BISFF2025 | ECHO: Archival Filmmaking Strata 回响：档案电影地层

A Geology of Time

Time is often imagined as a forward-moving line that neatly connects past, present, and future—a notion so long taken for granted continues to shape how we think about time itself. Historian Reinhart Koselleck’s concept of “temporal layers” (Zeitschichten) unsettles this entrenched paradigm, inviting us to reflect on the intricate nature of time.

In Koselleck’s view, time resembles a geology more than a line: a stratigraphy of experience in which disparate layers of temporalities coexist and interlace, their pasts and presents dynamically enmeshed in continual interplay. Each temporal layer, deposited over its lived duration, not only bears a diachronic imprint but also accrues new sediments through synchronic contact with others. Koselleck refers to this as “the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous” (Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen), a key he offers for grasping the intrinsic complexity of time. It reveals that what we call “the present” is not a singular point in a linear continuum, but a charged field of temporal heterogeneity.

How do we exist within the folds of time? “Echo: Archival Filmmaking Strata” gathers a constellation of answers. Here, existence is a becoming through the active embrace of plural histories, an entanglement through which we weave and are woven into the fabric of time.

In A Rare Way of Smiling (2024), an unsent letter from Kafka to his father, Super 8 home movies from half a century ago, and the filmmaker’s own childhood VHS tapes are held in conversation. From this emotive juxtaposition, the figure of “Father” emerges as a shifting trace—stretched, transformed, and refracted through time—an absence that becomes a presence, delicate yet unshakably felt. Myanmar Anatomy (2023) conjures a layered landscape where colonial legacy and contemporary resistance collapse into each other, revealing a violence that power has sought to conceal yet persists as history’s very substance. Brume of the Billows (2024) channels Hedy Lamarr’s frequency-hopping technology into an audiovisual poetics. As drifting soundwaves pulse through the flicker and grain of old 8mm film, imagination tunes in where transmission falters, and unlikely connections ripple into being. Jurassic Guy, A Musical Ode About Giving Up (2025) wryly reworks the globally consumed blockbuster Jurassic Park, a cultural icon of the 1990s, as a present-day allegory of alienated labor.

Gestures like these are responses, bodily and imaginatively, to the question of how to exist in times: salvaging fragments from the fault lines of memory, entwining with the specters that seep through history, unearthing unrealized potentials from the ruins of obsolete media, and wielding fiction as a pick to strike at the bedrock of reality… Together, films in this program disquiet the binary between presence and absence, leading us into a geology of time—porous, polyphonic, and alive with possibility.

Living time lineally is to follow one path; living it geologically is to keep digging. Amid strata of resonance, as we attune ourselves to the undulating contours of time’s multiplicity, a grammar for tracing the unsayable begins to surface. (WANG Zifei)

时间地质学

我们习惯于将时间想象为一条匀速向前、串联过去与未来的直线。这一隐喻长久以来深植于大众认知，构成了我们理解时间的惯性框架。历史学家莱因哈特・科塞雷克（Reinhart Koselleck）提出的 “时间层” （Zeitschichten）理论，有力撬动了这一固化的时间观，启发我们重新理解时间的复杂形态。

在他看来，时间更近乎一种地质构造：多重的时代经验叠合共存，往昔与当代在此纵横交错、相互作用。每一个时间层次都沉淀着特定的历时性痕迹，又持守着共时性的在场。这种“不同时的同时性”（Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen），恰是科塞雷克为我们提供的、理解时间本身之复杂性的钥匙。它揭示：所谓“当下”，并非线性进程中的一个孤点，而是一处充满时间异质性的张力场。

置身时间的褶皱之中，我们如何存在？“回响：档案电影地层”（Echo: Archival Filmmaking Strata）所呈现的，正是对此问的一份份回应。在这里，存在意味着主动拥抱复数的历史，与时间相互编织。

《稀有微笑》（A Rare Way of Smiling，2024）中，卡夫卡未寄出的家书、一卷半世纪前的超8家庭胶片与导演自身的VHS童年影像被巧妙并置，“父亲”的身影被拉扯、变形与重构，缺席因此化为最响亮的在场。《缅甸解剖学》（Myanmar Anatomy，2023）里，殖民遗迹与当代抗争彼此叠印，权力试图掩埋的暴力浮现为历史自身。《波涛氤氲》（Brume of the Billows，2024）将海蒂・拉玛（Hedy Lamarr）的跳频技术转译为一种视听诗学，断续声轨与8毫米胶片的物质纹理交织，通信失效处反而孕育想象的联结。《侏罗纪打工人，一首关于放弃的音乐礼赞》（Jurassic Guy, A Musical Ode About Giving Up，2025）则征用《侏罗纪公园》这一90年代的全球现象级文化商品，将其叙事改写为一则关于劳动异化的当代寓言。

凡此种种，皆是对“存在”的具身回应：于记忆的断层打捞往事的碎片、与历史的幽灵缠绕互生、在媒介的废墟里挖掘未竟的潜能、以虚构的利刃解剖现实的肌理……这些实践共同扰动在场与不在场的二元划界，带领我们穿行于暧昧的、多声部的、饱含可能性的时间图景。

