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Lydia Lunch’s Spoken Word Performance launches this program of recent experimental films featuring Englandbashi by Shayok Misha Chowdhury & Kameron Neal, which includes a life coaching session; layered movement and sound; an uncanny encounter with an old woman; A Mesoamerican spell; a blurry anecdote by the fire; and my repressed rage.
Spoken Word Performance (In-Person Only)
Lydia Lunch
New York, NY | 2022 | 10 min | spoken word performance
Celebrated writer and No Wave queen Lydia Lunch will cast one of her trademark spoken word spells.
Precautionary Measure
Lizzy Deacon & Ika Schwander
London, UK | 2021 | 14 | HD Video
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
After winning a life coaching session in a raffle at her local village hall, Helen is guided through the help she never really needed. Together with her life coach Hazel, they explore healing strategies to cope with fear, rejection, and grief, raising the important question as to whom this pain really belongs to.
Soft Rio
Zara Joan Miller
London, UK | 2020 | 4 | HD Video
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
Soft Rio plays between erotic and erratic productions of layered movement and sound. Inspired by Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic,” the film was shot on the stage of the Rio Cinema in London (once a striptease stage) with sound by @xcrswx.
Englandbashi
Shayok Misha Chowdhury & Kameron Neal
Brooklyn, NY | 2020 | 24 | HD Video
A queer ghost story about taking reincarnation (too?) seriously. Born with a dark scar around his neck, the narrator navigates coming of age as a skinny brown boy in New England. When he follows his first love back to Bangladesh, an uncanny encounter with an old woman unsettles his whole sense of who he is meant to be.
Tonalli
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
Tehuacán, México | 2021 | 16 | HD Video
Drawing on the ancient Nahuatl concept of the animating soul or life force, Tonalli engages the ritualistic powers of the cinema, summoning fire, flowers, and many moons into a frenetic and mesmerizing in-camera collage. Here, amid thickly swirling images and textured abstractions, the gods of creation and fertility manifest, dissolving into iridescent colors and dense, corporeal rhythms.
Portrait of Omar at 23
Aman Wadhan
Budapest, Hungary | 2020 | 11 | HD Video
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Omar is a student from Syria, not a refugee. He was in Budapest on a scholarship when we first met. His voice was frank and his eyes fiery. He had a lot to say, but he did not want to talk about the war back home. I filmed as I saw, as I perceived him moving in and out of the quiet flicker of uncertainty. An unconventional portrait of my friend when he turned 23.
Arkana
Ava Jeanene Farber
NYC, NY | 2021 | 4 | HD Video
The Holy Spirit, Father, Son and jilted mother's daughter Mutilated innocence Seduction of the slaughter She turned and took the belt to you with all the spite he gave her And so you learned, you learned to take the pain and feel it later.