, Ionuț Lupașcu, Georgel Lucan, Adrian Petru, Ciprian Cojocari, Călin Balmoș, Paul Sasu, Andrei Predescu

Prezenat în cadrul Festivalului Internațional de Film Visions du Réel

The summer is ending. The boys in the gang will soon leave their village for university. A few final moments spent together, between excitement and fear of the future, reveal these adolescent uncertainties with sensuality, by the warmth of a camp fire or under the lights of a private party. A female director’s perspective on masculinity under construction, on the edge, between two ages. (Mourad Moussa, Visions du Réel)

Your Visit Starts Here, 2015, 28 min (Centre Pompidou)

Regizoare: Alina Manolache

Filmed at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Alina Manolache’s first short documentary invites us to reflect on contemporary art and its institutions through the eyes of museum guards. Conventionally perceived as discreet presences fading into the grandeur of the masterpieces they protect, what if the guards themselves allow us to reframe what is truly valuable and “artistic”?