线性时间许诺单一的答案，而地质构造般的时间，邀请我们永续勘探。于多重时间的共振中，我们辨读其律动与回响，寻获不可言说之物的语法。(王紫菲）

check here to see the full list for Echo: Archival Filmmaking Strata

Brume of the Billows, Rodrigo Faustini, 2024

ECHO-1

Ode to Ghosts | Elogio a los fantasmas | 幽灵颂

Facundo Rodriguez Alonso 法昆多·罗德里格斯·阿隆索

2024 | 0:17:11 | Argentina | Spanish | Asian Premiere

Azkena | 最后

Ane Inés Landeta, Lorea Lyons 安妮·伊内斯·兰德塔，洛雷亚·莱昂斯

2025 | 0:20:00 | Spain | Spanish | Chinese Mainland Premiere

Being John Smith | 成为约翰·史密斯

John Smith 约翰·史密斯

2024 | 0:26:52 | UK | English | Chinese Mainland Premiere

Back to Mamanville | Retour à Mamanville | 重返马曼维尔

Stéphane Rizzi 斯特凡纳·里西

2024 | 0:27:16 | France | French, Russian | Asian Premiere

ECHO-2

Shadow of the Sakura | 樱之影

Arief Budiman 阿里耶夫·布迪曼

2025 | 0:28:09 | Indonesia | Indonesian, Japanese | World Premiere

Daily Worker | 工人日报

Ting Su 粟婷

2025 | 0:09:45: | US | Chinese Mandarin | Asian Premiere

In Memoriam / Islanders | Muistokirjoitus/Saarelaiset | 缅怀/岛民

Matleena Jänis 玛特莱娜·亚尼斯

2025 | 0:24:40 | Finland | Finnish | Asian Premiere

Displaced in Time | میان مرزهای تصویر | 失所于时

Pariya Bakhshi 帕丽娅·巴赫希

2025 | 0:28:00 | Germany | Persian | World Premiere

Displaced in Time, Pariya Bakhshi, 2025

ECHO-3

The Slides of Prof. Somkiat Tang-Namo | 颂吉·唐纳教授的教学幻灯片

Prapat Jiwarangsan 帕拉帕·吉瓦朗桑

2025 | 0:06:24 | Thailand | English | Chinese Mainland Premiere

Early Came the Stories | Les imatges arribaren a temps | 故事先至

Jaume Carrió 豪梅·卡里奥

2025 | 0:06:00 | Spain | Catalan (Valencian) | Asian Premiere

Myanmar Anatomy | 缅甸解剖学

Prapat Jiwarangsan 帕拉帕·吉瓦朗桑

2023 | 0:22:19 | Thailand | English | Chinese Mainland Premiere

Brume of the Billows | Rocio Das Vargas | 波涛氤氲

Rodrigo Faustini 罗德里戈·福斯蒂尼

2024 | 0:03:32 | Brazil | Portuguese | Chinese Mainland Premiere

Self-Portrait at 13 | Autorretrato a los 13 | 13岁的自画像

Oscar X Illingworth 奥斯卡·X·伊林沃思

2025 | 0:18:11 | Ecuador | Spanish | Asian Premiere

Black Glass | 黑玻璃

Adam Piron 亚当·皮龙

2024 | 0:08:50 | US | No Dialogue | Asian Premiere

Frequently Asked Questions | Preguntas Frecuentes | 常见问题

Sofía Salinas Barrera 索菲娅·萨利纳斯·巴雷拉

2025 | 0:15:48 | Colombia | Spanish, Portuguese, Persian | Asian Premiere

ECHO-4

Frail Hope | Frail Hope | 微茫希望

John Winn 约翰·温

2025 | 0:05:59 | US | English | World Premiere

Autobiography of My Diabetes | 糖尿病纪事

Matthew Lancit 马修·兰西特

2025 | 0:25:26 | France, Canada | English | Asian Premiere

Jurassic Guy, a Musical Ode About Giving Up | 侏罗纪打工人，一首关于放弃的音乐礼赞

Carlos Carbonell 卡洛斯·卡博内尔

2025 | 0:14:00 | Spain | English | World Premiere

Young Man with a Leather Jacket | Jeune homme au blouson en cuir | 年轻的皮衣客

Muriel Montini 米丽埃尔·蒙蒂尼

2025 | 0:05:30 | France | French | Asian Premiere

smirnov fedot | смирнов федот | 斯米尔诺夫·费多特

Misha Ketov 米沙·克托夫

2024 | 0:04:00 | Russia | Russian, English | Asian Premiere

desire | 欲望

Giuseppe Boccassini 朱塞佩·博卡西尼

2025 | 0:30:00 | Germany, Italy, France | English, Spanish, Japanese, Finnish | Asian Premiere

ECHO-5

A Rare Way of Smiling | Un modo di sorridere insolito | 稀有微笑

Veronica Orrù 韦罗妮卡·奥鲁

2024 | 0:21:26 | Italy | Italian | Asian Premiere

Strata | Schichten | 叠境

Fabian Schubert-Heil 法比安·舒伯特－海尔

2025 | 0:12:00 | Germany | No Dialogue | International Premiere

A Robin in the Room | Un Petirrojo En La Habitación | 屋中的知更鸟

Nicolás Martín Pintos 尼古拉斯·马丁·平托斯

2025 | 0:09:48 | Argentina | Spanish | Asian Premiere

The First Times | Le prime volte | 人生初时

Giulia Cosentino, Perla Sardella 朱莉娅·科森蒂诺，佩拉·萨尔代拉

2025 | 0:16:00 | Italy, Spain | Italian | Chinese Mainland Premiere

Tragedy | Tragédia | 悲剧

Bernardo Zanotta 贝尔纳多·扎诺塔

2025 | 0:15:00 | Brazil, Netherlands, France | English, Portuguese | Asian Premiere

Mobile Waterfall | 移动瀑布

Ge Tairan, Tenzin Dhame 葛泰然，旦增达美

2025 | 0:15:20 | China | Chinese Mandarin, Tibetan | Chinese Mainland Premiere