#but from a capitalist pov is a good strategy.

[nonokoko13]

If the devs don't take advantage of this chance and release New Year Malleus SSR at the end of 2024, I will blacklist them alongside with the senate.

[ospreyarcher]

More Honeytrap

Previously on Honeytrap: Honeytrap introduction There’s only one bed!/Huddling for warmth Gennady goes to Daniel’s childhood home for Christmas Gunshot wound with hurt/comfort and stoicism Daniel gets drunk as a skunk and kisses Gennady

This week in Honeytrap, we’re going back to Gennady’s first POV scene in the book, where he contemplates the honey trap mission that he has been given. It does not fill him with joy.

Content warnings for implied/referenced sexual assault, workplace sexual harassment, general consent issues, drinking (let me just blanket content warn for the whole book on this one. Everyone is going to drink a lot), the generally distressing nature of totalitarian dictatorships.

***

After Daniel left, Gennady lit his cigarette and sat for a while, watching the lowering dusk as he smoked. As a matter of fact, Daniel’s drinking habits – or non-drinking habits, more precisely – seemed liable to undermine Gennady’s mission.  

Oh, not his official mission: not the investigation into the assassination attempt on Khrushchev, not that anyone expected that to turn up much of anything anyway. “Now listen, Gennady, it’s obvious what actually happened,” Stepan Pavlovich had said. “Clearly the Americans tried to assassinate our Nikita Sergeyevich but failed through poor marksmanship, and now they’re trying to cover it up.’

Gennady did not think this was at all the obvious explanation – surely the Americans weren’t that sanguine about their chances of winning a thermonuclear war? – but it was his experience that a few decades with the intelligence services turned people’s brains to paranoid mush, so he said, “Of course, sir.”

“The only reason they’ve agreed to allow a Soviet officer on the case because they want a chance to become better acquainted with our working methods,” Stepan Pavlovich went on, exasperated. “Really, this whole idea is – ” He paused for a long moment, then said, “Well, it’s the Chairman’s idea. It’s a brilliant opportunity for us to gather some more intelligence about the FBI’s methods, as I’m sure he foresaw. See if you can’t find out anything about their secret military installations. Of course that’s mostly farther west, but still, it’s worth seeing if there is anything your American partner won’t take you to see.”

“My American partner,” echoed Gennady, his soul expanding. His American partner: Ilf to his Petrov. (Gennady had read Ilf and Petrov’s travelogue One-Storied America approximately five thousand times since he was eight.) They would drive for days on the beautiful smooth American highways, listening to American radio and stopping at diners for coffee and doughnuts, and Gennady could get to know a real American and see what they were really like once you got past the fake smiles.  

But these dreams lasted only until Gennady got back to his own office, where Arkady was pacing the floor in fury over Gennady’s reassignment. “Stepan Pavlovich is trying to undermine me again,” he fumed. “A joint Soviet-American investigation? He’s trying to frame us all as American spies, I know it. He’s always poaching my best people right when I need them!”

This was the first time Gennady had heard that Arkady placed any particular value on him at all.

“Well, if Stepan Pavlovich is going to try to undermine me, then the least I can do is take advantage of this opportunity to secure a new source – something that will give me an edge over him. Honey trap the American agent for me, Gennady.”

Gennady’s hopes for the trip collapsed. He did not want to go from being pawed by Arkady to being pawed (and probably worse) by an American.

But. But. “Wouldn’t it be better to send a woman?” Gennady asked.

Arkady waved an impatient hand. “It will be fine. All men want to fuck younger men.”

Gennady shifted in his chair. He had learned that Arkady’s pronouncements, no matter how absurd, where impervious to direct attack, yet he felt he ought to temper Arkady’s expectations somehow. “I’m not sure…”

“Listen,” Arkady interrupted. “I can see why you’re worried, Gennady, it would be better if you were younger and prettier. But after all, you don’t look nearly as old as you are – that baby face.”

He reached across the desk, cupping Gennady’s cheek in his hand, and turned his face from side to side. “Make sure you shave. And get an American suit. As for the rest, you’re a naturally seductive person, Gennady, it will be all right.”

