ALTERNATE SENSORY REALITY

Filmmakers and artists working with moving image are invited to submit short films for a screening event in Plymouth, UK.

Short experimental films and artists' moving image pieces under 20min in length will be considered for a programme that will aim to bring together perspectives exploring relationships of sensory experience with the world of moving image and sound.

Susan Sontag argued that our perception indeed makes us who we are, more than conceptual knowledge does:'we are what we are able to see (hear, taste, smell, feel) even more profoundly than we are what furniture of ideas we have stocked in our heads’.In line with the neurodiversity paradigm, the way we see, hear, feel the world is uniquely different for each person. For neurodivergent individuals with heightened sensory differences it might even mean, in the words of Temple Grandin, living in an 'alternate sensory reality.

If experience is an ongoing interaction with the world, how can the sensory identity be expressed, evoked, explored by adventures in perception made available by the medium of film? How does that process mediate the ability to connect to the world and to each other, through a non-conceptual, directly experienced type of understanding?

This is a non-competitive, informal event with an aim to spark conversation and connect to others interested in filmmaking as 'adventures in sensation' (Sontag, One Culture and the New Sensibility, 1966).

Neurodivergent individuals and people with sensory differences are especially encouraged to apply, but everyone with an interest in the convergence of perception and film is very welcome. 

The deadline for submissions is 1st November 2023. Submissions are free. 

Please send your work through the form HERE.

Please email [email protected] or DM IG: alternate_sensory if you have any questions.

Please limit your entries to one film per author. 

English subtitles are required for all non-English language films.

Please note: this a currently non-funded, small, local event that aims to open conversation and offer an opportunity for informal networking for those interested in the topic.