PARTNER
U-M Penny Stamps Speaker Series & Roman J. Witt Residency
Recent experimental, animated, personal and documentary films that include an old car in search of something new; a memory box; a Charles Bukowski poem; routines, chores, and pastimes; a lost moment of history; state repression; luminous geometry; the extreme decision of a woman; 35mm found footage; the armchairs; and the chaos we shape in order to thrive.
Miracle Whip
Jerod Willis
Detroit, MI | 2021 | 6 | HD Video
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
As we go about our daily lives, we often strive to be who the world says we should be. We do this because validation is what we all seek. This futile pursuit ultimately leaves us questioning our value and worth. Instead of showing gratitude for the life we have, we often treat ourselves as an old car in search of something new.
Prosopagnosia
Steven Fraser
Glasgow, UK | 2021 | 10 | HD Video
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Prosopagnosia is a story of identity, communication, and memory that uses expressive animation to investigate a personal memory box in intimate and experimental ways.
A Poem is a City
Tracey Snelling & Arthur Debert
Berlin, Germany | 2021 | 2 | HD Video
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
A lone female artist changes characters and countries as she wanders through her small-scale city sculptures to the tune of a Charles Bukowski poem.
Life Is a Particle Time Is a Wave
Daniel Zvereff
Brooklyn, NY | 2021 | 10 | 4K Video
In an attempt to ease his sadness, a widowed watchmaker spends his remaining days in solitude, distracting himself with repetitive activities to pass the time. Broken, like the old watches he repairs, he searches for ways to mend his soul and body, looking for meaning and respite in the ebb of time that remains, as his own death nears with every tick of the clock.
When the Sea Sends Forth a Forest
Guangli Liu
Tourcoing, France | 2020 | 21 | HD Video
Through a 3D virtual universe simulated by a game engine intertwined with historical pictures, a lost moment of history can be experienced. The story revolves around the memory of a Chinese survivor of the Khmer Rouge. This tragedy, which took the lives of 2 million people, continues to reshape our present in virtue of today’s narration.
Contraindre
Galdric Fleury & Antoine Fontaine
Tourcoing, France | 2020 | 11 | HD Video
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
We are all prisoners of a nationality, a social condition, a gender, a skin color, to which the police and state repression force us to resign ourselves. This film tells how the bodies suffer under the blows, the constraint, and the humiliation.
Origami
Maxime Corbeil-Perron
Montréal, Canada | 2020 | 2 | HD Video
Origami plays with perspectives and dimensions. Fractals and luminous geometry are here liquefied by the cathode-ray tube of a hacked television set.
Lacerate
Janis Rafa
Amsterdam, Netherlands | 2020 | 16 | DCP
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Inspired by the iconography of biblical paintings and Flemish still lifes, Lacerate reflects on the subject of domestic and gender violence by portraying the extreme decision of a woman who turns from victim into executioner. In a series of mise-en-scènes shot only in natural light, we see a domestic setting overrun by a pack of dogs that roam around restlessly, attacking objects and furniture.
My Stars
Jon Behrens
Seattle, WA | 2021 | 2 | 35mm
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
A film using found 35mm footage: painted, manipulated, and optically printed.
Theorie und Praxis
Leonie Minor
Berlin, Germany | 2021 | 7 | HD Video
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
A woman wants to get up, but the chairs she is sitting on won’t let her go. The woman’s room becomes her universe and the way out of it is, of all things, the armchairs.
TriKE
Giselle Bonilla
Los Angeles, CA | 2020 | 4 | 4K Video
TriKE is a visual representation of the chaos we shape in order to thrive within the fullness of ourselves. Our film uses absurdity to scandalize our explicit vulnerability in a public space while celebrating our childlike sensibility to find the erotic in the mundane, and the power within our complexities.