News
SectionX at Unconvention
SectionX was born out of the need to highlight the shared countercultural roots of both experimental filmmaking with cinematic horrors.
On 19 October, at Rua Maria 10b (map), by invitation of Unconvention Lisboa, we present two special screenings featuring bold visual experiments that are shaping the horror of today and tomorrow.
Expect body horror, fantasy, transcendence, and hallucination, films that unsettle with trance-like techniques and unconventional forms. By breaking narrative causality and deconstructing familiar visual language, these works function as hallucinatory rituals: disorienting, poetic, and eerily primitive.
The program searches the sources of these visions to reveal fresh perspectives of cinematic terror, offering a kaleidoscope of macabre poetry, occult imagery, and chromatic puzzles from leading experimental innovators.
Unconvention Lisboa is a festival dedicated to tattoo art and creative experimentation produced by Charleine Boieiro (Françoise Tattoo) and Catarina Querido (Anjos70). Two weekends transformed into a living laboratory of skin and body, bringing together national and international artists to show, experiment, and connect.
19 OCT - 16H30 | SHORTS
(Rua Maria 10b, Lisboa)
Free Entrance
A New Kind of Testament
(France, 2023, 16')
by Stephen Vuillemin
A young woman comes across animations on the Internet that have clearly been created from her private selfies. An unknown female with the same name confesses to identity theft. But death is quicker than the answer to the question: Why?
Ele of the Dark
(USA, 2022, 12')
by Yace Sula
A nonbinary visual artist contemplates their relationship with darkness and its hold on their complexion, trauma and queerness.
Semen Retention for a Better Tomorrow
(USA, 2022, 5')
by Alexandra Neuman
Motivated by the causal relationship between patriarchal domination and the climate crisis, “Semen Retention for a Better Tomorrow” integrates climate science, ecofeminism, and tantric alchemy into a speculative ethos for bodily and planetary healing.
Halves Through Night
(France, 2021, 11')
by Lina Laraki
‘Barzakh’ is a term of Persian origin to name a transitional space between the living and the dead. It designates the very distance or time that both separates and comes between these two worlds. "Halves Through Night" explores this veiled space in which beings are suspended, disembodied from the real, and no longer belong to any place.
From.Beyond
(Norway, 2022, 13')
by Fredrik S. Hana
"From.Beyond" is an experimental short film consisting of different perspectives, referencing genres like science fiction, horror and found footage. A kaleidoscopic vision portraying mankind’s first meeting with alien life, told through faux archival footage combined with practical FX, miniatures and old school in-camera trickery
19 OCT - 19H | FEATURE
(Rua Maria 10b, Lisboa)
Free Entrance
Residency
(USA, 2023, 75')
by Winnie Cheung
During a winter residency in Brooklyn, ten women artists succumb to the darkness of their own creative fascinations and obsessions. In a kind of DIY punk tango that ambiguously mixes the fictional and the documentary, Winnie Cheung sculpts her first feature film, working on her own transcendence - woman, artist, New Yorker and daughter of immigrants - in contrast to her imminence and that of what surrounds her - bodies, space, time. The film follows ten women throughout the month of February 2022, in the gallery/art collective, The Locker Room; but this time, instead of their story being arbitrated by the traditional male gaze, the tropes of the horror genre - such as the "final girl" - are subverted in order to dialogue about the true experience of a female artist in the moment of creation: anxiety with serious notes of pleasure, delirium and joy; the desire of the core over the physical; not knowing when to stop. They are the hands of the dream and the heart of the nightmare.
Expect body horror, fantasy, transcendence, and hallucination, films that unsettle with trance-like techniques and unconventional forms. By breaking narrative causality and deconstructing familiar visual language, these works function as hallucinatory rituals: disorienting, poetic, and eerily primitive.
The program searches the sources of these visions to reveal fresh perspectives of cinematic terror, offering a kaleidoscope of macabre poetry, occult imagery, and chromatic puzzles from leading experimental innovators.
Unconvention Lisboa is a festival dedicated to tattoo art and creative experimentation produced by Charleine Boieiro (Françoise Tattoo) and Catarina Querido (Anjos70). Two weekends transformed into a living laboratory of skin and body, bringing together national and international artists to show, experiment, and connect.
19 OCT - 16H30 | SHORTS
(Rua Maria 10b, Lisboa)
Free Entrance
A New Kind of Testament
(France, 2023, 16')
by Stephen Vuillemin
A young woman comes across animations on the Internet that have clearly been created from her private selfies. An unknown female with the same name confesses to identity theft. But death is quicker than the answer to the question: Why?
Ele of the Dark
(USA, 2022, 12')
by Yace Sula
A nonbinary visual artist contemplates their relationship with darkness and its hold on their complexion, trauma and queerness.
Semen Retention for a Better Tomorrow
(USA, 2022, 5')
by Alexandra Neuman
Motivated by the causal relationship between patriarchal domination and the climate crisis, “Semen Retention for a Better Tomorrow” integrates climate science, ecofeminism, and tantric alchemy into a speculative ethos for bodily and planetary healing.
Halves Through Night
(France, 2021, 11')
by Lina Laraki
‘Barzakh’ is a term of Persian origin to name a transitional space between the living and the dead. It designates the very distance or time that both separates and comes between these two worlds. "Halves Through Night" explores this veiled space in which beings are suspended, disembodied from the real, and no longer belong to any place.
From.Beyond
(Norway, 2022, 13')
by Fredrik S. Hana
"From.Beyond" is an experimental short film consisting of different perspectives, referencing genres like science fiction, horror and found footage. A kaleidoscopic vision portraying mankind’s first meeting with alien life, told through faux archival footage combined with practical FX, miniatures and old school in-camera trickery
19 OCT - 19H | FEATURE
(Rua Maria 10b, Lisboa)
Free Entrance
Residency
(USA, 2023, 75')
by Winnie Cheung
During a winter residency in Brooklyn, ten women artists succumb to the darkness of their own creative fascinations and obsessions. In a kind of DIY punk tango that ambiguously mixes the fictional and the documentary, Winnie Cheung sculpts her first feature film, working on her own transcendence - woman, artist, New Yorker and daughter of immigrants - in contrast to her imminence and that of what surrounds her - bodies, space, time. The film follows ten women throughout the month of February 2022, in the gallery/art collective, The Locker Room; but this time, instead of their story being arbitrated by the traditional male gaze, the tropes of the horror genre - such as the "final girl" - are subverted in order to dialogue about the true experience of a female artist in the moment of creation: anxiety with serious notes of pleasure, delirium and joy; the desire of the core over the physical; not knowing when to stop. They are the hands of the dream and the heart of the nightmare.