REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE FESTIVAL

RPM Fest is dedicated to short-form poetic, personal, experimental, social, essay, film, video, VR, expanded cinema and audiovisual performance.

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REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE FESTIVAL

We are looking for any work that experiments with the formal possibilities under 20 minutes.

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REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE FESTIVAL

Submission Opening Date: Nov.16 , 2020
Festival Date: October 15 - 17, 2021
RPM 2020 Sponsored By
Art Department of UMASS Boston
Cinema Studies of UMASS Boston

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In the past year or so, the film community of Boston lost some pillar voices: the passing of programmer David Pendleton and filmmaker Robert Todd, the closing of landmark film series MassArt Film Society, only to name a few. While we were always grateful for their brilliant existence, it is only until they are gone are we confronted with the dark meaning of living without them: a void of intelligence, imagination, and inspiration. So we bring forth the Revolutions per Minute Film Festival (RPM), out of a simple desire to bring more films to the area and bring more light to our dialogue about the art of moving image.



RPM was originally co-founded in 2013 by Wenhua Shi, experimental filmmaker and assistant professor at UMass-Boston, as a traveling exhibition of sound art and audiovisual performance. Notable highlights of its nomadic experience include RPM Exhibition Sound Art China 2013 in New York, RPM Exhibition Hong Kong 2014, and RPM Exhibition Shanghai West-Bund Biannual 2015. Finally, RPM finds a new home in Boston, and RPM Fest 2019 is the first edition focused on film and video.



RPM Fest 2019 presents 10 programs including 114 short films and 17 installations by 131 artists from 23 countries. These films push the boundary of the poetics of cinema as a melting pot of image, sound and text, with their fictional and non-fictional ambitions and aptitude. There will also be three special programs including a screening of documentary Yumen by Xu Tuotao, J.P. Sniadecki, and Huang Xiang, an experimental sound performance by Manfred Werder, and a special program featuring films by local film collective AgX.



We are lucky to be able to host RPM Fest 2019 in UMass Boston’s University Hall whose state-of-art facility - a 230-seat theater and a multi-function art gallery - allows us the freedom of exhibiting contemporary cinema in its multiplicity of forms and formats. It is also our hope that, by hosting RPM Fest 2019 at a public institution, we can make the often seemingly exclusive experimental cinema less opaque and more available to a wider audience, especially more students.

Yangqiao Lu, January, 2019

2019 Program

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Disruptive Gestures

Body Echo, Ali Aschman, HD, 2017
La Mesa, Adrain Garciaa Gomez, HD, 2018
Emptying, to make room for overflowing, Hannah Hamalian, HD, 2018
Copper Perforation Loop Triptych, Ruth Hayes, 16mm/HD, 2018
Snow Lee Leopard, Laura Heit, HD, 2018 2018
Eclipse, Emillia Izquierdo, HD, 2018
_Galore, Bernd Lützeler, DCP/16mm, 2017
Seaside, Emmanuelle Negre, 16mm, 2018
DizzyMess, Vivian Ostrovsky, HD, 2017
Bailsy: Story of A Revolution, Seyed Mohsen Pourmohsemi Shakib, 16mm, 2017
The Cage of Sand, Edward Rankus, HD, 2018
Applied Pressure, Kelly Sears, HD, 2018

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Collected Wisdom

Faded Tropics, Valentina Alvarado Matos, 16mm, 2017
A Chorus of Footsteps, Sara Dittrich, HD, 2018
The History of Religion, Thomas Kyhn Rovsing Hjørnet, HD, 2016
Shelf Life, Ryan Benjamin Lee, HD, 2017
Star Ferry, Simon Liu, 35mm, 2017
Film Loop 34: Ryoanji, Michael Lyons, 16mm, 2018
Rodez, Stefano Miraglia, HD, 2017
Monsters Walking, Diego Porral, HD, 2018
Broken Tongue, Monica Saviron, 16mm, 2016
Artist and Friend, Daniel Wesseik, HD, 2017
Tupianas, Marcos Bonisson and Khalil Charif, Super8/16mm, 2017
Normal Appearances, Penny Lane, HD, 2018
The Element of Surprise, Pawel Grajnet, HD, 2017
The Glass Note, Mary Helena Clark, HD/16mm, 2018
Requiem, Harold Charre, HD, 2018

