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connect reminds us of our own humanity by allowing us to see ourselves in others. Six films show a social and visual portrait of over 160 people of different ages, gender, socio-economic backgrounds, cultures and religion from local communities in the USA (New York City), Germany (Schöppingen, Berlin) and Spain (Blanca).

The project presents stories and interactions that build intrigue about who we are and how we relate to one another. The protagonists share their private stories and thoughts in an honestly refreshing way, as they answer five universal questions that we all ask ourselves at one time or another. Each question is the subject of its own film, with similar answers and counterpoints sewn together to build a narrative on humanity.

The questions are: What makes you happy? What are you scared of? What do you love the most? What advice would you give your younger self? What are your hopes for the future?

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Water ways is a film about human engagement and the waterways that connect a group of people. The film’s protagonists take us on a journey that transports us into the lives of a riverside community in Indonesia. We are given intimate observations and access to everyday people, their homes and things that are usually invisible to us, including their intrinsic connection to an environment that is both essential and harmful.

We see a slice of everyday life, that starts with a group of children playing in the wash of a boat on a river. As the waterway divides, we follow the path to a tangle of boats that ultimately leads us to the main protagonist of the film, an older woman who shares her point of view with us. This woman absorbs the details of life around her from the edge of a timber mill, as she completes her morning rituals. She takes us into her world, a textured and fascinating place that we are invited to experience and marvel at.

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How do you begin to understand what life’s like for someone working in the armed services? How do you ask personal questions of someone trained to kill? Someone who, on meeting you for the first time, instinctively thinks about how they would disable you.

These are the questions Sylvia asked herself when she was commissioned to create a work for the Royal Australian Navy’s 100-year anniversary of sailing into Sydney Harbour. As part of this commission, she was embedded with the Navy at the naval base, HMAS Penguin.

A Naval Novella is a film featuring interviews, physical workouts and anecdotes. The work demystifies the Navy by breaking down some of the barriers that exist between elite Naval personnel and civilians. It shows the human side of the Navy and invitingly allows people to access this closed culture. The work is anchored by the naval tradition of tattoos and gruelling physical training that uses rope.

For the Navy, the rope is a symbol of union, mateship and stability. For the viewer, tattoos are symbols of humanity and individuality.

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In November 2011, on the two-month anniversary of the Occupy movement, police arrest over 100 protestors in New York, the mayor apologises to peaceful protestors in Seattle after police use pepper spray and a returned veteran from Iraq is injured in California when police shoot him with rubber bullets. In Montréal, they have the bubble.

The bubble and other stories from Montréal is a celebration of people who are trying to change the world and a portrait of the everydayness and practicalities of people living together in a protest environment. A film shot entirely at night follows relationships built across people from varying backgrounds through the stories they tell and the actions they share.

The Occupiers strengthen the unity of the movement by singing and dancing together and sharing in the making of beautiful bubbles, using only the wind and a simple silken cloth that envelops their bodies.

Together they call on the world to eliminate economic inequality and to redistribute resources from the 1% for everyone to share.

“We are the 99%.”

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Talking about death is difficult. And yet not talking about death can sometimes be more difficult.

In her film, A shared space, Sylvia approaches the subject side-on by showing us death from the perspective of two grave diggers. Our protagonists have been preparing graves for more than 20 years and for them death is a very normal part of life. They enjoy their job and take pride in burying the dead.

The film starts by showing us a graveyard on a beautiful serene day. The grave diggers work in a quiet and harmonious way and their movements almost seem choreographed as they prepare the burial site. Today, however, there is an unexpected outcome. Something the grave diggers have never experienced.

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Imagine what your life would be like if you were imprisoned.

Not the fictionalized Prison you’re shown on TV, but a real Prison, a Prison of the everyday. A Prison of the minutia. A space where you lose your freedom of movement, your freedom of choice, your privacy and to a large extent your identity.

five Prison stories relays five stories about life inside a maximum security Prison. It does so in an understated, matter of fact, yet private and sometimes almost humourous way. Sylvia gives us insight into a way of living and a space that most people have no exposure to, or experience with.

The stories are told in the third person by a prison guard and are set against images and footage of the inside of a prison. The stories are titled:

1. “visiting you on table 33”
2. “They did have pottery and a kiln”
3. “It’s not homosexuality. Its jail sex”
4. “There was excessive use, not for the purposes they were intended.”
5. “At least you are giving people contact.”

five Prison stories makes the inaccessible accessible in a simple and engaging way.

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but of the drip, drip,
of long haul
no end in sight solitude,
they know nothing

is a simple and beautifully framed visual documentary about an abandoned insane asylum used from 1878 to 1914.

The film is set to hauntingly beautiful music and sounds. It does not explicitly talk about the institution, nor of the horrors experienced by the marginalised: the mentally ill, disobedient or “promiscuous” women, victims of violence and sexual abuse, the poor and criminals, who were committed here, often for life. Instead it offers an opening, a space for the viewer to bring what they know and imagine what they cannot.

Also in this series

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There is a hidden space used by workers in a large shopping centre in Cologne. Moving between floors unseen by shoppers, the workers use a private elevator without doors that never stops. Like a conveyor belt it continuously deposits staff throughout the building.

The lift moves rhythmically and silently in a constant steady loop. It offers the workers a moment of escape from the hectic shopping environment that awaits on the other side.

The workers glide on and off in concert with its flow. Person and machine engage in a daily ritualistic dance where the basic step is so simple yet becomes bigger and more beautiful with repetition.