He gave Gennady’s face a quick double pat, hard enough that it was almost a slap.

So Gennady went home and got drunk and sulked, because in the first place you couldn’t imagine Ilf blackmailing Petrov, theirs was one of the great friendships of literary history and they would never betray each other. And in the second place, if the American behaved like Arkady, it would spoil this trip which had been the dream of his life since he first marveled at Ilf and Petrov’s photographs.

He could just see it, they would be driving down a black tarmac highway, with the trees arched over it and the sunlight dappling through just like the photograph – and the American would grope him over the gear shaft. He would drag Gennady into bizarre perverted capitalist sex practices. He would probably sodomize him with a Coke bottle. Unfair, unfair.  

Then the drunkenness began to ebb and Gennady realized that it was all more likely to go wrong in the opposite direction: it might be impossible to seduce the American. How did you seduce a man, anyway? All Gennady had ever done was exist in Arkady’s general vicinity, and in any case Arkady had shifted his attentions instantly when Nikolai – younger and prettier – got assigned to the department.

Gennady stumbled into the bathroom to vomit. Then he opened the window to stick his head out into the early October air. By Moscow standards October in DC was hardly cool, but it cleared his head, at which point the obvious solution presented itself.

Drunkenness.

Get a man drunk enough and he would do anything: piss icicles into snow banks in negative forty degree weather, brawl with traffic cops, kiss other men. Just look at Alyosha, Gennady’s cousin Oksana’s husband, who lived with them sometimes until Oksana got fed up with him and kicked him out. Then Oksana would leave too, going back to her mother’s room in another kommunalka, or staying with a friend so Alyosha wouldn’t know where to find her.

Inevitably Alyosha would come to the door, falling down drunk and crying about Oksana, Oksana, how could he live without Oksana, falling on Gennady’s neck and sobbing into his shoulder and kissing the side of his face as Gennady explained that Oksana had gone away, and no, he didn’t know where, and “Get off me, you oaf, I don’t even look like her.”

“You taste like her,” Alyosha said once.

“Everyone tastes like eau de cologne when that’s what you’ve been drinking!”

When Grandfather was home, Gennady would pin Alyosha down and sit on him till he went to sleep. If Grandfather was elsewhere, and Alyosha had brought something drinkable  (“I draw the line at furniture polish, Alyoshka”), Gennady would drink with him and let Alyosha jerk him off, because why not? After all, Gennady didn’t get to see his girlfriend Galya often, and a hand was a hand was a hand; and it kept Alyosha from wandering back out into the night and maybe drowning in two inches of filthy water in the gutter.  

So, anyway, although Arkady had probably overstated the case with all men want to fuck other men, most men would at least fuck around with other men if they were drunk enough. All Gennady had to do was wait for Special Agent Daniel Hawthorne to get bombed, then sit on his lap and let nature take care of the rest. None of this groping over the gear shaft or Coke bottle business. It didn’t have to be awful. It didn’t have to be like Arkady at all.

Whatever else happened, this assignment had gotten him away from Arkady. Maybe permanently. Stepan Pavlovich had dangled the possibility of a promotion into his department.

And now Gennady was on the road, which was just as wonderful as Ilf and Petrov’s photographs, miles of smooth tarmac and friendly attendants at all the gas stations, who were happy to give you road maps and discuss directions to any place nearby. (You could tell this was a nation that had not suffered a land war in nearly a hundred years.)

And Hawthorne wasn’t a bad travel companion. Certainly not the Arkady type. Of course the man had faults: too serious about his work perhaps, impatient for results, certainly too straightforward. The attempt to gather blackmail with the strip club suggestion had been laughable, although in a way Gennady was glad that the American was trying to gather blackmail on him as well. It evened things up somehow.

And really he wasn’t as stupid as the strip club ploy would suggest. In fact, Gennady suspected the strip club was only an opening gambit designed to put Gennady’s guard down in its incompetence, and really Hawthorne meant to talk him into slandering the Soviet Union. Devious, but clever, you had to admit. The strategy played to his strengths: he was likeable, good-looking, funny, easy to talk to. Just look at the way he got the witnesses talking, just by seeming so interested in what they had to say.

