Director: Various Directors
“L’Mina” (dir. Randa Maroufi; 26 min.) is set in Jerada, Morocco, where coal mining was officially shut down in 2001 but continues clandestinely, because there’s simply no other livelihood. It’s an odd feeling, being nostalgic for a lightbulb, but that’s exactly what happens in “No Mean City” (dir. Ross McClean; 15 min.). From there, this program moves to landscapes we’re reshaping, often without noticing. “High-Rise Pigs” (dir. Ang Siew Ching; 15 min.) brings us inside an unsettling twenty-six-story pig farm in China’s Hubei province. “Buckskin” (dir. Mars Verrone; 17 min.) is something different: a film about the filmmaker’s grandfather, a U.S. Forest Service member who spent his career navigating institutions that weren’t designed to welcome him. “Endlings” (dir. MarÃa Luisa Santos; 16 min.) wanders from churches to DNA labs to ghostly archives, asking what actually endures when the things we love vanish from the earth.Â