The Barcelona Independent Film Festival, l’Alternativa, is now in its 31st edition. For over three decades we have been offering filmgoers and professionals a unique opportunity to discover and enjoy screenings and activities that value creative freedom, diversity, innovation, commitment and thought-provoking reflection.

This year we will once again be running a hybrid edition: onsite screenings and activities from 14 to 24 November 2024 plus a selection of films from the 31st edition available on Filmin during our online fortnight in January 2025.

L’Alternativa has three competition sections in l’Alternativa Official: Spanish Films, International Feature Films and International Short Films.

L’Alternativa Parallel presents tributes, premieres, little-known films, work by new directors and a programme of family screenings.

And l’Alternativa Hall offers a rich, varied programme of free screenings, performances and debates in the CCCB Hall.

Hall Selects is a bridge between l’Alternativa Official and l’Alternativa Hall. Whittling down the many entries we receive for the official sections is a painstaking process designed to produce a final selection that showcases a wide range of striking films that reflect the spirit of the festival. Here we open up a space in which we can share an additional selection of impressive films and offer the Hall audience the chance to engage directly with the filmmakers and others members of the creative and artistic teams.

Hall Selects Tuesday 19 November, 6 pm, Hall CCCB, 111 min

Presented by Jorge Moneo, Patxi Burillo and Tamara García

Madwomen in the Attic
Tamara García Iglesias

Contractions
Lynne Sachs

Nafura
Paul Heintz, Witt Anne-Catherine, Witt Anne-Catherine

Exergo
Jorge Moneo Quintana

Year and Time
Patxi Burillo Nuin, Proyecto Landarte Urroz

Shorts Program 9
Saturday, September 14, 2024 4:00 PM CDT
Harper Theater 1

https://cuff31.eventive.org/schedule/66acd8bf03f5e30051dd8e0d

Otherhood | Deborah Stratman
Mother and child confront the other. Meanwhile, some ladies are thinking.

Retracing Our Steps | Kelly Gallagher
A woman reflects back on her time spent assisting abortion seekers when Roe v. Wade was law of the land in the US.

Contractions | Lynne Sachs
What happens when women and other who gestate no longer have control of their bodies? In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in the United States. “Contractions” takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic. We listen to an obstetrician and a reproductive rights activist who movingly lay out these vital issues. We watch 14 women and their male allies who witness and perform with their backs to the camera. In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, they “speak” with the full force of their collective presence.

We Continue To Speak | Lynne Sachs
In this sound collage Filmmaker Lynne Sachs records the participants and producers of her film Contractions as they vocalize their reactions to the reduction of women’s bodily autonomy in the United States.

Patient | Lori Felker
Fiction, reality, the private, and the performed overlap on a routine but emotional day at a medical center.

What Went Down | Danièle Wilmouth
Beauty is pain – at least in the world of Dance. WHAT WENT DOWN takes a humorous and irreverent approach to unpacking ideas of suffering in pursuit of physical virtuosity. A collaboration between choreographer Peter Carpenter and filmmaker Danièle Wilmouth, WHAT WENT DOWN features a group of middle-aged dancers who navigate the tense relationship between their chronically injured bodies and the barked orders of an uncompromising film director. Exposing the strenuous labor of the cinematic process both in front of and behind the camera, WHAT WENT DOWN devolves from constant action to profound inaction… all for you!

Ashes of Roses | Sasha Waters
This movie is about loving things that are embarrassing and people who are inappropriate. It’s an essay film reflection on popular trash.

I Was There (Part 1) | Chi Jang Yin
“I Was There” is a trilogy of experimental documentary films that explores the problem of radiation, our society’s fading collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the unresolved debate between ethics and science. These series concern the immediate effects of weaponized nuclear technology, as invisible poison, on the human body. Meditating on the survivor’s memories, “I Was There” (Part I) traces the experience of a physician for the past 70 years, who recounted his day as a rare witness when the atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. The poignant and thought-provoking evidence of the secret war tactics reveals the human value during times of war in conflicts. Saving American lives is the commonly known and acceptable narrative of why the United States government dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. However, this narrative contradicts the finding in personal and petitions letters, and arsenal photography housed at the Truman Presidential Museum. The evidence uncovers a rather surprising reason for testing the atomic bomb on humans – competing for war power against Russia and securing the US dominant role in global politics.

