What does a lake dream about? This year, London’s off-beat Short Film Festival takes a mythical excursion

Four fresh New East productions will feature at London’s prestigious Short Film Festival between 10 - 19 January.

Bridging experimental animations, abstract films, and documentaries on counter cultural phenomena like drag or grime aesthetics, the festival is a celebration of the alternative and the poetic, produced on a shoestring budget.

Of the four New East films, Volcano: What Does A Lake Dream and Imbued Life are contestants in the International Competition category, while Deep Love and Daughter are part of the animation programme.

Volcano: What Does A Lake Dream?

Romanian filmmaker Diana Vidrașcu’s visceral film explores the science and mythology behind natural phenomena such as lakes and volcanoes, combining electronic music with abstract cinematic language.

Imbued Life

Imbued Life is part of the International Competition: Houses in Motion category. A surrealist Croatian animation by Ivana Bosnjak and Thomas Johnson, the short follows a young woman’s relation with the force of nature in deeply sensual visual language. Thanks to her passion for taxidermy, the woman discovers camera rolls inside stuffed animals and decides to “return” them back to their natural habitat.

Deep Love

Blood flows out of a tree. A bus crashes. “Deep love has finally happened in Ukraine” is the official description of this roughly lined, colourful animation on the life of a Ukrainian city.

Daughter

This moving Czech animation explores the relationship between a father and a daughter and how they manage their emotions.

Find out more and grab your tickets here.