Altered Innocence Vol. 1
Nearly 3 hours of LGBTQ and Coming-of-Age short films and music videos await you in the debut of Altered Innocence’s cinematic mixtape supreme! Films from established auteurs like Peter Strickland, Cam Archer, João Nicolau, and Yann Gonzalez join fresh new voices such as Alexis Langlois, Shaun Hughes, Caroline Poggi, and Jonathan Vinel. Cruising, dancing, naked wrestling, trans terrorism, first love, bullies, femme fatales, band practice, and more is in store!
Cam Archer
Peter Strickland
Antonio Hens
Bertrand Mandico
João Nicolau
Yann Gonzalez
Shaun Hughes
Caroline Poggi
Jonathan Vinel
Alexis Langlois
Anna Cazenave Cambet
Gjertrud Bergaust
Casts & Crew
Elina Löwensohn
Félix Maritaud
Kate Moran
Niels Schneider
Pablo Puyol
Jenna Thiam
Jasper Bel
Laurie Reynal
Mila Lendormy
Israel Rodríguez
Marylou Mayniel
Lucas Doméjean
Connor Newall
Csaba Molnár
Gyula Muskovics
Nana Benamer
Tomás Franco
Håvid Kringstad Hagen
Cato Skimten Storengen
Also Directed by Cam Archer
Bobby Stone is 13 and in love. Problem is that he's in love with his best friend Dylan and Dylan doesn't feel the same way.
Two boys dream of a life together in heaven.
An amplified sense of place that nonetheless leaves one feeling unmoored, the destabilization of loss layered with a new, raw potential...these relatable states of being are invoked through image and voice in Cam Archer’s new film His Image.
A lyrical telling of the coming of age of a 13-year-old boy who learns to cope with his new found sexuality and his unrequited love for the cool kid in school.
Filmmaker Cam Archer examines and explores his ordinary, suburban neighborhood in search of hidden truths, new narratives and a better understanding of his fading, creative self. Combining heavily degraded video with personal photographs and real life neighbors, Archer re-imagines the concept of 'home video'. In an attempt to distance himself from his subjects, actress Jena Malone narrates the piece as Archer in the first person.
Cam Archer revisits the life of child actor Jonathan Brandis who committed suicide in 2003. Lydia Lunch narrates this meditation on fame, the actor’s pressure to remain in the public eye and the surreal events in the lead up to his unexplained death.
Vivid colors, trees and secrets answered. A LOOK BACK is part of Mike Plante's Lunchfilm series of commissioned shorts (made for the cost of a lunch between Plante and filmmaker Cam Archer).
Renowned actress Colleen West abandons her successful career for a secluded life in the hills. But the quiet and peace of mind she longed for is disrupted by the noisy construction of neighboring housing developments. Before long, Colleen discovers that she really can’t stand herself now that she has given up the only thing that she has ever truly been passionate about. As an alternative to isolation, she reluctantly befriends her jubilant, whimsical neighbor and reconnects with her estranged brother. Haunted by loneliness and past desires, Colleen begins to feel as if she has lived her life through the characters she has played on stage and screen. –Quinzaine des Réalisateurs
Cam Archer's hypnotic short film takes form as a letter into the void. A middle-aged woman reads a note to a lost friend while slowed home movies of an adolescent boy flash across the screen. With movements blurred and the picture flaring with light, the image seems to register the uncertain memory of one left behind. "Have you forgotten about me," the woman asks. "We left a mark on each other, didn't we?" We don't know the nature of the relationship or the loss but the haunting conjuring power of cinema works its primal spell. ABOVE BELOW is another remarkable selection from the Cinemad Almanac.
Also Directed by Peter Strickland
A haunting ghost story set against the backdrop of a busy winter sales period in a department store, following the life of a cursed dress as it passes from person to person, with devastating consequences.
A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube.
Day in and day out, lovers Cynthia and Evelyn enact an elaborate sadomasochistic fantasy as mistress and maid. But as their ritual of domination and submission begins to turn stale, Cynthia yearns for something more conventional, while Evelyn tries to push their taboos even further.
In Astoria, Queens, in 1980, young Greek-American Nondas is determined to jump-start his electronic music career by doing what has been previously impossible: using new music tech to make his own demo in his bedroom & basically hand delivering his freshly pressed singles to DJs, radio stations, and anyone who can help him.
Short film by Peter Strickland.
Instead of using tape splices 16mm wide, this film was edited by turning the splicer sideways to reveal the sprockets and the soundtrack. The long cuts run diagonally across the screen and, as the filmstrip slides by, the highest jumper shows the way to the herd.
A feature-length anthology film. They are known as myths, lore, and folktales. Created to give logic to mankind’s darkest fears, these stories laid the foundation for what we now know as the horror genre.
