Daniel Jacoby

Deepening confusion becomes a delightful experience watching this collaborative film by Daniel Jacoby and Araki Yu. The documentary observes the idiosyncratic sounds and rhythms of Ban’ei, a rare kind of draft horse race that takes place only in Obihiro, Japan. Capturing the behind-the-scenes operations of the race, the film gradually twists itself into a knot as the excited voices of the commentators merge into a frenzy of gibberish.

From plain white walls to bombastically crafted backdrops: adult chat rooms are portals to people’s fantasy worlds. Focusing on the moments when the performers are off-screen, a meticulous concatenation of ghostly spaces takes us on an unsettling journey of self-expression and lonesome desire.

A sequence of family anecdotes and historical events coinciding with the artist's date of birth takes on a different tone as he unearths what happened in his native Peru on that specific day in 1989. The monotonous pattern of facts pertaining to the 31st of May suddenly begins to unveil connections to notions of oppressive masculinity, the nuanced tactics employed by imperialist forces, and a neoliberal dream that facilitated the neglect of an important episode in Peruvian history.

An atmospheric portrait of Christian, a young man from the city who finds himself an outsider in his new home, a poor village called Cocachimba in the jungle of Peru. Fragments from colourful Cubist paintings playfully interrupt the image while the camera shows nature in ever-flowing motion. Sitting on a rock, Christian philosophises about his newfound situation and recalls being visited by a mythical ‘devil’ in the dark of the nigh

In a monotonous future where beings have lived all possible lives, "there's a whale, there's a tortoise, there's a parrot." A climbing gym serves as the futuristic scenario for two boys and one girl to wander around while they discuss diverse ideas about the dystopian world they’re trapped in. By speaking in allegorical terms, they avoid addressing their dreadful condition directly. Only one character is different - liberated from such condition. Their love affairs will start to permeate their points of view. The fiction of a movie they’re discussing will blend with their own story. In a world where people live forever, certain things won’t be possible: "there's a novelty, there's a lie, there's a death."

Somewhere in the middle of Hokkaido, lives a man with an inexplicable bond to a potato. Unwilling to be found yet at the same time yearning to reach out, the enigmatic story of his proximity to a root plant is told through the few unaddressed letters he decides to send out. The film captures moments from Daniel Jacoby’s journey through the Northernmost island of Japan in search of this secluded man. Images of unrelated landscapes, situations and objects that the artist encounters in the way acquire an otherworldly aura when presented in the context of the potato-man.

The director returns to an exclusive Lima beach club in three moments of his life, each visit revealing new contradictions beneath its unchanging surface. Centuries earlier, a European naturalist collapses on the same shore and is visited by the vulture he has just reclassified. What happens on that shore exposes a bias that will outlast them both.