object permanence
Alix Blevins, USA, 2022, 1 minute
New York Premiere

Objects disappear.

The Perfect Room
Leonardo Pirondi, Brazil, 2022, 2 minutes
US Premiere

The rendering of an impeccably constructed computer-generated image displays a disarranged home. Filmed on 16mm and hand-processed, the image is formed through a process that allows imperfections such as hair, dust, and dirt.

Community Room
Amanda Katz, USA, 2018, 4 minutes

On my daily commute, I'm drawn to this underutilized space, tacked-on to a newly constructed condominium. Filmed on the first day of Spring. 210 North 12th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The Black Tower
Mandy Eugeniou, UK, 2019, 17 minutes
US Premiere

The Black Tower is an experimental film using crowd-sourced, aftermath photography of Grenfell Tower, in the wake of the catastrophe that befell Londoners in 2017. As a homage to John Smith’s 1987 masterpiece of the same name, we enter the world of a notional character who is preoccupied with a black tower that seems to follow them around eventually driving them to oblivion. Crucial that all aftermath images for the film were crowdsourced from the general public who had documented the aftermath, here we consider how a networked connectivity can link individual consciousness to cultural memory. This re-enactment creates an aesthetic space to join the conversation between event & representation, myth & reality and the role of viewer-witness in our digital culture. Given how voyeurism underlies an engagement with spectacles of violence, the film explores how “Art After Grenfell” is even possible by putting the traumatic image under scrutiny to perform a critique of seeing. We watched the Tower transform overnight from presence to absence - and then again ad nauseam through the prism of mainstream media. On that day, event and representation experienced a temporal collapse. An architectural and visual anomaly, the ‘monument’ became a politically and historically resonant site of trauma. As the real appears and disappears through the power of images, its monumentality hides in plain sight. The project explores (counter) memory and attempts to inspire an ethical presence with the wider complexities of this unconscionable trauma.

This (award-winning) research project has a dedicated website and is accompanied by a Word Piece.

http://www.theblacktower.co.uk 

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A Meditation on Nature in the Absence of an Eclipse
Crystal Z Campbell, USA, 2021, 8 minutes

Running like water, an eclipse streams glimpses of irreversible consequence.

Timekeepers of the Anthropocene: Tolchikaualistli
Federico Cuatlacuatl, Mexico, 2022, 9 minutes
New York Premiere

Tolchikaualistli: to exist simultaneously in two places and dimensions of time is an immigrant’s ability to embody a transobder life, navigating the past, present, and future at once. To (be)long is to reclaim territory, in this case it is a transcendence of time and space as a means to reclaim a new dimension of territory or place that must exist in between two worlds, between the past and the future, between two identities, between ones many selves. Smuggling traditions are acts of resiliency, self-preservation, resistance, and self-rematriation in a dimension of transborder indigeneity and one’s many selves: to be an alien; to be the other; to be the threat; to be the dream; to be the backbone; to be the invasion; to be a cultural nomad; to be (in)visible; to be 500 years of historical weight; to be a ‘pinche indio’ ; to be hope...

Ejemplo #35
Lucía Malandro & Daniel Saucedo, Uruguay / Cuba, 2022, 6 minutes
North American Premiere

This unusual documentary pixilation is based on images discovered in Cuban court archives. In the past, the Communist regime’s prying security forces surveilled not only the enemies of the regime, but also the activities of nonconformists, misfits and dissidents.

“The images stored in Cuba’s judicial archives contain the island’s most jealously guarded secret: an alternative history in which the nonconformists, the misfits and the dissidents are also part of it.”

a.o.k.
Christopher Tym, UK, 2022, 14 minutes
North American Premiere

a.o.k is a hybrid video documentary about the experience of making pop videos and pop music. Using only behind the scenes and B-roll footage altered with animations, it is a painting of the emotional experience behind and in front of the camera. It is as much about the content as it is about the making of it.

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The project revolves around a series of music videos created to original tracks but the end results are neither seen nor heard; what remains visible, however, are the sensations of the contributors during the production.

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It is a journey that cramps with discomfort at the beginning but opens up, softens and releases into something tender and compassionate. The result is relentless and unforgiving but it is an ode to the loving images we create of ourselves.

Puncture
Carleen Maur, USA, 2022, 4 minutes
New York Premiere

Through the limits of language breaking visually and sonically over a burning forest, Puncture seeks to pierce through the affect and potential of its own particular moment in time.

The Endless Journey
Priscyla Bettim & Renato Coelho, Brazil, 2021, 10 minutes
North American Premiere

Atlantic Ocean, Year 1500. During the voyage of the ships commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral, strange events cause the crew to get lost in space and time without ever reaching Brazil. The Endless Journey is a reassemblage of the classic "O descobrimento do Brasil" (1937), directed by Humberto Mauro.

Pet World
Sofia Theodore-Pierce & Grace Mitchell, USA, 2022, 14 minutes
New York Premiere

A parking lot by the airport where people sit in their cars, eat takeout, and watch the planes land. A parking lot outside a mega pet store. A parking lot with a mailbox and a laundromat. A parking lot on the beach. Inspired by Amy Hempel’s short story collection, Reasons to Live, and the work of poet Bernadette Mayer. An ensemble cast riffs on what we might discover about intimacy in parking lots.