ACCIDENTAL LUXURIANCE OF THE TRANSLUCENT WATERY REBUS
dir. Dalibor Barić, 2020
81 mins. Croatia.
In Croatian with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2 - 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 - 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25 - 5 PM ($10 w/Q&A)
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30 - 7:30 PM

Barić’s first feature-length animated film is the abstract chronicle of a couple, pencil-pusher Martin and conceptual artist Sara, as they attempt to break out of a future dystopian surveillance state. At their heels is the ambivalent Inspector Ambroz, who pushes the case forward despite a mounting existential crisis. Relentlessly polychromatic and hallucinatory, the film’s modulated, fragmented images and cryptic voice over narrations recall the often murky and worryingly uncanny qualities of AI-generated art. In line with noir’s signature pessimism, REBUS imagines a world where the deepest recesses of the human mind have all been thoroughly externalized and everything rendered predictable. A hope granted in viewing the film is that at least some creativity can be found from excavating the cultural wastes.