Gennady didn’t really want to blackmail him.

Not that it mattered much, given that Hawthorne didn’t drink. Oh, a beer with dinner sometimes, but beer was barely even alcohol, it didn’t count. No true drinker would turn down a flask just because he didn’t happen to like the drink – when it was schnapps, which was meant for human consumption, no furniture polish!

Well, after all, that solved the Ilf-and-Petrov problem, didn’t it? If Hawthorne never got drunk enough to honey trap, then Gennady would never be in any position to betray him. Unfortunate, of course (Gennady imagined explaining this to Arkady), but after all, it would blow the whole mission to push the seduction angle too hard, and the most important thing was to find out who tried to shoot our dear Nikita Sergeyevich, wasn’t that true, Arkady Anatolyevich?

That would be altogether the best solution. Except it didn’t seem likely they would find the shooter – and if they didn’t, there’d be no promotion out of Arkady’s department. So, so, so.

So he’d just wait and see. Perhaps the knot would untie itself one way or the other. And in the meantime, he had already seen more of America than he had ever expected to see.

***

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[rawinternets]

After a long hiatus, a pep talk for startup founders

I'm part of a well-respected startup accelerator, and someone asked a really hard question. The following is the question and my best attempt at an answer. I hope other founders will find this useful.

QUESTION

"For reference, I'm in the early trenches of fundraising and talking to VCs has been making it easier to feel like an imposter as an entrepreneur.

Anyone have strategies for fighting that imposter syndrome kind of feeling?"

ANSWER

This is a challenging question with likely a rich, nuanced discussion required, but it's also great, and I'll do my best to give something of an answer from my POV.

The [Venture Capitalist]'s job is to look and sound smart - first to the [Limited Partners] that invest in them, then to other VC's, and (cynically) lastly to entrepreneurs. This roughly follows the power gradient of the money. VC's are ultimately risk-allocating middlemen, albeit smart, well-connected, and (often) socially smooth ones. One strategy is to realize that, and to realize that many investors spend most of their day very worried that they will not be able to keep up appearances, and what if they aren't actually successful at all, and what if it's all going to come crashing down. Everyone is faking it 'til they make it, even (sometimes) at the big funds.

Following that, another strategy is to realize that VCs are nothing without good companies to invest in, and that you are the expert and the person in the trenches that many of them kind of wish they could be, but can't or won't take the risk. You do have the power even if you don't have the money. This is the main message during [accelerator] -- play powerful, play hard to get, play like you're the hot person at the dance, and you're not a jerk, but everyone does want to date you.

Next, you know more about your business than anyone. Pitching is sales. It's your job to get someone to buy into your vision, but it's also a sales process the other way. You're looking for someone who has conviction in you and will jump all in. It's a dating game and it also matters whether you like the person across the table. If you know you're also evaluating them, it helps take some of the power back.

And, sometimes an investor will ask a really dumb question that makes you realize these folks are often just very good at (things that are not actually your space/business/market) and may not actually know all that much about what they're investing in. Extremely smart people make extremely dumb investments every day.

The last strategy that I have for you is that it's all a bit of a crapshoot. The valley has a lot of trends, echoes, and randomness. You might be the right team, the right idea, and the wrong time. You might be the wrong team, the wrong idea, and the right time. You might be a hot deal and you might be cold as ice for reasons totally outside your control. If you believe in your vision, your company, and your team, then that's what you know to be true. Go out there and let the process happen - whatever happens happens, and the things you do control are the things you *should* have confidence in. This can put you in a more calm, settled, and powerful mindset, where you can then turn up the dial on charm/sales/etc.

[gilmoregirlsbigbrother]

EPISODE #3

After a surprising tied eviction and Liana evicting Madison, the middle of the house shifts as Adrian wins Head of Household. A problematic guest causes confrontation, and Adrian makes the decision to join a side by throwing his fellow outliers under the bus, and on the block.

Bobby

i nominate dan and dani if im hoh🙃🙃🙃🙃

Randy

sammy is a mansplainer

Andrew

there is about a 50% chance that this hoh is going to go very, very wrong.