Shorts Program: The Cosmos in Us

Points North Institute, Journey’s End
Friday, September 13 2024

https://camdeniff.eventive.org/schedule/shorts-the-cosmos-in-us-66c34485ef5b8600391ddbcd

Five films that take us into diverse worlds, persuading us to question our perceptions and to see the world more humanely. These films transform our perspectives on what constitutes identity, how we build resilience against adversities, and how we seek to heal our traumas.

Adura Baba Mi | Juliana Kasumu | 15′
Intimate recollections by the filmmaker’s father, a religious leader within the Celestial Church of Christ, and the filmmaker’s mother, his once devoted wife.

A Body Called Life | Spencer MacDonald | 15′
A self-isolated young human known delves into the hidden world of microscopic organisms, forging a tender connection with these nearly invisible creatures and developing a massive online following, as he seeks to understand his own place in the cosmos and accept the scars of his past.

Contractions | Lynne Sachs | 14′
Intimate confessions, paired with experimental choreography outside a woman’s clinic in Memphis, offer a glimpse into the end of safe and legal abortion access in the US.

Familia 💖💎 | Picho García and Gabriela Pena | 19′
With the help of his friends, Picho coordinates through WhatsApp to get a profile picture that represents him. Meanwhile, there’s a crisis on the family WhatsApp chat: the demand to be present during the dizzying loss of autonomy of his grandfather, the patriarch of the family. Between missed calls, bombardment of images, emojis and stickers, we access the digital intimacy of a young man conflicted with the expectations of others and his own.

One Night at Babes | Angelo Madsen Minax | 29′
At Babes Bar Cribbage tournaments overlap with afternoons of karaoke and nights of raucous queer dance parties. When the aging rural townsfolk of Bethel, Vermont and the younger queer leftists begin sharing the same watering hole, delicate lines of communication open, but not without some drama.

You can’t get what you want but you can get me | Samira Elagoz and Z Walsh | 13′
An intimate slideshow chronicling how two trans masculine artists fall madly in love. From their initial meeting to traveling across continents, viewers witness their intimate moments, long-distance relationship, and transformative top surgery.

Best Short Documentary Jury Award: Contractions

Mimesis Documentary Festival
Sunday, August 18, 2024 1:00pm
Boedecker Cinema

https://mimesis.eventive.org/schedule/6695d04d31c517005dea881d

Program: In Our Hands

Acts of digging into the ground and into the past deconstruct vulnerabilities, unheralded work, and systems of care. Behind everyday labor we find partial prints etched in the pavement, on abandoned sites, or in recorded images; a palimpsest of existence and action to be deciphered by generations to come.

El itinerante

Tiff Rekem

Patients file in and out of a public health clinic in a former Mayan town in rural Yucatán. A young doctor, who has just arrived there on temporary assignment, sends voice messages to his girlfriend.

Contractions

Lynne Sachs

What happens when women and other who gestate no longer have control of their bodies? In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in the United States. “Contractions” takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic. We listen to an obstetrician and a reproductive rights activist who movingly lay out these vital issues. We watch 14 women and their male allies who witness and perform with their backs to the camera. In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, they “speak” with the full force of their collective presence.

Couple More Shovels for a Few More Levs

Pauline Shongov

This project features a group of workers at an archaeological site in the Sub-Balkan region of eastern Bulgaria. Their confessions to the camera explore the conditions of contemporary life as the country, shaped by over thirty years of lethargic political transition, transitions from the lev currency to the euro.

Set Pieces

Bentley Brown, Ibrahim Mursal

Seaside fireworks, a march to the US-Iran game, and Souk Waqif festivities all make up a series of vignettes from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Meanwhile, an attendee ponders the event’s significance amid a shifting of the world’s centers of power.

Heterotopia

Nikola Nikolic

The coexistence of two mutually exclusive fictional entities.

https://www.olhardecinema.com.br/en/film/contractions-2/

Contractions screens 6/16/24 and 6/18/24

Olhar de Cinema – Curitiba IFF began its activities as an independent film festival. Since 2012, the festival has attracted more than 200,000 people to movie theaters, 30,000 people watching movies online and exhibited more than 1,000 films from all over the world.

