RPM Film Festival and the Brattle Theatre are proud to announce the screening of solo artist Laura Kraning.
Laura currently resides in New York, where she is an Assistant Professor in
the Department of Media Study at University of Buffalo.
Laura Kraning’s moving image work navigates liminal spaces at the intersection of nature and machine
and have been described as a form of “esoteric archeology,” delving into an experience of the
subconscious of a landscape. In her most recent films, she deconstructs the material textures of
landscape at 12 frames per second, mining the slips between stillness and motion.
Her work has
screened widely at international film festivals and venues, such as MoMA's Doc Fortnight, the New
York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, International Film
Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Visions du Réel, National Gallery of Art, Hallwalls
Contemporary Arts Center, REDCAT Theater, and Los Angeles Filmforum, among others. She is a
recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation John H. Johnson Film Award, Jury Awards at the 2010, 2015
and 2016 Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Film House Award at the 2016 Athens International Film and
Video Festival, the Jury Award for Short Film at the 2018 Rencontres Internationales Sciences et
Cinémas, a 2019 NYSCA/Wave Farm Media Arts Grant, and a 2023 New York State Council for the Arts
Support for Artists Grant.
Sponsored by RPM Festival, Art and Art History & Cinema Studies UMass-Boston and Brattle Theatre.
Post-screening discussion:
Laura Kraning & Bryan Parcival
Bryan Parcival is a Boston-based experimental filmmaker and mixed-media artist whose work combines animation with live-action film and still photography. He began his professional career at Olive Jar Studios, where he worked as a commercial director, animator, cinematographer and eventually associate creative director. In 2001, along with his friend and long-time collaborator Jeff Sias, Parcival started Handcranked Productions, an independent film/animation company. He has worked with commercial clients Samsung, MTV, HBO, Cartoon Network, PBS, Sesame Street and many others.
de-composition (2023)
2:37 mins
Port Noir (2014)
10:42 mins
Landforms (2024)
11:15 mins
Meridian Plain (2016)
18:30 mins
Fracture (2020)
4:09 mins
Las Breas (2019)
Co-Directed with Blue Kraning
12:21 mins
ESP (2024)
2:48 mins
Total: 60 mins
de-composition (2023)
A textural macro collage of a rust belt landscape- scratched, splattered, dripping, cracking, and bursting to the
surface. Photographed and meticulously edited over one year in Buffalo, NY, the reverberant tones of the New
York Central rail line provide the rhythmic pulse to a rapid cascade of multi-hued material decay and metallic de-
composition.
Port Noir (2014)
Within the vast machine landscape of Terminal Island, the textural strata of a 100-year-old boat shop provides a
glimpse into Los Angeles Harbor’s disappearing past. Dwarfed by massive container terminals, the cumulative
scenic details of the last working boatyard, often recast as an underworld backdrop for fictional crime dramas,
evoke imaginary departures and a hidden world at sea.
Landforms (2024)
Landforms unearths the physical remains of past and future geological strata. The forms, of ancient fossils and
broken plastic, mesh and intertwine into a meditation on deep time and a reflection on extinction.
Meridian Plain (2016)
Meridian Plain maps an enigmatic distant landscape excavated from hundreds of thousands of archival still
images, forecasting visions of a possible future, transmitted from a mechanical eye.
Fracture (2020)
Fracture mines the slips between stillness and motion, as cracks and fissures of bark and stone are spliced and
layered, frame by frame, intersecting slices of time. Gathered and assembled over two years, the scarred
surfaces of tree limbs and stratified rock collide with slabs of marble and clusters of moss, crystallizing into a
flickering mirage of radiating branches and splintered veins of iridescence.
Las Breas (2019)
Co-Directed with Blue Kraning
A portrait of three tar pits in California – located within the city, the valley, and the sea, LAS BREAS investigates
the spaces between archiving the pre-historic and the contemporary industrial landscape. Of the earth, yet
primordial and impenetrable, the bubbling remains of ancient organisms seep to the surface, speaking of past
extinction and human exploitation of the earth’s limited resources.
ESP (2024)
A brutalist monument to the Empire State as manifested by a malfunctioning inkjet printer. Chroma and
luminance are made audible as architectural and printed lines converge and dissolve into pattern and noise.
Photographed in the Capitol City, Albany, N.Y.