Dani

So like no one talks in this game apparently. Or I just suck. But anyway when liana went on the block DAN and I made an alliance with her so we were setup for this week. She literally let us decide who to put up. And I led her away from the people in my alliance.

I don’t trust Dan at all by the way. But I’m using him for now.i did tell everyone I switched my vote to Madison because I heard she was in an alliance. I knew she probably wasn’t but I chose to vote her anyway so I wouldn’t be associated with the alliance BC I WAS!!

I honestly feel good with a lot of people but my strategy is to atleast barley talk to people I don’t think will win hoh. So I won’t get blood on my hands since oh hey you didn’t talk to me. Ok I’m drunk bye love you Nicole you’re doing a great job

Adrian

WOW. Alright it has been 12 hours into this new week and I think I have a bearing on how I am feeling. I went from nominated, to veto winner to HoH all in a span of 3-4 days and I cannot be anymore happy, shocked, surprised- literally a whole slew of emotions. Winning HoH... it wasn't one of my things to win early on in this game. Because I did solidify myself as the middle person. One side of the house thinks I'm with them, and the other thinks the same. So winning HoH this week... wasn't ideal. But I think I have a way to navigate through this house and that is to nominate two people who haven't spoken to me prior. and that's between Chelsea, Liana and Bobby. Then, it puts up that I'm not gonna solidify myself with a side yet, since there are nominees from both sides of the house- and I can easily front with the fact that, not speaking to the HoH is a big sign of disrespect and I have 0 idea where they stand. WHEW im excited. I'm ready to rock and roll. Lets do this!

Andrew

Andrew

if I didn’t trust Adrian before I sure as hell don’t trust him and his smelly opinions now

(a little while later) DR: me the beginning of this game: wow Adrian seems game savvy and down to earth why does he keep getting double digits in main series TS Me now: i-

(a little after that)

 if I get nominated tonight we just gonna start eating motherfuckers toes

Dan

ALL OF BILLY’S FRIENDS BEING NOMINATED THIS WEEK? NUT!

Adrian

 I don't know what is up with this cast... like from what Clash and Liana told me about how their weeks ran as HoH- no one spoke to them... and they say 'fair' in the house chat that they get nominated... but the moment it hits PMs, they get mad? I'm sorry. But who the fuck is the HoH? Yeah ME. Not you bitches. Don't get mad at me because I am trying to root out them bitches who don't care about this game. Like fuck! Sorry it makes my blood boil. Like at least take it seriously.

Chelsea

Tbh, fair that I got nominated,  but the chat works both ways bb. I know this game is like 95% social but I'm not fake. I talk to who I talk to, so im not gonna go around saying "Heyyy" to everyone I haven't chatted with yet just to cut to my sob story about why I haven't been talking but all the sudden need you to save me. It drives me kind of crazy and It's just not what I do.

I'm obviously hoping to win POV so i can prove that i still want to be in the game, regardless of how MIA I've been compared to others.

Andrew

“ya we love getting nommed for not talking and then ignored by a chat of 16 other people all day - Bobby”

remember that time that Bobby was pretentious when isaac was like “I was at work” when he was nommed and Bobby was like “I was too and wasn’t nommed soooo” when literally no one fucking asked and then today he gets mad about people not answering him in the main chat when pms ya know, exist but i guess Bobby’s never used Skype or something and is like expecting people to reach out to HIM when he’s the one nominated and then it turns out that myself and many others were probably at work. It’s almost like we live in a capitalist country that you need to go to work all day for. Never heard of employment. Never felt that emotion.

Bobby

so are the visitors supposed to have an impact on the game or no

bc...….

well johnny just turned me asking if anyone wants to call into it seemily like I was trying to fight with the house so im fully pinning my eviction tomorrow on him

Andrew

why did Bobby just heart react my response to his pm and not campaign to me?? Am I playing Big Brother or is this just a fucking coke dream

(a little while later)

randy acting like he’s above this game after last vote didn’t go his way like....if you don’t care about this game after we played y’all then idk.. quit?? Slash leave is free.

