The Sea Seeks Its Own Level (After Joyce)
|United States, 5:00, 2014 |
- Erin Espelie

A journey from ice-capped mountains to the coasts of the Irish Sea.

Erin Espelie is a writer, editor, and filmmaker whose work connects with current scientific research, questions of epistemology, environmental precarity, and fallout from an increasingly image saturated culture. Her poetic, nonfiction films have shown at the New York Film Festival, the British Film Institute's London Film Festival, the Whitechapel Gallery, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Crossroads Film Festival at SFMoMA, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Imagine Science Film Festival, and more. Her feature-length film, The Lanthanide Series, premiered at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen and won the grand prize at the Seoul International New Media Festival in 2015; an interview about the film appears in The Sublimity of Document: Cinema as Diorama (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Film Essay #1
| Germany, 5:00, 2023 |
- Juan Pablo Meza Artmann

An examination of the relationship between reality and artifice, sound and image, and the passage of time and film.

Juan Pablo Meza Artmann is a filmmaker from university of Hamburg.

Parangolé
| United States, 3:00, 2023 |
- Abinadi Meza

A rainy morning in Rio de Janeiro; film as a membrane, a memory veil, imprinted by the body and the environment. The title is a reference to the performative cloaks/capes of the late Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, made of various materials including fabric, paper, and plastic. This cameraless film is a textural exploration of the environment that surrounds us in a given site. Abinadi Meza (US/MX) is a Latinx-Indigenous artist who studied creative writing, art and architecture, and whose practice includes experimental film, sound art, and installation. Meza’s films are made with found and original footage, hand-painted film, and original soundtracks. Meza's award-winning films have been presented at: Anthology Film Archives, New York; Athens International Film & Video Festival; Bogotá Experimental Film Festival; Cinemateca Nacional del Ecuador; Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City; Crossroads Festival, San Francisco; Festival ECRÃ, Rio de Janeiro; Filmmakers’ Cooperative, New York; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival; Kassel Dokfest, Germany; Kino Palais, Buenos Aires; Light Matter, New York; Mientras Tanto Cine, Montevideo; Millenium, Brooklyn; New Orleans Film Festival; and ULTRAcinema, Mexico among other places.

Nautilus
| Canada 6:14 2024 |
- Kent Tate

Unlike its close relative the octopus, the nautilus has a poor memory and yet it has managed to exist for half a billion years. Our ancestors have been on Earth for about 6 million years while modern humans evolved in more recent times. Humans have memories, a lot of memories. Whether real or false, these memories loom large in all that we see, hear, and feel.
According to fossil records the chambered nautilus has remained fundamental unchanged for about 500 million years. What I wonder will the records show of our presence on planet Earth?
Filmed on location by Kent Tate in British Columbia, Saskatchewan & Alberta, Canada.

Kent Tate is a Canadian artist/filmmaker whose work explores the dichotomy between tranquility and activity in our natural and manufactured worlds. Time, motion and stillness are intertwined through Tate's work to act like a fulcrum upon which the environmental, social and philosophical aspects of his projects are held in dynamic balance. Tate has received awards, grants, and artist residencies for his projects which have been exhibited internationally at film/new media festivals, symposiums, group screenings/exhibitions and solo gallery exhibitions/tours.

The Stream V
| Japan, 5:30, 2014 |
- Hiroya Sakurai

This work is a ballet using the sound and the movement of water weeds and water. With the waterway as the theater, I filmed the choreography of water weeds that flow in the water. In the man-made waterways of rice paddies, the water in nature must follow artificial rules. In that way, nature is made abstract, giving rise to a new form of beauty distinct from the natural state. The theme of this work is the liveliness of the water as it follows the man-made course.
Hiroya Sakurai was born in Yokohama, Japan in 1958. Professor, Seian University of Art and Design. Sakurai’s work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada and J.Paul Getty Trust. Sakurai was awarded at “35th Asolo Art Film Festival (2016)", Italy, "39th Tokyo Video Festival", "18th FILE 2017 ", São Paulo (2017) and "56th Ann Arbor Film Festival" (2018). Exhibitions include "4th Sydney Biennale (1982),"62nd Melbourne International Film Festival"(2013),"58th San Francisco International Film Festival" (2015) and "24th Rhode Island International Film Festival"(2020)

Tarot Portrait: Faith
| United States, 9:00, 2023 |
- Brittany Gravely, Ken Linehan

One of a set of cinematic tarot cards in which we collaborate with the subject to create layered vignettes infused with personal symbolism. By choosing costumes, objects, actions and locations that represent their own visions, the stars of these films bring forth what they want to manifest mythically and physically within their lives. Inspired by their particular choices and personalities, we collaborate throughout the shoot, double-exposing each roll of film as a toss of the alchemical I ching to the beguiling discoveries of the serendipitous while adding a spectral layer. Sealed into the receptive emulsion, these layered iconographies are then awakened with the projection of light and then affirmed by audiences who may recognize parts of their own dreams.

Brittany Gravely, Ken Linehan Magical Approach is the live cinema practice of Brittany Gravely (Boston, MA) and Kenneth Linehan (Providence, RI). Combining 16mm film projections with live and recorded sound, Gravely and Linehan create modular films whose parts can be used in the performance of cinematic rituals. They have performed at the ICA Boston, the RISD Museum, Mono No Aware and Magic Lantern in New York, among other venues, and were awarded a Traveling Scholars Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Recently, they have been screening finished films that emerged out of the live shows. Recent festivals include Toronto International Film Festival, Crossroads, Chicago Underground, Kinoskop, FLEX Fest and Antimatter.

Coal Spell
| China, 8:00, 2008 |
- Sun Xun

Inspired by a five Yuan RMB note, Coal Spell recounts the rise and fall of Fuxin, an old industrial coal city located in Northeast China. Yellow sand storms wreak havoc. Huge smokestacks pierce the sky, clouds of black smoke block the sun. Political slogans blast away daily, they drown out any form of curiosity about the outside world. The city is a tremendous prison where history is boxed up like a fierce monster, until a screeching Soviet excavator is forced to gouge the land. Sun Xun's meticulously drawn animation film questions the relationship of history and power, based on the artist's own experiences and nostalgia for his upbringing.
Sun Xun was born in 1980 in Fuxin, which is located in Liaoning, a remote agricultural province in northeast China between Mongolia and North Korea. Fuxin was once known for its booming coal industry, but decades of over mining led to the eventual bankruptcy and closure of many mines. Sun’s childhood experiences in his hometown led to an awareness of how time affects the rise and fall of powerful forces, a lesson that remains a strong influence on his artwork.

Wasser
| Germany, 22:35, 2021 |
- Marie-Pierre Bonniol

A visual essay on water and its different states, the hydraulic forces, the transformation of the flow into energy and the devices of metamorphosis, through a musical and mysterious journey.

Marie-Pierre Bonniol (*1978, Marseille, France) is a Berlin based artist, curator and research fellow who works internationally. She graduated in Visual arts (MFA) and in Aesthetics and Sciences of Arts (MA) from the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research focuses on the affective dynamics of creation, and the matrices and machineries of transformation and transmission. She takes a particular interest in the myth of Bachelor Machines, in books and in collections.