Program Info
Between Breaths
Films by Kalpana Subramanian
Sunday, Feb. 22nd · 4PM
Join us at the Brattle Theatre for a special screening of works, Between Breaths, Films by Kalpana Subramanian - an artist-filmmaker, scholar of experimental film and media and Assistant Professor at the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Her current research investigates the poetics of breath in experimental film using a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach. Her work has been supported by grants including a Humanities Institute Advanced PhD Fellowship (University at Buffalo, 2022-23), the UK Environmental Film Fellowship (2006) and the Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship (University of Colorado Boulder, 2015-16). Her films have been presented at venues including the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Interfilm Berlin, National Gallery of Modern Art (Mumbai, India), UNESCO (France), Antimatter Media Arts (Canada), Asia Society, Union Docs and Flaherty NYC Seminar (USA) among others. She has received awards for her films at the Documentary Festival of History and Archeology (Perugia, Italy, 2015), Montana CINE International Film Festival (2003, 2005) and CMS Vatavaran (2008). Her curated film programs have been screened at the Alternative cinema series (Colgate University, USA), Bristol Experimental Expanded Film (UK) and Simon Fraser University (Canada) among others.
The Maze of Lanes (2002)
6’12, Col, Sound
Incantation (2021)
8’38, Col, Sound
woolgathering (2020)
3’10, Col, Sound
Tattva (2018)
4’34, Col, Sound
Light Mediated Series
Liquid is Light (2016)
8mm transferred to Digital, 4:02, sound, B&W
Empyrean (2016)
HD, filming of 16 and 35 mm projections, 6:20 min, silent, color
Light Rooms (2016)
HD filming of digital and 16 mm and 35 mm projections, 1:45 min, silent, color
Prismatic Resonance (2016)
HD, 12:46 min, sound, color
A Dialogue of Dissonance (2016)
HD filming of 16mm projection, 6:23 min, Sound, Color
Strange Duet (2026)
8 min, Digital, sound, color
Total: 72 mins
Brattle Tickets
Post Screening Q&A
with Kalpana Subramanian and Shira Segal
Shira Segal has designed and taught a wide range of film history, theory, and criticism courses, with a focus on avant-garde and documentary. As the former director of Film Studies at UAlbany, she oversaw curriculum redesign initiatives and served as co-chair to the Experimental Film and Media scholarly interest group at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS).
She received her PhD in Film and Media from Indiana University. Her dissertation "Home Movies and Home Birth: The Avant-garde Childbirth Film and Pregnancy in New Media" includes filmmaker interviews and research with the James Stanley Brakhage Collection, housed by the Archives at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. Her MA in Cultural Memory from the University of London focused on Hollis Frampton.
The Maze of Lanes (2002)
6’12, Col, Sound
An experiment in navigating the ancient city of Varanasi in India.
Incantation
(2021)
8’38, Col, Sound
A serendipitous ritual of memory
Colliding archives of body and place
A cine-incantation to freedom and (be)longing
woolgathering (2020)
3’10, Col, Sound
Cinematic breath, and breathlessness. A pandemic reverie.
Tattva (2018)
8 min, 22 sec, 16mm
Straightboy Lessons is an experimental documentary that reenacts a conversation, and a friendship, between a transitioning Female to Male transman and a non-transsexual man. To-the-point imagry and the structure of a numbered lesson plan allowed the film to examine gender in an innovative new light.
"Straightboy Lessons is the first film to show that straight male identity is as constructed as any."
-- Inside Out, Toronto
Winner: Planet Out National Queer Short Movie Award Best Documentary.
Liquid is Light (2016)
8mm transferred to Digital, 4:02, sound, B&W
A study of light and water at Boulder Creek CO. The title is inspired by a quote attributed to Leonardo da Vinci in a correspondence between Stan Brakhage and Guy Davenport. Shot on Super 8, this film also explores the idea of cinematic breath, using in-camera editing to explore a Brakhagian landscape.
Empyrean (2016)
HD, filming of 16 and 35 mm projections, 6:20 min, silent, color
An encounter with cinema as a source of light.
In partial response to Brakhage's metaphors on vision and the notion of 'light moving in time' (William C. Wees) as an aesthetics of the American avant-garde. Light as a kind of breath of cinema.
Light Rooms (2016)
HD filming of digital and 16 mm and 35 mm projections, 1:45 min, silent, color
Cinema as refracted light. Any surface is a screen.
Looking both at and away from the canon, reading and re-writing the text of light. Light Rooms revels in the absence of the actual film that is being screened.
Strange Duet (2026)
8 min, Sound, Color
In the thick city air,
Something stirs.
A returning.
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Partners & Sponsors
Revolutions Per Minute Festival is co-hosted by Art and Art History Department and Cinema Studies at UMass-Boston,
MFA Boston, Goethe-institut Boston, Brattle Theatre in Cambridge & Harvard FAS CAMLab.
RPM Festival 2025-2026 presented with the support of a Festivals Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
RPM Series at Boston City hall presented with the support of a grant from Mayor's Office of Arts & Culture.
The RPM Awards are co-presented with the Cinelab, Boston.