A 16 mm narrative short shot in New York with Nick Zedd and Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn
From a mind unlike any other, Biophilia Live chronicles the multidimensional concert centered on the eighth studio album of avant-garde Icelandic artist Björk. Nick Fenton and Peter Strickland, unique voices in their own right, film Björk live in performance and punctuate her music with evocative animation and science and nature footage. The infinitely creative journey presents a culmination of work that represents one of the most original musical endeavors of a generation.
ASMR-infused sound design, shot on 8 and 16mm film. Commissioned by London Short Film Festival 2020.
Also Directed by Antonio Hens
The long-awaited sequel to Boys Briefs, the successful compilation of six outstanding short films about gay first love. Hosted by DANNY ROBERTS, star of MTV's THE REAL WORLD NEW ORLEANS. Films included are: Doors Cut Down (2000); Chicken (2001); Back Room (2000); Breakfast? (Frühstück?) (2002); Touch (2001); and Take-Out (2001)
A school boy hangs around a mall in order to pick up older men and have sex in the public toilets. When his English tutor teaches him anal sex he is opened up to new experiences despite being caught by his disapproving father. When he meets a 18 year old he goes to the toilets only to be caught by security and charged. Despite his parent's disapproval he finds this makes him dedicated to one relationship but the sexual anonymity of the toilets is a constant lure for him.
Cuba is not a country for young gays. Teen rent boy Reinier falls in love with a mate in the slum soccer field at their neighbourhood in Havana. Although obsessed with moneymaking to hold up his baby, teen wife and wife's granma, gambler Reinier always fails in getting the stoke of luck he looks for. At the same time he cannot help being infatuated by Yosvani. Handsome Yosvani will give up his wealthy -and elder- girlfriend whom he hooked to pay him a lavish life in the big city, and the works he makes for her father, a loan thug, so much in love he is with Reinier. But the boys would fight hard to keep this love in the reckless Havana streets.
Three boys escape from a youth prison in Spain, and head for the city of Madrid. Xabi and Joel, both Spanish, and an Arabic boy named Driss, quickly meet up with some eccentric people on the road. Joel, and the very cute and lovable Driss have no trouble hooking up with a couple girls that don't at all mind if the two handsome guys stay with them. The quietly intense Xabi, however, is dealing with some darker demons, and his personal reason for escaping the prison soon becomes apparent.
Antonio Hens from Cordoba delivers a fascinating and unusual look at the world of the porn industry, in which a convention acts as a melting pot that allows us to meet a number of people whose way of life is "live" sex. Through the stories of a series of men who are involved in gay porn, and the particularities of this work in which the body is a tool (erections being a sensitive element in this equation), another perspective is opened up: the one of the mise en scène of others' fantasies and what this implies for the bodies that carry them out.
Also Directed by Bertrand Mandico
According to an English legend, Joan of Arc never died at the stake. Her eyes were seared with hot pokers and she was deflowered by an English stud. She was then sentenced to wander on the battlefields, like a vulture, on the look-out for life and searching for any virgins left alive.
On a Scottish island, a depressive police investigates the disappearance of a girl. The mournful mother is responsible for the disappearance of the inhabitants of the island.
Andreï researches the sonic memory of plants. He has developed a technique for making sounds come back from the past. Andreï wants to keep a tight lid on his discoveries.
Henry Darger travels the icy roads of Iceland to find out how much time he has left to live. Two o’clock will tell him a clairvoyant with blue skin.
Shining Sex features five poetic visions of sexual ecstasy by filmmakers Hadzihalilovic, Sion Sono, directorial duo Cattet and Forzani, Mandico and Mendonça Filho. The storylines range from a young man who falls in love with a mermaid to lovers who abandon themselves to sensual pleasure in a dance hall in Brazil.
Directed by Bertrand Mandico
Four paintings. Ode to nature.
Hoisted by his rope, a hanged man is lifted up through the branches of a tree. While he is in the middle of his ascent toward the heavens and death, the woman who’d accused him of a crime clears him of it. He gently comes back to life, lying in a field, gazing at everything around him.
Mister Flupersu thinks he has been in touch with an extraterrestrial life. He talks about it, in front of the camera and with the supporting evidences.
Also Directed by João Nicolau
Manuel bids farewell to his routine and boards a 15th century vessel under pirate law. Treason on board triggers a series of terrible events our protagonist overcomes while keeping his moral principles intact.
After finishing his MA in Anthropology, Hugo spends his days giving his brain a rest from the endless reading of texts by unknown authors. His only company is Luisa, the cleaning lady, with whom he plays cat and mouse. To escape the sleep of reason – which creates monsters -, Hugo exercises his lyrical vein by writing, with his friend Manuel, songs about their neighbourhood. The quiet dilettantism of our protagonist is shaken by Catarina, a young and beautiful translator who’s starting her professional life as a freelancer. Hugo is hooked and wavers. High above, a kestrel falcon hovers. It’s not the only bird of prey that can do it.