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Performances

Blood Shaped Hole In My Heart, Kevin Endres, Super 8/HD, 2018
A Saying, Sean Hanley, Sarah Friedland and Corinne Spencer, 16mm/HD, 2018
Diana, Traci Hercher, 16mm, 2018
Hijacked, Shambhavi Kaul, HD, 2018
The Fall, Yun Ting Lo, HD, 2018
KFLL | Squawk | 0.9 HZ, Shane Eason, Super 8, 2018
Sir Bailey, Matthew Ripplinger, HD, 2018
Catherine, Marcy Saude, 16mm, 2018
Black Dog, Josh Tuthill, HD, 2017
Confident, Karen Akerman & Miguel Seabra Lopes, film archives & 16mm, 2016
BOOKANIMA: Dance, Shon Kim, HD, 2018
Total: 68min

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All That We See or Seem, Is But a Dream Within a Dream

Alfaião, André Almeida Rodrigues, HD, 2018
XCTRY, Bill Brown, HD, 2018
Evangelia c'est Moi, Alison Folland, HD, 2017
MATCH.COM, Miguel Antonio Garcia, HD, 2018
Film-collage 2 - introduction, Anaïs Ibert, 16mm, 2018
On Familiar Waters, Rita Mahfouz, HD, 2018
Memory of August, Margaret Rorison, 16mm, 2017
The Stream VIII, Hiroya Sakurai, HD, 2017
Spatial, Miles Sprietsma, Super 8, 2015
Dog in the Shade, Ei Toshinari, 16mm, 2018
The Hymn of Muscovy, Dimitri Morris, HD, 2018

Total: 74min

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Towards an Altered State

.Almost Nothing: So Continues the Night, Davor Sanvincenti, 16mm/HD, 2017
3 Peonies, Stephanie Barber, HD, 2017
Hinterlands, Scott Barley, HD, 2017
Antler, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, 16mm, 2017
(k)now (t)here, Hey-Yeun Jang, 16mm, 2016
Grabados del Ojo Nocturno, Jean-Jacques Martinod, Super 8+ 16mm to HD, 2018
Reasonable Watchfulness, Talena Sanders, 16mm, 2017
Street Twenty-Seven Number Ten Sixteen, Josh Weissbach, 16mm, 2017
Look Around You, Lauren Cook, HD, 2018
Life In Patterns, Vojtech Domlatil, HD, 2018
STELLA 50.4N1.5E, Elsa Brès, HD, 2017
faint forgone forgotten, Roger Deutsch, HD, 2018

Total: 70min

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Blueprints for Renewal

Salt Water, Abe Abraham, HD, 2018
Stakra, Sara Bonaventura, HD, 2017
MEMORY VI An Ostrich’s Eye Is Bigger Than Its Brain, Gloria Chung, HD, 2014
Ccconvolve, Scott Fitzpatrick, HD, 2017
XARUSSELL , Andreas Gogol, HD, 2017
In Case Things Go Poorly, Alex Ingersoll, HD, 2018
The Invisible Ax, Anna Kipervaser, 16mm, 2018
Fold In Formation, Eduardo Makoszay, 16mm, 2017
Nothing a Little Soap and Water Can't, Jen Proctor, HD, 2017
Field of Infinity, Guli Silberstein, HD, 2018
Topographies of a distant noise, Agustín Telo, HD, 2018
HOSTILE SITES - I I , Katja Verheul, HD, 2017
Dance with Third Grandmother, Wen Hui, HD, 2016

Total: 68min

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Tracing the Invisible

Frame, Ways, Inflections, Kioto Aoki, 16mm, 2018
Emergence, Jason Bernagozzi, HD, 2017
Even In Paradise It Is Not Good To Be Alone, Lorenzo Gattorna, Super 8/HD, 2017
Framelines, Sabine Gruffat, 35mm, 2017
Cactus Raptus, Maxime Hot, HD, 2017
KALOPSIA, M. Kardinal, HD, 2018
Let's Take a Walk, Moria Lacowicz, 16mm, 2017
If I Were Any Further Away I’d Be Closer to Home, Rajee Samarasinghe, 16mm, 2016
Room 11a, Lindsay McIntyre, 16mm, 2018
Everything Under the Sun, No.2, Jeffrey Langille, 16mm, 2018
debris, Keitaro Oshima, HD, 2018
Musical Landscape, Jean-Michel Rolland, HD, 2017
Guster, John Kelley, HD, 2017
Mountain View, Markus Maicher, HD, 2018

