For this short film programme at ASAP festival, the theme of heartbreak is interpreted through the shock of meeting with reality and the shattering of childhood fantasies.

As small children, we are raised to believe that the world spreads out before us in a dazzling array of possibility and potential. We are encouraged to dream. Time passes and we grow up. Reality sets in and, for many women, it is a crude wall, fencing off our girlish dreams. The contemporary patriarchal society that we have inherited and now inhabit is a resounding fracture of that potential and possibility that used to dangle before us. What dreams are still possible in the face of the cold, hard intrusion of reality?

This programme layers intimate and startling fantasies from women filmmakers, ranging from corrupted girlhood desires to cracked and limping hybrid dream-nightmares. In a grown-up world that has left innocence and naivety behind, the unbridled dreaming of a young girl still courses wildly beneath the surface like bubbly lava under a cooling earth. 

We invite you to come and go throughout these grotesque and disfigured dreams that are only possible after the fall. These fleeting impressions are for you to collect like plastic pearls on fishing wire. Come hungry, come sleepy, come curious.