Liana

Nick

Sooo it’s been a little since my last update and I really should do a video for this but I’d rather type and listen to music so here we go! So Madison went and I wish I could say I didn’t expect it to be honest but at the end of the day I guessed it was going to tie and unfortunately Liana wouldn’t listen to my pleads. Shes got some trust with people on the other side and was like “I wanna work with you though”... so I was fake and agreed because I’m not about that making enemies lifestyle. I highly doubt Liana actually wants to work with me which honestly sucks because I like her a lot. Moving into the next week (this week) I wanted hoh but didn’t win obviously because why would I ever win a competition that could help my game... Adrian wins and I’m sitting here looking like a clown thinking he was going to avenge Madison when in reality he puts Bobby up who’s like one of the last players in this game that actually has my back it seems. The veto isn’t used and it seems Bobby is going home.... I’m honestly screwed. SOS

JG

I'm trying fucking flip this vote last second , I don't want Bobby to go and this is gonna suck ugh 😭

[festivalists]

I as an eye

“Las Palmas” usually evokes associations of sunny beaches and decadent tourists, pretty much like in Johannes Nyholm’s cult short of the same name. Yet with Andreea Pătru as our Canary Islands insider, now we know that this happens to be a wonderful place hosting an exquisite festival, with an Official Competition for shorts that could satisfy even the most demanding taste. So we invite you on a slow journey through the ocean of the self!

It is the second year since Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival restored its international section of short films after a long pause, so such a welcome addition to the Official Competition depicts the current state of this less (re)viewed cinema. The 2017 selection consisted of 16 works coming from a wide diversity of countries, continents, and authors, also displaying a pro-feminist curation by including no less than 50% titles directed and co-directed by women. In terms of genres, styles, and working formats, the approach was a diversified one – fiction, documentary, experimental, and animation, even if the preference inclined towards a contemplative cinema that offers unique perspectives on the world. To me, the most appealing proposals were the short films that went beyond our immediate reality to distillate meaning about ourselves as observing subjects of the world.

One of the possible perspectives or strategies to navigate this selection is through the meditative take of Chris Marker’s SUNLESS / SANS SOLEIL (1983) on the trivialities of daily life and how personal memories affect the perception of history and politics. In this respect, Ico Costa's NYO VWETA NAFTA (2017), shot on 16mm, begins from a personal, almost documentary point of view that is blended into fiction. The director started shooting in Mozambique without a predetermined purpose, searching for a friend called Nafta – an episode that serves as a fictionalized search for a girl in the crowded market of Maputo. This search, giving name of the film, develops into a sharp exploration of society through a bunch of funny and unexpected stories told by young men. Just like Marker depicts Guinea Bissau, Ico Costa shows the contemporary face of another Portuguese colony, Mozambique. Instead of an idealistic view on post-colonialism, Ico Costa lets his characters voice their political views on the world, views that are surprisingly more universal than one expects.

The youth of Inhambane, where part of the shooting takes place, dreams of the capitalist goods. Baobab fruit pickers court girls by promising commodities such as houses, cars, clothes, or pursue amateur singing while others discuss on the lack of freedom of rich people who cannot genuinely drink in an ordinary tavern. Apart from funny moments born out of the discovery of Snake, the cult mobile game and a technology that the West already looks down to, NYO VWETA NAFTA intertwines these shots with a contrasting poetry of the youth's curiosity in the face of modernity. In a memorable scene, one of the characters recites pretentious terms that supposedly relate to the baobab fruits they are picking. The camera pans vertically as if climbing the enormous tree while the boy naively brags how this wonder fruit with superpowers, trendy in the West, would change his life. The contrast between those who collect the raw material and those who exploit the posh market of organic foods is disheartening, yet the boy’s innocence reveals a vibrant image of humanity.