Total: 69min

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The Inner Life of Space

Lumen, Richard Ashrowan, 16mm, 2018
Girl Becomes Snow, Ryan Betschart, SD, 2017
The Future, Pamela Breda, HD, 2017
The Symphony of Names: No Man is and Island, Elizabeth Withstandley, 16mm, 2018
Re-entry , Pierre Yves Clouin, HD, 2017
Boral Pather Panchali, Alex Cunningham, HD, 2018
Gibraltar Point (transformed), Penny McCann, 16mm, 2018
Anxiety, Muge Yildiz, Super8/16mm, 2016
Gede Vizyon, Marcos Serafim, Jefferson Kielwagen and Steevens Simeon, HD, 2018
Winter's First Moons, Kathleen Rugh, 16mm, 2018
In front of the Sea, Yaniv Touati, SD, 2017
Farewell Transmission, Mike Rollo, 16mm, 2017
Maelstroms, Lana Caplan, HD, 2017

Total: 54min

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Body and Object

Chromosoma, Sonia Kechagia, 16mm, 2018
Surface Connection, Monica Duncan & Senem Pirler, HD, 2018
In-Between, Sahar El Echi, HD, 2018
Vague Images at the Beginning and End of the Day, Carl Elsaesser, HD, 2018
A Different Category, Linnéa Haviland , HD/35mm, 2017
The Big Guy Is Here, Antoine Herve, HD, 2017
For His Sake; For His Pleasure, Hugo Ljungbäck, SD, 2018
Did You Know?, Lynn Kim, 16mm, 2016
Music of Desire, Kristin Reeves, HD/16mm, 2017
Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration, Ricardo Vieira Lisboa, 16mm, 2018
Nihelious, Yuri Yefanov, HD, 2017
Among the Broken Furniture, Ye Mimi, HD, 2017
Camouflage, Yuka Sato, HD, 2018

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Installation

Rabbit in the Sand, Monteith McCollum, Live, 2018
A Chorus of Black Voids Sings in Rays of Unseeable Light, Michael Morris, Live, 2018
Rabbit in the Sand, Monteith McCollum, Live, 2018
Somewhere In Between, Mirelle Borra, HD, 2016
Window | Ghosts, Jill Guyon, HD, 2017
Everted Sanctuaries V, Ryan Lewis, HD, 2018
Yellow Persona, Sharon Mooney, HD, 2018
What It Takes Series, Ellen Mueller, HD, 2018
Pope With Falling Arms #2, Blas Payri, HD, 2017
Tadpole Tale; a Fantasy, Lauids Sonne, HD, 2016
SONG No.24, Celine Trouillet, HD, 2017
Fake Believe, Ryan Murray, HD, 2017
The Night Between Ali and I , Nadia Hotait & Laila Hotait, HD, 2016
Windswept, Belangtelon Initiative, HD, 2017
Dolphin Desert, Stuart Pound, HD, 2017
Bloodie Writes an Anthem, Rebecca Ruige Xu, HD, 2018
LIE, Carla Knopp, HD, 2018
Arpeggiated March 09 2018, Justin Lincoln, HD, 2018
Shanghai Ghost Memories - part 1, Xu Cheng, HD, 2018

Total: 73min

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AgX Film Collective

AgX Screening Program
Curated by Susan DeLeo and Ernesto Livon-Grosman
Oracle, Douglas Urbank, 16mm, 2015
Astrology, Brittany Gravely, 16mm, 2017
Cuts and Shifts - after Potteau, Nicole Prutsch, 16mm, 2018-2019
Deer Island, Tim Wojcik, 16mm, 2017
A Flaw in the Brownstone, Sean Fisher, 16mm, 2015
4X4, Alex Sarabi-Daunais, 8mm,16mm to HD, 2018
Peddocks Island, Janet Benn, Super 8 to HD, 2017
Wind Above Thunder, Susan DeLeo, Super 8 to HD, 2019
Nova Remnants,Stefan Grabowski, HD, 2016
Unless You're Living It , Sarah Bliss, 16mm to HD, 2019
Almargen, Anto Astudillo, Super 16 to HD, 2018
From Wolff On Composition , Ernesto Livon-Grosman, HD, 2018

AgX is a Boston-area film collective, artist-run film lab, and cinema arts space that was formed in 2015 to share resources, equipment, camaraderie and knowledge with a focus on the moving image arts, particularly photochemical film. AgX offers screenings, workshops, and other film events throughout the year, for AgX members and for the general public. Learn more at agxfilm.org

Total: 56min

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YUMEN

'Yumen' combines ghost stories and the 'ruin tourism' to form a celluloid psychocollage of wandering souls, seeking connection to each other and a lost collective history among the frozen remnants of the abandoned oil town of Yumen in China's north-west Gansu province.