João is an indolent young man, whose life is desperately empty. Day after day he goes through the motions of duplicating keys in his tiny shop concealed in the basement of an obsolete nearly deserted shopping center. Some day, he hopes, the lady of his heart will come and order the key that will unlock his heart. Against all expectation, the miracle happens...
A princess and a hunter. An iconographic journey immersed in Lusitanian fantasy.
The start of Luís Rovisco’s old age isn’t exactly cheerful. Already in his sixties, he’s still roaming the country by himself, carrying out his tasks — increasingly less real — as sales director for the company SegurVale. Sadness, resignation? Not with the songs Luís makes up behind the wheel, and that take over this film from start to finish.
"Cape Verde is an archipelago situated 500km off the West Coast of Africa. On the island of Santiago lives Mano Mendi, the last player of the cimboa, a one-string violin used to accompany the traditional batuque music. Through the portrait of Mano Mendi and the learning experience of To, a music teacher in the capital city of Praia, the film shows us how this music is rooted in the rhythms of everyday life."
Rita is fifteen and spends the summer between warm afternoons of teenage love and party nights with her friend Sara. From Portugal to the South Pacific, the pleasures of this routine will take a turn when the young girl visits the art show of a new neighbor in the local community.
A ten year-old boy faces up to the struggles of life in a summer camp. It’s not easy to be ignored by the girl of his heart or seeing his dormitory vandalised by adolescent thugs. Fortunately, in the forest, the wild haggis insists on remaining out of sight.
Also Directed by Yann Gonzalez
A girl, a boy, a ghost. Some pop music and noisy rock. Meanwhile, youth keeps fading away.
Around midnight, a young couple and their transvestite maid prepare for an orgy. Their guests will be The Slut, The Star, The Stud and The Teen.
Short introduction to the film Knife+Heart (2019).
Night. Kisses. A consumed heart.
A sexual reverie unfolds over the course of one ethereal night. Characters wander through an erotic maze of love and lust, blurring the lines between wet dream and lucid nightmare as a macabre, erotic stage performance sends a ripple of lustful desires through its audience and performers.
Mock porn trailer directed by Yann Gonzalez for Knife+Heart (2019).
Dead city. Foggy night. A saxophone is playing. Lust is lurking.
In the summer of 1979, gay porn producer Anne sets out to film her most ambitious film yet, but her actors are picked off, one by one, by a mysterious killer.
A party at night. Some teenagers dance and fall in love as if it was the first and the last time.
Bianca and her mother meet again in Porto after many years. Together, they will hit the road with their stripping show, running after lost time, impossible love and strange fantasies.
Also Directed by Shaun Hughes
Cariño is a short psychological thriller set in Spain. We follow the Rider as he travels through rural Spain on his motorcycle. An unexpected and tragic accident sends the Rider spinning into a world of darkness. Uncovering themes of loss, abandonment, love and pain, Cariño explores the darker side of human nature and delves into the contamination of destructive psychology.
An emotionally repressed and traumatised young man is challenged by disruptive outsiders to face up to his delusion, and risks losing the final bond to his dead mother.
Also Directed by Caroline Poggi
Laëtitia, Roca, Nico and Naël are in a band. As per usual, they meet late afternoon before rehearsal in a vacant lot. The group will soon no longer exist; they will be forced to disband because Laetitia is moving away to study. This is the story of four young adults who do not want to say good-bye.
Lucas invites his girlfriend Anäis to visit him at home. His parents aren’t around. The garden is all theirs. They can make love there. A photograph hangs on the wall of a man with a tiger in his arms. “Is that your father?” asks Anäis. “Yes, that’s my father. He’s the chairman of a tiger protection group in Thailand.” The father is Pierre Woodman, the famous pornographic film director. Lucas enters into an imaginary dialogue with his father. He makes an attempt to understand his father and makes an attempt at love himself – always in view of his father, who practised it incessantly.Then Lucas confers Anäis with a knighthood and fiction soars above reality.
In a country of mountains and forests, a young man no longer recognizes his dogs.
As a small-town drug dealer named Pablo and a strange young man, Night, get into serious trouble, Apolline (Pablo's younger sister) has to deal with the discontinuation of Darknoon, a video game akin to some virtual paradise lost she's been playing for as long as she can remember.
The filmmakers film young cosplayers posing in the streets of Paris.
Two young men in a nearly abandoned suburban landscape deal with the suicide of one of their friends by shotgunning beers and joining a gang.
Unfamiliar stories that are universally relatable, these teenagers are put into situations which they have no experience deal with. A reflective anthology of French short films exploring the elation and heartbreak of not quite knowing who you are yet.
