Sunday, Feb. 23rd, 4PM
Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle St.
Cambridge MA

Mountains Meet the Sea
Kathy Rugh

RPM Festival, in collaboration with Brattle Theatre, is excited to welcome Kathy Rugh, an accomplished 16mm experimental filmmaker, back to Boston for a special screening of her recent works on February 23 at 4:00 PM. This event will offer a rare opportunity to experience Rugh’s ten exquisite 16mm films, which explore double exposure, pinhole lenses, and hand-processing techniques. The program will also include one of her early works created during her MFA studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The screening will highlight Rugh's experimental films that examine environmental consciousness, showcasing her creative process and the evolution of her filmmaking career.

Now based in Brooklyn, Kathy Rugh has garnered international recognition for her deeply inventive and visually striking films. Rugh’s films have received funding from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic Media & Film Finishing Fund, and have been celebrated at festivals worldwide, including the Antimatter Film Festival in Victoria, BC, and the Images Festival in Toronto.and other prestigious festivals such as the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival and EXiS Experimental Film Festival in Seoul.

Post-screening discussion:
Kathy Rugh & Brittany Gravely

Publicist and designer at the Harvard Film Archive since 2010, Brittany Gravely is also an experimental 16mm filmmaker and visual artist. Currently, she creates expanded and non-expanded cinema projects in Magical Approach with artist Ken Linehan. Recently, their films screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, Artifact, Fracto, Crossroads, Chicago Underground and Antimatter, among others. She also curates short film programs and is a founding member of the artist-run film lab AgX.

Winter’s First Moons
16mm, 3 min, Color, Sound, 2018

Isabell
16mm, 7 min, B/W, Sound, 2007

Don’t Look Directly into the Sun
16mm, 9 min, B/W toned, Sound, 2010

Urban Green
16mm, 8 min, Color, Sound, 2011

Light Streaming
16mm, 7 min, Color, Sound, 2012

East, West, and East Again
16mm, 9 ½ min, Color, Sound, 2016

Light’s Return
16mm, 3 min, Color, Sound, 2021

Floods Recede to Luxury
16mm, 4 min, Color, Sound, 2023

The City is a Heat Island & our Forests are on Fire
16mm to Digital, 4:41, Color, Sound, 2019

Mountains Meet the Sea
16mm to digital, 4 min, Color, Sound, 2020

Summer’s Last Moons
16mm to digital, 3 min, Color, Sound, 2018

Total: 67 mins

Winter’s First Moons
16mm, 3 min, Color, Sound, 2018

Following the winter solstice, the longest nights of the year prevail. Through these darkest nights the moon reaches to its fullest. Filmed over numerous nights the moons of different phases are brought together in the black sky. Through multiple exposures on film and editing created in-camera, the moons move and bounce off one another in unpredictable ways. Official NASA sound recordings from space help activate their actions. The stoic moon breaks free and gravitates at will.

Isabell
16mm, 7 min, B/W, Sound, 2007

Isabell presents views of a domestic space juxtaposed with audio from an elderly man's discarded answering machine tape. The tape was discovered in an abandoned automobile factory in Detroit and contains dialogue and messages centered around the loss of a dear friend, Isabell.

Don’t Look Directly into the Sun
16mm, B&W toned, Sound, 9 min., 2010

Sunlight is abstracted and accentuated through alchemy. Through a pinhole lens, then hand-processed and toned, this film chases sunlight through its reflections in water and glass and streaming through branches and clouds.

Urban Green
16mm, 8 min, Color, Sound, 2011

Woven within brick, metal, traffic and people there exists an oasis of the natural both indoors and out.

Light Streaming
16mm, 7 min, Color, Sound, 2012

Imagery and sound create an encompassing environment where tunnels of light and the continual flow of water act as a connecting force between differing locales ranging from the Oregon coast, the woods surrounding a New Hampshire river, the waterfalls of upstate New York and the depths of an urban park in Brooklyn. Stepping into one place and then out into another relates to the atmosphere and experiences of a dream. Made possible in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic Media and Film Finishing Funds grant program, administered by the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (www.NYSCA.org www.eARTS.org).

East, West, and East Again
16mm, 9 ½ min, Color, Sound, 2016

On the edges of New York City and the outskirts of Los Angeles expansive oceans reach the land. People flock to experience a piece of nature grander than their cities. The film explores that boundary and at moments brings these two disparate coasts together as one. Through in-camera edits and double exposures slices of the film layer together these distant locales. Film made possible in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic Media and Film Finishing Funds grant program, administered by the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (NYSCA.org, eARTS.org).

Floods Recede to Luxury
16mm, 4 min, Color, Sound, 2023

Ten years after Hurricane Sandy flooded the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, new luxury housing is built ever closer to the water’s edge, poised to ignore the risks of future storm surges. Using in-camera layered exposures the film examines the neighborhood in this time of transition and imagines what may still come.

The City is a Heat Island & our Forests are on Fire
16mm, 5 min, Sound, Color, 2019 The landscape is changing rapidly in Colorado. Denver’s dense growth has contributed to trapped heat in the urban core. Meanwhile, the state’s mountain regions are suffering from more frequent and devastating wildfires. In 2018, the 416 Fire burned more than 54,000 acres in the San Juan Mountains near Durango. These two changing landscapes are juxtaposed together through in-camera multiple exposures on film.

Light’s Return
16mm, 3 min, Color, Sound, 2021

Before all magic was lost, the sun awoke to meet me on the surface of the river.
The film captures an in-camera edit of this fleeting encounter.

Mountains Meet the Sea
16mm, 4 min, Color, Sound, 2020 Escape into a natural world that stretches from the mountains of Colorado to the ocean’s edge in Oregon. Journey through fleeting moments when these distant landscapes become one through layered exposures on film.

Summer’s Last Moons
16mm, 3 min, Color, Sound, 2018 As summer comes to an end, the moon reaches towards becoming full. Over three nights the moon is captured on film through in-camera editing and multiple exposures. The moons of different nights come together in the frame, to interact and play with one another, while official NASA sound recordings from space bring us closer.