Dir: Xiang Huang
J.P. Sniadecki
Routao Xu
Total: 65min

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Manfred Werder - 20160

MANFRED WERDER
performing 20160 (2016, ongoing)

MANFRED WERDER Composer and performer, is wandering through the abundance. His scores feature words and sentences found in poetry, philosophy and the world. Earlier works include stück 1998, a 4000 page score whose nonrecurring and intermittent performative realization has been ongoing since December 1997. Lives in situ. Manfred Werder on 20160: “The score 20160 consists of 3 rolls of semitransparent paper with the seize of each 10cm x 22m, trisected from a found paper roll. “In January 2016 I began inscribing the first roll with typewriters found on site. The first performative presentation took place in Ciudad de México February the 9th, 2016. In early 2019 I will have reached the end of the first roll. “I’ve been tracing the world onto the roll, words and text found on the street, in poetry and philosophy. In the act of writing, the world operates on the unveiled paper, impregnates it and so actualizes the score, and once the paper is again rolled up, its veiled transparency lets the world’s abundance manifested on the paper mingle into ever new possible compounds.”

This program is funded in part by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Total: 65min

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RPM @ Non-Event TV

24 Hour Non-Event Fundraiser featuring performances, interviews, studio visits, record collection tours, short films, random weird stuff, plus videos & recordings from the Non-Event archives... many never before seen!

Starting July 9 at 8pm Streaming on Non-Event's Twitch channel TURN ON, TUNE IN, DONATE
Artists include... Susan Alcorn/Jeb Bishop/Damon Smith trio, Arkm Foam, Linda Gale Aubry & Michael Bullock, Bastian Void, Bats from Pogo, David Behrman with String Noise, Olivia Block, Victoria Cheah, Jesse Kenas Collins, Alvin Curran, Jacques Demierre & Vincent Barras, Denim Mystics, Tashi Dorji/Mette Rasmussen duo, Arnold Dreyblatt, Tim Feeney, F/I/P, Floating Shapes, FRKSE, Forbes Graham, Sam Grass Man, G*Park, Andy Graydon, Danny Gromfin, Heathen Shame, Sarah Hennies, id m theft able, Instar, France Jobin, Brittany Karlson, Greg Kelley/Seijiro Murayama/Vic Rawlings trio, Felix Kubin, Okkyung Lee, George Luke, Lasse Marhaug, Luke Martin, Kevin Micka/Chris Strunk duo, Bill T Miller, Brendan Murray, The Mystery, Rob Noyes, Andrea Pensado, Pita, Joe Potts, Vic Rawlings, Tom Recchion, Michael Rosenstein, Claire Rousay, Victoria Shen, Chris Strunk, Jan St Werner, Mary Staubitz/Vic Rawlings Duo, Asha Tamirisa, Gilmore Tamny (and Faraday), Kate Village, Byron Westbrook, Keith Fullerton Whitman, C. Spencer Yeh, Neil Cloaca Young with a scene report from Western MA)… more (maybe) TBA!!
With films by... Ben Balcom, Stephanie Barber, Jason Bernagozzi, Jeremy L Bessoff, Wang Bo & Pan Lv, Xu Chen, Charlotte Clermont, Roger Deutsch, Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler, Shane Eason, Scott Fitzpatrick, Adrian Garcia Gomez, Laura Heit, Thomas Kyhn Rovsing Hjørnet, Maxime Hot, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Alex Ingersoll, Dusica Ivetic, Anna Kipervaser, Jeffrey Langille, Ryan Lewis, Jean-Jacques Martinod, Penny McCann, Stefano Miraglia, Vivian Ostrovsky, Ugo Petronin, Toh Hun Ping, Diego Porral, Jen Proctor, Kristin Reeves, Mike Rollo, Margaret Rorison, Lynne Sachs, Talena Sanders, Kelly Sears, Guli Silberstein, Agustín Telo, Ei Toshinari, Josh Weissbach, and Müge Yildiz. (Film programming curated by Wenhua Shi)

Past Selection Committee