Celebrating 12 Years of Vision:
Cambridge, May 18, 2PM – Now in its twelfth year, RPM Festival, an
artist - and curator-run festival dedicated to experimental and poetic
film, invites audiences to a rare behind-the-scenes showcase: a
screening of works by members of the festival’s own selection
committee.
This special event offers an intimate look into the creative practices
of the artists and curators who shape the festival’s identity. The
program features experimental film and video works by
Robert Harris, Brett Melican, Homa Sarabi, Wenhua Shi, and additional
pieces recommended by curators Ariel Hou and Shira Segal.
From meditations to abstractions, the films in this screening reflect
the curatorial ethos and aesthetic breadth that have defined the
festival’s programming for over a decade.
Following the screening, there will be a post-screening conversation
with the featured artists and curators. The discussion will reflect on
the artist practice, the past, present, and future of the festival,
and explore the evolving landscape of short-form poetic and
experimental film.
And Then - Brett Melican
8:31, Digital, Color, 2022
CROSS THE RIVER 岸 - Annie Yuan Zhuang
2:07, Digital, Color, 2025
Choreography of Light - Homa Sarabi
6:20, 16mm to digital, B&W 2024
Tan/Vatan -Body/Homeland
Homa Sarabi & Meenakshi Garodia
7:34, 16mm to Digital, B&W, 2025
Nam June Paik: Violin Dragging
– Bob Harris
6:14, Super8 3K Scan, Color, 1975/2023
Monosabishii - Wenhua Shi
4:00, 16mm to digital, Color, Silent, 2023
Concréte: Boston City Hall - Wenhua Shi
24:20, Digital, 2020
Total: 55 mins
And Then - Brett Melican
8:31, Digital, Color, 2022
As told by Ronan Ellis.
Brett Melican is a filmmaker, writer, and curator. He programs for RPM
Festival and IFFBoston, works on the production staff of the Telluride
Film Festival, and is a member of the AgX Film Collective.
ACROSS THE RIVER 岸 - Annie Yuan Zhuang
2:07, Digital, Color, 2025
ACROSS THE RIVER 岸 constructs a liminal space within 1km of my
childhood home in Beijing. The radius is shaped by habit, memory, and
transitions of daily life. This familiar terrain, once a boundary
between private and public worlds, now becomes a site where the
mundane dissolves into introspection.
Annie Yuan Zhuang (b. 2000 Beijing, China) is a multidisciplinary artist living in New York City. Zhuang’s practice, spanning site-specific intervention, installation, book arts, and soundscape, originates from observations of contemporary life. Her works are a series of investigations on everyday living experiences in an urban environment. She transforms them into visual, audio, tactile, and fragrant explorations. By engaging with found and foraged materials in urban living spaces, she amplifies the neglected nuances in contemporary life, such as cultural, social, and power dynamics.
Choreography of Light - Homa Sarabi
6:20, 16mm to digital, B&W 2024
The mechanical production of the camera is articulated through the
mechanics of the body. Choreography of Light overlays the physicality
of the analog filmmaking process and the anatomy of the human body
through a metaphorical and ritualistic dance. A symbolic study of the
mechanical reproduction of light and life through film.
The film's final chapter animates the dance notation motifs of the
Leban technique, representing the 16mm filmmaking movements. Leban is
a unique language for recording time-based choreographic movement.
Homa Sarabi is a filmmaker, educator, and programmer from Iran. She is
a member of the Feminist Futurist collective, a LEF Flaherty Fellow,
and a Mass Cultural Council grantee. Through moving image
installations, non-fiction storytelling, and media arts, Homa explores
the spaces of physical and emotional distance and connection, history,
and personal and collective memory. In addition to her independent
curatorial practice, she collaborates with the RPM Film Festival and
serves as the shorts program director for Salem Film Fest. She teaches
16mm filmmaking and collaborative design studios at Emerson College.
Tan/Vatan - Body/Homeland
Homa Sarabi & Meenakshi Garodia
7:34, 16mm to Digital, B&W, 2025
The piece is a collaborative experimental film. It is a conversation
between two women and their intimate experiences of love and life.
The film embodies a symbolic form borrowed from the origin cultures of
the artists, in India and Iran. Tan and Vatan are mutual words in
Hindi and Persian language, sharing the same meaning and
pronunciation. Artists utilize the language, the medium, and their
bodies to connect and visualize their experiences while engaging with
the mechanical and physical experience of 16mm and handmade film.
Meenakshi is a multimedia artist, a storyteller, a ceramicist, a
writer/director, and an experimental filmmaker working in digital,
installation, and 16mm film. She has written and directed multiple
well-received plays and short films with an emphasis on women’s
agency. Her work explores women’s lives within the patriarchy and the
immigrant experience.She is Affiliate Faculty at Emerson College,
where she got her MFA in Film and Media Arts.
Nam June Paik: Violin Dragging – Bob Harris
6:14, Super8 3K scan, Color, 1975/2023
Fluxfilmconcerto for piano, head, violin, asphalt, water, & grass.
12th Annual Avant Garde Festival
Robert Harris is an educator, film-poet, and traveler. Currently a professor of film production at Fitchburg State University, he was formerly Curator of Video at Anthology Film Archives (NY) and PS#1 (Queens, NY), and Artistic Director of the New York State Summer
School of the Arts: Media Arts. He has taught at the University of
California, San Diego, Palomar College, School of the Art Institute of
Chicago, and Ithaca College. He has assisted and collaborated with
artists Nam June Paik, Shigeko Kubota, and Aldo Tambellini. In 1977,
he spent 9 months living with and filming the Arhuaco peoples of the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. His films have been
shown in festivals, museums, and institutions throughout the world.
Monosabishii - Wenhua Shi
4:00, 16mm to digital, Color, Silent, 2023
A visual poem was composed, when no one is at home.
Wenhua Shi pursues a poetic approach to moving image making, and investigates conceptual depth in film, video, interactive installations and sound sculptures. His work has been presented at museums, galleries, and film festivals, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, European Media Art Festival, Athens Film and Video Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, West Bund 2013: a Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary art, Shanghai, Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism, and the Arsenale of
Venice in Italy. He has received awards including the New York
Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and
Juror’s Awards from the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. He is the
founder and one of curators of RPM Fest.
Concréte: Bsoton City Hall - Wenhua Shi
24:20, Digital, 2020
Image Concrete -
turn the image upside down:
nothing more,
nothing else,
nothing
Concrete: Boston City Hall (2021) During the pandemic, drones flying over the empty city became an over-saturated media coverage fixed our imagination into one way of reading a city/ space. I return to the idea of “ma” empty or open spaces (interval or pause in time). The newest piece, titled Concrete: Boston City Hall, was created with this additional perspective and creates a contrast to legendary documentary filmmaker, Frederick Wiseman’s four-hour long film, City Hall.
Here I try to present the meditational quality of the empty city hall. The project was presented by local art organization Non-Event with support from MCC (the Massachusetts Cultural Council).