We are pleased to announce the winners of the third NOVUS call!
NOVUS is a FilmEU WIRE initiative designed to encourage practitioners across the FilmEU Alliance to explore artistic research and develop new ideas and projects.
Following the evaluation process, two projects have been selected to receive €7,500 each to support their artistic research activities:
- Going Along: Four Responses to the Same Place by Susana Oliveira (Universidade Lusófona), Ema Konstantinova (NATFA), and Saara Mildeberg (TLU).
- Land, Flesh & Water by Hind Kammourieh (Universidade Lusófona), Maria Emilia Lloret Moscoso (Universidade Lusófona), Sangam Panta (TLU), and Michal Šabík (VSMU).
Going Along: Four Responses to the Same Place is a collaborative artistic research project exploring how four practitioners respond independently to the same people and places, each through a different artistic practice.
Set in Barroso, northern Portugal, the project brings together four approaches: walking, writing and instant photography (Susana Oliveira); photography informed by ethnology and landscape studies (Saara Mildeberg); listening, field recording and sound composition (Noa Timmermans); and documentary filmmaking (Ema Konstantinova).
Taking its cue from the Surrealist cadaver exquis, the project follows a sequence in which each practitioner encounters the same people and places, receiving only a few clues from the preceding participant. None sees the material produced by the others until all four responses are complete.
Through this process, Going Along explores how attention, experience, and artistic practice shape what we notice and how we interpret a shared place. The four contributions will be brought together in a collective multi-channel screen installation, allowing their distinct perspectives to remain perceptible.
LAND, FLESH & WATER is an experimental moving-image and spatial installation exploring the relationships between belonging, displacement, the body, and memory. Initiated in November 2020, in the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion and a period of personal transition, the project emerged from an ongoing inquiry into what it means to leave a place behind, to inhabit the space between departure and arrival, and to search for refuge in the world and within oneself.
Structured around three interconnected elements - Land, Flesh, and Water - the installation approaches the body as both a landscape and an archive: a site where personal and collective histories, ruptures, and transformations are inscribed. Through moving images, fragmented narratives, text, sound, and sensory elements, the work explores the porous boundaries between the human body and the natural world, questioning how experiences of displacement reshape our sense of identity, home, and belonging.
Supported by NOVUS funding, the project will continue to develop its experimental and spatial dimensions, bringing together image, sound, and material exploration to investigate the possibility of finding refuge in the spaces we inhabit, the bodies we carry, and the landscapes that remain with us.
Congratulations to the winners, and a big thank you to everyone who submitted their proposals!