A day of small spaces, shifting realities and shared film moments.
The third edition of Day of the Visionaries took place this day. Final preparations were completed just in time before arrival. Three people at setup, with a few additional guests arriving shortly after. A sound check was done using random K pop playback, which confirmed that the audio system worked correctly. The program featured works from Sweden, Japan, Spain and Azerbaijan, along with a David Lynch inspired lottery segment, drinks, candy and pizza. Everything was ready.
All and all this Sunday we where 8 people attending.
Last time we where 25.
Read about it here:
https://moonglimmermagazinex.blogspot.com/2025/10/event-visionarernas-dag-sasong-2-2025.html
Film 1:
Doften av ett band - (SMELLSCAPE) - (2026, Sweden)
By Mattias Eliasson
Length: 1h
After a short introduction by Mattias,
That you can watch here:
Now everything was set in motion and the day opened with the first film. The film is a music documentary focusing on a punk/hardcore band. Going in, the expectation was a straightforward portrait of a band and its music. What unfolds instead moves in a different direction.
While rehearsals, performances and live moments are present, the film gradually shifts toward the personal lives behind the music. The members appear as middle aged musicians balancing work, family and everyday responsibilities while still trying to keep the band active.
This shift creates a slower, more reflective tone than a conventional music documentary. As it progresses, the identity of the band becomes less central and attention moves toward relationships, persistence and the reality of sustaining creative work over time.
After the viewing, there was some discussion about the band’s
name, which is not clearly stated in the film. Some visual cues
appear in rehearsal spaces and locations, but nothing fully confirms
it during the film itself, what any of us noticed anyway.
Later research suggests the band is called
Shitsame, a local group connected to Vimmerby, Hultsfred and
Stockholm.
Overall rating: 6/10
The documentary leaves a thoughtful impression. It does not
function as a straightforward band portrait, instead leaning into
ambiguity and everyday realism, which invites reflection rather than
clear conclusions.
More info about the band here:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093499309509&locale=sv_SE
More info about Mattias Eliasson
https://naturfilmarna.se/mattias-eliasson/
Film 2:
Notch: Ep 04 - Mabito (2025, Japan)
By: James
Webb
Length: 23min
First we got a Statement from the group explaining there idea of
there anthology show Notch.
This focus shifted now to Japan, featuring a short film titled Mabito from an
anthology project associated with a group using the name James
Webb.
Here the tech started messing, after the file I had
downloaded from YouTube started to lag for some reason, we looked at
it on YouTube, that worked fine.
The story follows a unit of soldiers moving through a forest during the Second World War. What begins as a straightforward wartime setting gradually introduces a more uncertain presence within the environment. The forest feels active in a way that goes beyond geography, suggesting something unseen moving alongside the group.
The film relies heavily on atmosphere. Sound design plays a major role in shaping tension, using subtle environmental audio to build a sense of unease. The visual approach is restrained, with attention to movement through space and the gradual build of psychological pressure.
A comparison can be drawn to Deathwatch (2002), particularly in how isolation and fear develop inside a hostile environment. Both films use enclosed natural spaces as a form of psychological trap, where the real threat is never fully defined.
Overall rating: 8/10
Mabito stands out through its controlled pacing and strong
technical execution. The cinematography supports the mood
effectively, with a consistent focus on distance, silence and
uncertainty.
Watch it
here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uagcz49Xtwk
Film 3:
Videohead (2026, Sweden)
By - Robin
Andersson
Length: 8min
The third film began with an extended introduction from
director Robin Andersson, who framed the short as a tribute to the
videocassette format and its cultural influence. The presentation set
up expectations of a retro inspired experience centered on analog
media and physical tapes.
Watch his introduction here:
The film follows a young woman who receives a mysterious cassette. From there, the narrative moves into increasingly unstable territory, blending experimental horror elements with a stylized retro aesthetic. The tone leans into 1980s inspired visual language, where analog texture, distortion and mood driven pacing take priority over conventional structure.
Partway through the screening, playback was interrupted due to a
technical file issue. The film could not continue normally at that
moment, which forced an early stop in the viewing. This created an
unintended break that left the audience with an incomplete first
impression. At that moment I did not know it existed on YouTube also.
This was the last frame that was seen at the event from this short sadly.
Later, the remaining portion was viewed separately for this blog article. The second half escalates into more chaotic and surreal territory, pushing further into experimental horror and fragmented narrative structure. The transition from the earlier section to this part feels abrupt, almost as if the film deliberately abandons coherence in favor of tonal expression and visual experimentation.
There is a noticeable shift between the more grounded opening and the later abstract progression, which gives the film a dual identity. The initial stopping point would have worked as a strange but contained conclusion, while the full version expands into something more unpredictable and unrestrained.
At moments it lands in a strange space somewhere between Ringu (1998) and Darkman (1990) energy, where familiar horror logic dissolves into something more distorted and reactive.
Overall rating: 6/10
A playful, experimental work that
embraces imperfection and ambiguity, with a strong emphasis on sound
design and visual atmosphere rather than narrative clarity.
Watch it
here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNyFOScZL4M
Robin
also help me write some of the reviews here that you might have seen.
Check out his own site here:
https://filmfett.wordpress.com/
Film 4:
NO ME SUELTES (Don’t Let Me Go) - (2025, Spain)
By: Lia Montsu
Length: 5min
Next film is from Spain, created by film student Lia Montsu. The short is inspired by a visual reference from Junji Ito’s manga The Long Hair in the Attic(1988) .
Maybe this panel.