Case in point, an even more distinguishable social commentary is being exemplified in NIGHTFALL (2016), co-directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong and Tulapop Saenjaroen. Again, like Chris Marker, the filmmakers resort to the tool of exchange as a voice-over to accompany the fictionalized images. The cinematography focuses on a nameless woman that crosses impersonal modern spaces versus her aimlessly wandering in luxurious parks. However, she does not gain enough weight to be a protagonist, the camera showing undistinguished people walking pedestrian tunnels that seem to lead nowhere. The vocal exchange plays out between two legendary figures in the Southeast Asian politics, Lee Kuan Yew, the ex-Prime Minister of Singapore (responsible for the country’s miraculous transition from a third-world economy to one of the Four Asian Tigers) and Thanom Kittikachorn, a notorious military dictator of Thailand's past ruling over a military coup. The two share diplomatic cordialities that are in fact empty words, general statements about each other’s politics.

Both politicians praise each other’s historical achievements, like Thailand being the only nation that Western powers could not colonize, or Singapore’s augmented financial growth. Apart from a sculpture of an elephant, symbolic animal of the Siam culture to remind of this political encounter, the image focuses on the extreme contrasts of Singapore today. The directors resort to dream-like imagery, like a door opening to a lush vegetation only to swap to skyscrapers and cable railways overlooking to the modern city landscape. Like in her highly praised feature BY THE TIME IT GETS DARK / DAO KHANONG (2016), Anocha Suwichakornpong uses the historical facts as a means to explore memory, blur the lines between time and space, and confer a subtle social critique. The confrontation with urban spaces is being examined as a part of past decisions' consequence that produces contemporary realities.

Once more, following the SANS SOLEIL first-person heritage, the festival screened some works that highlighted the power of the self in constructing our actuality, like Jacqueline Lentzou’s Berlinale selected HIWA (2017) based on the architecture of remembering. The Greek director, awarded last year in Locarno for FOX / ALEPOU (2016), continues to explore family constructs, yet this time she employs the means of dreaming. In HIWA, a Filipino man called Jay tells his wife as an off voice about a dream he had about their daughters. The dream soon turns into a nightmare set in a fictionalized Athens he had never visited before. The director depicts familiar places in an enigmatic manner, with a floating image that contributes to the feeling of evanescence. Avoiding the postcard scenery of the city, the dad (re)constructs Athens as a venue of suffering and decay, where his daughters are innocent victims without knowing it.

Similar to Konstantina Kotzamani’s depiction of Athens in her 2015 short YELLOW FIEBER, Lentzou renders an exotic apocalyptic setting that has little to do with reality. However, in HIWA the city is a traumatic place due to the personal experience of feeling rootless and lost in a foreign country. To recall the fuzziness of dreams, the short has a grainy image that reminds of found-footage video essays. For Jay, ordinary places like the meat market become the perished hospital, and the girls' turtle-shelled backpacks remind of being trapped under one’s own home. This sensitive story is portrayed with a directorial aesthetics close to documentary, although there are a few artificial reactions from the mother’s side that let slip this feeling. Meaning “wound” in Tagalog, HIWA is indeed the consequence of an open wound, a subconscious father’s worry for his daughters supported by an ambiguous depiction of time and space that are suppressed like in a vacuum. While this psychoanalytical approach reminds of Lucile Hadžihalilović’s transformation of realistic images into an esoteric reflection about our usual surroundings, Jacqueline Lentzou chose the dream-like imagery to depict a fleeting manifestation of trauma.

An interesting addition to the competition, NO'I (2016), directed by Aline Magrez, explores an exotic place like Vietnam, precisely a crowded little street of Hanoi, through surprising links based on the protagonist's personal interaction with the space. The author avoids a Westerner superior perspective about a place she is not familiar with, yet she embraces her condition of a visitor trying to connect, to discover this small community. The film is built around slow-paced travelings along the rails that cut through an impoverished neighborhood. It is a very peculiar space, with the rails almost glued to the damaged improvised houses. At the end of this maze, curling continuously from the outskirts of the city to more inhabited areas, the viewer gets a glimpse of a contrasting cleaner and more modern version of the city. Like with Jacqueline Lentzou, the camera of Aline Magrez focuses on a dream-like sensation set in a single space.

