Location April 5th: Mariënburgkapel
Location April 8th: LUX

There is a mask for all seasons. The films in this selection bear witness to contemporary attitudes toward masks and masquerade traditions in a digital world. They explore modern realities by stretching the limits of the physical and the supernatural. In this collection, we encounter longstanding masquerade traditions, masks in an Afro-futuristic context, masks as a metaphor for migrant or diasporic experiences and masques as socio-political commentary. In a world with no borders between real and virtual existence, and where an awareness of the supernatural or the traditional is often trivialised, the shorts question the modern existence and occasional denial of self: is it a crisis of consciousness or a consciousness of crisis. What face do we put forward? What stories are hidden behind the mask? What is (un)seen or (un)heard? What is erased? What is lucid or ambiguous?

The six short films in this programme feature masked protagonists and reference concepts of being and belonging through the prism of heritage, home, stasis, disconnections or detachment as individuals or within a community. From Lagos to Goma, Kinshasa to Zurich, the stories show us that to know is to understand, and perhaps, to belong in a modern world while retaining links to one’s heritage.

The ticket of the screening on 5 April includes a drink.

Curated by Aderinsola Ajao