Short Film Competition 2018

The Crosscuts Short Film Competition was organized by the Environmental Humanities Lab, at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

The winners:

Stratum
2018, HD video, 12 mins.
Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan
Soundtrack score by Lord Mongo

Jury’s motivation:
‘Stratum’ is a fluid meditation superbly cutting across film-making and archival practice. Its narrative style effectively interlaces various temporalities, diffracting the lives of people and minerals, and envisioning the historical metamorphosis of places – Crosscuts Jury

Stratum
Stratum is a film that navigates through post-industrial landscapes on the European Route of Industrial Heritage, from Britain’s abandoned South Yorkshire coal seams to the culturally re-purposed collieries of the Ruhr Valley, Germany, via the former coal-mining region of Wallonia, Belgium. Contrasting the past and present, contemporary scenes are combined with archival film material, alongside audio narration and excerpts from Misère au Borinage (directed by Henri Storck and Joris Ivens, 1934), a socialist documentary made in the depths of the Great Depression.

Stratum frames the industrial, social and ecological genealogy of a pan-European region, capturing the economic, structural and physical transformation of post-industrial sites, where particular flora and fauna species have colonised the disturbed landscape.

Stratum is a companion film to the artists’ two-screen 40 minute work Strata, commissioned by contemporary art agency Arts & Heritage.

Link: Stratum

Jury

  • Kalle Boman (Chair) – Advisor, Producer and Professor of Cinematic Composition
  • Serenella Iovino – Professor of Environmental Philosophy
  • Issraa El-Kogali – Filmmaker and Artist
  • Jan Olsson – Professor of Cinema Studies
  • Anna Åberg – Assistant Professor, History of technology and cultural studies

Contestants

  • Andrej Slávik with The Literal Zone: Exhibits A-J
  • Farideh Sakhaeifar with Halabja, 1988
  • Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan with Stratum
  • Jarell Mahinay Serencio with Siyudad Sa Bulawan (City of Gold)
  • Michael Glowacki with A life of Debt
  • Stine Alling Jacobsen with Times of extraction
  • Viveca Mellegård with Mapping Majang