Still, NO'I accomplishes this feeling with a clever editing that connects the city’s wires with the railway lines and imaginary threads which the camera dolly draws through movement. Avoiding dialogue and direct sounds, the ties between the inhabitants of this atypical street are almost impressionistic. The editing is intuitive, associating surprising interior with the routine along the exterior of the houses. Like the people who build their little habits around the passing of the train, the camera organically waits for it to pass and keeps rolling. Appealing even to multiple exposure, NO'I relies on an inner perception of the surroundings. In a scene where the neighborhood’s children express curiosity and look directly into the camera, while the dolly passes by, the camera blends with the landscape like a pulsating vertebrae.

Furthermore, THE I MINE (2017) by Emilio Moreno questions memory through a complex archaeological digging not only in personal experiences, but also in the context of history itself. The short is the closest to a film essay, lending the first-person POV to a biographer, John P. Roquentin, who intends to write a novel about a deaf-blind auctioneer, Valerie Louise Ellis. The director mixes real-life historical characters with his own stance in a multi-layered experience of writing and discovering the personal self. These biographical stories blend with images of digging either in mines or with palaeontologists looking for human relicts in a sort of searching for the narrator’s real self in the past, being it historical or personal. Emilio Moreno’s interest seems to revolve around the idea of language as the mankind’s attempt to define the world. In this respect, the presence of Ellis is almost like a ghostly figure, like a myth, her image being superposed and identified with archival images of the deaf-blind American activist Helen Keller. In some of them, Ellis is depicted caressing the throat of another person, trying to decipher the vibrations of the sounds. The film shows images of Helen Keller with First Lady Grace Coolidge or President Eisenhower, thus fictionalizing her past and attributing her a constructed identity of the auctioneer Valerie Louise Ellis.

This false diary guides the viewer through Roquentin’s own struggle to separate his experience from Valerie’s, while questioning her experience with communication due to her mediated form of knowledge (by touching somebody else’s mouth). We do not know if the inspiration for Roquentin is not the fictional historian with the same name that is the leading character of Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel Nausea, or an alter-ego of the the director himself as a narrator of somebody else’s experience, neither if the book Ellis wrote is Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life. The similarities are striking, and Emilio Moreno manages to build a faux documentary only to question how identity is shaped. Similar to Chris Marker’s practice, he turns to tracing biographies that are supposed to reveal how history is made.

Moreover, this experimental documentary showcases images taken in a South African archaeological site in contrast with showcasing them in museums. In an attempt to find our ancestors, the past justifies the present. With the help of the auctioneer and images of displayed objects, either contemporary art or palaeolithic exhibits, questions of value arise over our culture and accumulation of knowledge. These objects are not just things to be marketed, yet they carry the value of the stories they contain. It is astounding how through this filtered information and (de)constructed narration dispersing in various interests, the footage becomes auto-referential, questioning how stories themselves are developed. Ultimately, THE I MINE brings to attention a provocative debate in the philosophy of language, wondering if Wittgenstein’s assumption that our words describe reality is true or not. The layers of coding and decoding the spoken language must be different for someone who perceives reality through foreign bodies, as well as for historians who investigate the past through the perception of the other. How can one find his/her own voice and trust history as a gathered experience of others?

Last but not least, the jury gave the award for Best International Short Film to the Canary-born filmmaker David Pantaleón and his THE PAINTED CALF / EL BECERRO PINTADO (2017), a work that has passed before by IFFR. A regular in previous Canary Shorts editions, Pantaleón’s film was the only exponent of the Canary Islands in the Official Competition. The short uses the biblical imagery of the Golden Calf that Moses’ brother Aaron built for the people of Israel while they gave up waiting for their leader to return with the 10 commands. However, the filmmaker's adaptation does not look like a faithful representation, yet more like a carefully composed installation. Pantaleón works with the local environment to make a sharp statement against the hypocrites who state they venerate God / Yahweh, yet their only idol is money. He pays respect to the oral culture by using a choir resembling ballad singers and points out de-spiritualized spaces. Abundant in fixed shots, his short film resembling oil paintings is a poetic allegory rooted in the Canary islands cultural heritage that along with other proposals appealing to mystic imagery, such as ABIGAIL (2016), DUEL / DUELO (2017), or DADYAA (2016), constituted the section’s provocative exploration of spiritual crises.