In 2020, it completed its ninth edition with the screening of more than 78 films, enabling online access for more than 30,000 people to these works.

After nine years of experiments, risks and accurate shots, Olhar de Cinema is already part of the cultural scene of independent cinema in Paraná, Brazil and around the world.

The event aims to highlight and celebrate independent cinema made around the world through the official selection of films with inventive, engaging and thematic commitment, ranging from addressing contemporary concerns about the daily micro universe of relationships, to interpretations and positions on politics and world economy. Films that venture into new forms of cinematographic language, which are open to experimentalism and which, nevertheless, have a great potential for communicating with the audience.

Amidst these requirements, it is possible to compose a program of great thematic and aesthetic diversity, which does not reject genres, formats and durations. A universe composed of approximately 90 films per year, Olhar de Cinema always seeks to value Brazilian and Paraná cinema as well, by digging up what is most precious and urgent in these cinematographies, ensuring special care when programming such works.

The festival seeks to compose shows that mix Brazilian and foreign films, enabling dialogue and exchange between all these universes. Alongside the shows that make up the event’s official selection, the festival also sheds light and pays tribute to masters of world independent cinema, restored classic films and also new directors who, even with a short filmography, already have a strong artistic identity.

With this proposal, the programming carried out by Olhar de Cinema has the vast majority of selected films that are still unpublished in Brazil. In this way, the event is intended not only to provide the public with unique cinematographic experiences, but also to encourage reflection on the language and history of cinema. We thank everyone who made this story possible, who are part of our present and contribute to making the event’s future even more vivid.

Film Description:
In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court granted several states the authority to revoke women’s right to autonomy over their bodies, resulting in 21 states, including Tennessee, criminalizing abortion. In Memphis, Tennessee, Lynne Sachs draws upon her decades of experience in producing feminist counter-images to orchestrate a performance involving 14 women and some of their partners. Together, they evoke invisible visibilities and silenced discourses in front of an abortion clinic whose operations were halted following this decision. (C.A.)

JUNE 16 2024, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM

Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg Center

555 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE NW, WASHINGTON, DC 20001

Shorts Program: STAND MY GROUND

Contractions

In 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion. Contractions takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic. We hear from an obstetrician-gynecologist and a reproductive justice activist. We watch 14 women who witness and perform abortions with their backs to the camera. In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, they speak with the full force of their collective presence.

Film followed by a special audio piece: WE CONTINUE TO SPEAK (Lynne Sachs, 4 min. 33 Sec., audio,  2024 ). Filmmaker Lynne Sachs records the participants and producers of her film Contractions as they vocalize their reactions to the reduction of women’s bodily autonomy in the United States.

Denial

Paul Moakley, Daniel Lombroso. On the eve of Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection bid, he captivated his supporters with a narrative that led to widespread denial, diverting attention from those upholding our country’s ethics and election laws. This distraction allowed conspiracy theories to overshadow essential facts, culminating in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. As the 2022 midterm election approached, civil servant Chairman Bill Gates of Maricopa County was instrumental in determining the vote and delivering results for the largest voting district in a swing state that could sway a national election.

Hold the Line

Daniel Lombroso. When the largest Protestant organization in the U.S. decides to purge women in leadership positions, one prominent female pastor fights back.

I Am The Immaculate Conception

Frank Eli Martin

In 1985, the Irish village of Ballinspittle witnessed a mass visionary experience at the local grotto, where worshippers claimed to see the statue of Mary move. Nearly forty years later, only a few local devotees remain, including the statue’s caretaker Patrick Joseph Simms. I Am The Immaculate Conception documents the mystical landscape of rural Irish Catholicism and delves into a darker undercurrent beneath its surface.

Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr

Kimberly Reed. After Zooey Zephyr’s expulsion from the Montana House of Representatives for defending transgender medical care, she made a nearby bench her “office.” Director Kimberly Reed’s intimate camera transforms this shocking political moment into a portrait of trans and queer joy.