"The apparatus as an eccentric performer within the film.”

FRACTO festival seeks to reflect upon the techno-attitude that directs film towards the demands of its apparatus, constantly floating as a supreme and fragmented perceptual eye. In this configuration perceptual contingency is ultimately conceived as a totalizing, post-organic point of view—seemingly seeking primarily itself—instead of folding in on specific meanings conveyed by a clear distance from medium.

How can we gather, with an answering gaze, from the novel dispositif its tension, while being aware of its self-embodiment qua eccentric presence? How can we perceive this seemingly submerged, carousel-like apparatus, as a mimetic perception, an ingestion, an embodiment—or is it so extremely inhuman that it returns to us a mere trace of our material bond with its nature, allowing us to take distance from it? Can its behavior be conceived partially as a mirror, a frame, or even a membrane by which it grasps its space? Or does it tend to entwine these forms constantly through its unceasingly ambulant state? What is the scope of our consciousness, and thereby our sense perception which experiences it? Is our vision intrusive or extrusive? Is it just a spectacular absorption or does it drown us, through a perceptual wound—a counter-shock—within an uncanny perceptual space, seizing us to reconfigure, in the opening of its void, frequently perceived stale categories such as gender, physicality, dwelling, nearness-distance, natural-unnatural, perceptual, leisure and so on? In other words how can we perceive the classic kinematic dichotomy between haptic immediacy, nearness, from one side, and stillness, distance from the other? Is the nature of this sovereign yet contingent apparatus a matter of the current digital state, or merely a novel way of envisioning a timeless need, or even the dispositif itself? Is cinema still a spectator's space, when it has reached a point of self-denial as a non-space, non-camera, non-human or even non-apparatus state within production and reception? Is this tension an extension (an ambulant body which attempts to know more about itself), or a self-castration of the flesh (a dying body which is loosing its memory), or is it already out of any sort of pure bodily conception, like a vanishing cloud? Is film still considered as a challenge to keep the body alive, or is it definitively breaking any sort of dichotomy between life and death?

The submission deadline is April 10th, 2018.

Entrants may submit an unlimited number of works with the maximum length of 30 min each (via private link with password). Complete an entry form for each title submitted. Your films must have been completed after 1 January 2016. All formats will be accepted including super8, 16mm and 35mm. It is not necessary to include still photos with the entries. Do not send us DVDs or any hard drives. Entrants will be notified of results on May 1, 2018. This year we ask all the filmmakers a small fee of 5 euros, for each entry, to support our no-profit film festival project.