SPONSOR
Destination Ann Arbor
COMMUNITY PARTNER
CultureVerse
DONOR
The James and Helen McCaffery Charitable Foundation
Three Short Shorts
Peter Sparling
Ann Arbor, MI | 2022 | 2 | Digital File
These three short animations are a fusion of skill sets: dance, video, and painting. Acrylic pens offer a more “drawn” approach to my painting practice, and I use brief sets of danced improvisations as sources for these screendance miniatures. Frank Pahl provides the delightful music.
Rare: The Boy Who Cried Swag
King She
New York, NY | 2022 | 5 | Digital File
Rare: The Boy Who Cried Swag is a magic realist portrait of model Rico Sanches as he grapples with an electric youth, tragedy from police violence, and a burgeoning fashion career.
Urban Dreamscape
Nicolas Gebbe
Hessen, Germany | 2020 | 6 | Digital File
North American Premiere
If you walk through the city you are often not aware of the outside. The images seen mix with thoughts, occasionally fail, are sketchy. Only certain parts of the path are perceived and when you remember, these snapshots form a collage of some sort. With the technique of photogrammetry in Urban Dreamscape, these parts are captured and staged in such a way that they empathize with this phenomenon. Many individual photos are used to create 3D objects. These are edited, merged, and distorted. A dream landscape arises.
Hailstone
Claudia Claremi
Spain / Brazil / Chile / Cuba / Italy / Mali / Mexico / UK | 2021 | 4 | Digital File
World Premiere
Hailstone is a “condensation” of images from 2020 in Super 8 film. The work, composed of moments lived or seen through screens—such as video calls, Instagram Live footage, home videos, and TV broadcasts—solidifies a piece of the collective memory of the year of the pandemic.
The Truss Arch
Sonya Stefan
Sault Ste. Marie & Montreal, Canada | 2021 | 35 | DCP
United States Premiere
Somewhere between an autobiographical piece, a heartfelt tribute to an immigrant mother whose fate is out of her hands, and a dance film rich in poetry and symbolism, this ode to freedom bubbles with reflections and experimentations—all set against the imposing backdrop of factory chimneys and a truss arch bridge.
Un-Tidal
Masha Vlasova
New York, NY | 2022 | 10 | Digital File
An experimental film essay about a found (stolen?) photograph, a hurricane, and film’s inherent ability to animate and re-animate still, dead, and inanimate beings, images, and objects. The film is created using an inkjet direct-on-film technique where the digital frame is printed directly onto recycled 16mm celluloid.
Skyscraper Film
Federica Foglia
Toronto, Canada | 2022 | 8 | Digital File
World Premiere
Skyscraper Film is a cameraless handmade film collage created from scraps of 16mm orphan films from the 1970s. Originally produced to promote tourism in North America, these films are remediated by the filmmaker to create an abstract collage via the emulsion lifting/ emulsion grafting technique. Using this method, the filmmaker lifts by hand the emulsion layer from the film strip and subsequently places it on a different film strip. This way a celluloid collage is created, then re-animated.
Pulsar
Alejandra Hernandez & Ann Steuernagel
Mexico City, Mexico | 2020 | 9 | Digital File
Pulsar is the inspiration of Mexican composer Alejandra Hernandez, who wished to set an original score to her late father's home movies. The movies were edited by experimental filmmaker Ann Steuernagel. The creation of this project took place during the COVID pandemic, with many hours spent on Skype fine tuning the relationship between image and sound.