The film presents a simple but striking scenario. A young woman appears trapped, her hair physically bound to a wall, while another woman attempts to help her escape. The setup is minimal, but the emotional weight is carried through movement, framing and atmosphere rather than dialogue.
Shot in black and white, the film develops a timeless quality that
enhances its poetic tone. The visual choice removes distractions and
places full focus on texture, contrast and physical tension within
the frame. The result is a piece that feels closer to a moving
illustration than a traditional narrative short.
What stands out most is the restraint. The concept is not expanded into explanation or background, but instead allowed to exist as a fragment of a larger implied world. This creates a lingering effect after viewing, where the situation continues to resonate without clear resolution.
Overall rating: 6/10
There is a sense that this material could support a longer form
adaptation, where the emotional and symbolic elements could be
expanded further. Even in short form, it leaves a strong impression
through its visual simplicity and thematic focus.
What it
here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oii3niLXeYQ
David Lynch lottery drawing.
The atmosphere shifted into something more informal and relaxed compared to the screenings earlier.
The segment was a lottery draw by David Lynch. A YouTube playlist he had created during the pandemic. Random selection turning it into a kind of unpredictable draw mechanism. Numbers were pulled in sequence from this setup, the process was simple but carried a sense of anticipation because of its completely random nature.
What happened during the draw was crazy. The number 10 appeared
three times in a row, so the all the prize ended up going to a single
participant that by luck had this numbers as wining numbers. That was an unplanned twist.
Check out the playlist
here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eonhfU_5UnY&list=PLTPQcjlcvvXFtR0R91Gh5j9Xi8cq0oN3Y&index=123
Pizza from Dana Pizzeria!
Here the program paused for a short break. The timing landed well, giving space to reset before moving into the later part of the evening. Food arrived from Dana Pizzeria, which added a welcome change of pace to the screening. The delivery turned into a shared moment. Thanks so much to Dana Pizzeria for sponsoring this event, it helps a lot. Taste good too.
Check them out on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/p/Dana-pizzeria-100063764701898/?locale=sv_SE
Film 5:
Aporia Kiyamet Deneyi (Doomsday Experience) - (2019, Azerbaijan)
by Rec Raven
Length: 1h 26min
The final film of the evening brought the audience into a part of world cinema rarely represented, a horror film from Azerbaijan directed by Rec Raven. Title roughly translates to “Doomsday Experience”
Part of the fascination surrounding the film came from simply experiencing a movie from a country many viewers knew very little about. Several attendees were unsure where Azerbaijan was geographically located, which became part of the discussion surrounding the film itself. The country sits west of the Caspian Sea, below Russia and above Iran, positioned in a region that rarely reaches international horror audiences.
The version screened at the event had been dubbed into Turkish, reportedly to help the film reach a larger market.
One of the film’s strengths is how it maintains tension despite the limited environment. Creating atmosphere and momentum in a single confined location is difficult even in short films, yet this production manages to sustain interest across a full feature length runtime. The hostage scenes are intense and at times extremely brutal, adding a harsh realism to the horror elements.
The film also contains several effective gore effects that help reinforce the physical danger surrounding the characters. Rather than relying purely on shock, the horror grows from the feeling of entrapment and uncertainty.
Overall rating: 6/10 for intensity, confined storytelling and the uniqueness of seeing horror cinema from Azerbaijan.
Watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjbKc6mhL1I
Paper Shoot
Another thing that was happening in the shadows of the event was this camera was making a round around the area, it is an anti digital camera, that is digital, but you can not see on the back what photo was taken, it has no display, all is saved on a memory card for viewing later. I am in the making of a longer article about it so stay tuned for that.
Not so many photos was taken sadly, but here are some that was taken at the event by those attending.
One thing I like with this camera is the 90´s era felling over it.
THE END
The throughline becomes surprisingly clear when looking back at the program as a whole. Even without planning it, the selection of films ends up circling the idea of confinement in different forms.
The opening documentary places its focus inside a limited social space, where the “band” exists less as a public identity and more as a small, contained struggle to keep something alive within everyday life. The Japanese short pushes that idea into a physical environment, where movement through a forest becomes a controlled, enclosed experience shaped by unseen pressure.
The Swedish short takes confinement into a more stylized direction, narrowing everything into a single object and perspective, almost like a sealed narrative space where meaning has to be extracted from limited fragments. The Spanish film reduces it even further, holding the entire emotional weight inside one static situation, a single visual problem that never expands outward.
The feature film from Azerbaijan, then pushes confinement into its most literal form, trapping its characters inside an underground space where survival and tension are built entirely from restriction. Even the closing lottery segment, shaped through David Lynch inspired randomness during a period of isolation, fits into the same pattern of constrained conditions producing unpredictable outcomes.
Seen together, the program starts to feel less like a collection of unrelated works and more like variations on a shared condition: people, spaces, or ideas placed under limits and forced to evolve within them.
Against that, the presence of the Paper Shoot camera becomes almost the opposite gesture. It moves freely through the room, capturing moments outside the films themselves, outside the structured confinement of the screenings. It acts like a small breach in the concept, documenting the people watching the constraints rather than the constraints themselves.
That contrast gives the evening its final shape. The films explore restriction from different angles, while the camera quietly records what exists beyond that shared frame.
Overall an okay event for it being on a Sunday. Next event is planed for Nov, let´s see how that goes.
Thanks to :
Studiförbundet Vuxenskolan
Dana Pizzeria
Direkten Nöje
Then also thanks to those that attended the event this time.
Article written by: Sonny Mikszath