Short film made for the Ulule campaign for As Long as Shotguns Remain.
A default CGI animated child is confronted with modern subjectivity and world coming of age issues, making animation a gloomy tool to subdue modern narrative feelings in favour of despair and micro-dosed hope. Animation based routines and easy-portraiture of desolation are strategically organised as a grim Dark Toon.
In Corsica, a woman chooses to care for the earth by burning it.
Also Directed by Jonathan Vinel
Early short by Jonathan Vinel.
Laëtitia, Roca, Nico and Naël are in a band. As per usual, they meet late afternoon before rehearsal in a vacant lot. The group will soon no longer exist; they will be forced to disband because Laetitia is moving away to study. This is the story of four young adults who do not want to say good-bye.
Lucas invites his girlfriend Anäis to visit him at home. His parents aren’t around. The garden is all theirs. They can make love there. A photograph hangs on the wall of a man with a tiger in his arms. “Is that your father?” asks Anäis. “Yes, that’s my father. He’s the chairman of a tiger protection group in Thailand.” The father is Pierre Woodman, the famous pornographic film director. Lucas enters into an imaginary dialogue with his father. He makes an attempt to understand his father and makes an attempt at love himself – always in view of his father, who practised it incessantly.Then Lucas confers Anäis with a knighthood and fiction soars above reality.
As a small-town drug dealer named Pablo and a strange young man, Night, get into serious trouble, Apolline (Pablo's younger sister) has to deal with the discontinuation of Darknoon, a video game akin to some virtual paradise lost she's been playing for as long as she can remember.
A fantasized portrait of Ashlynn Brooke.
The filmmakers film young cosplayers posing in the streets of Paris.
Martin cries. He is alone. He woke up in the morning and all his friends were gone. Disappeared. Just not there. He sets off to look for them. And he searches everywhere, in the city, in the mountains, in the rivers, but he doesn’t find them. That makes him furious. Really furious – really sad. Rage, violence, longing, loneliness. Without fear of great feelings, without fear of one's own courage and without fear of violence, Jonathan Vinel tells a story of love and loss entirely based on elements from the computer game Grand Theft Auto V – beyond all kinds of tawdry notions and with extremely concrete physicality.
Two young men in a nearly abandoned suburban landscape deal with the suicide of one of their friends by shotgunning beers and joining a gang.
My neighbour committed suicide. He was car tuning at the end of his life. I played football with him. Child. And also ping-pong. Herepaired our computer. He was called Gilles my neighbour. We cannot play any more. In a room, a boy reminds himself his dead friends.
Unfamiliar stories that are universally relatable, these teenagers are put into situations which they have no experience deal with. A reflective anthology of French short films exploring the elation and heartbreak of not quite knowing who you are yet.
Also Directed by Alexis Langlois
Kalthoum and her girlfriends sip cocktails, look for sex on the internet, impatiently want love and, once again, suffer the transphobic insults of strangers. Today is going to be different though ; today, the four friends will imagine their revenge. A sour film that offers to get revenge from the mundane intolerance in the best possible way : by laughing really hard !
First grief of love, Billie is devastated. The jokes of her girlfriends, the advice of her teachers and the sweet words of her mother intertwine and resonate like old chatter. Nothing to do, Billie is inconsolable.
On a Sunday morning, a group of young revelers enter a large, vacated apartment. Tired drag queens mix with debauched grannies, drunken vagrants and shy virgins over the course of the morning.
Directed by Alexis Langlois
At the edge of a cliff, three naked men perform a strange ceremony. Suddenly, a creature emerges and kills the three pagans. At this point, we switch to another space-time, where some hybrid beings are born. Together, they celebrate the victory of falsehood and artifice…
Looking for a place where they can live their romantic idyll, a love triangle ‘the weirdos’ will go on multiple dates, good and bad, that will eventually rush them to a tragic end.
Outside, things are rumbling. We must go out, rebel, but it's too hard.
Also Directed by Anna Cazenave Cambet
It’s winter, Theo and Sasha are both dead to each other. Everyone tries to mourn Esther. Theo would like to make peace with Sasha, find the ocean again, find Esther again.
Esther, a young woman from the South of France moves to Paris at the end of the summer to look for her summer crush. She is in for an intense and romantic journey.
Nérac in the early 2000s. Laurie and Mila, 13-years-old, dance to Gabber music on the shores of a remote lake. Mila is in love with Laurie and she wants to tell her.
Also Directed by Gjertrud Bergaust
14-year-old Asgaut struggles to adjust to life in the small village where he and his mother have settled. After one day receiving unexpected help from the farmer Kjell, Asgaut starts working as a farm hand during the lambing season. The lonely Kjell appreciates having Asgaut on the farm, while Asgaut longs for care and security. A close friendship evolves, but is challenged when the people of the village jump to conclusions about their relationship.