Our curated film program features a wide selection of experimental short films, ranging from animated works and 16mm film to computer programming recordings, two-channel video, and live puppetry. Each film was selected through an open call for video art shared online.The programming listed below reflects the order in which the films are screened in the video loop.

FLORE by Emily Sasmor

2:12 min

"FLORE" follows two lovers as they fall in love over the phone during an endless night. They can only escape it through each other.

Linden Beer by Eden Attar

5:50 min

"Linden Beer" tells a story of queer trans friendship around the seasonal act of collecting linden flowers. This film is a live recording of a reading of the story's text, written in Orca---an esoteric programming language for generating musical MIDI signals, in which every capital letter of the alphabet is an operator. Stretching the intended use of the language, "Linden Beer" is a story whose words create their own sonic and visual accompaniment.

Zoonomia by Yeon Jin Kim

7:12 min

"Zoonomia" proceeds from the notion that if the rules that govern our universe and determine how it develops were altered, what we see around us would be profoundly different.

Efforts to understand and represent foundational premises have driven humankind and are ongoing - explorations involving the Fibonacci sequence, the Riemann hypothesis, Feynman diagrams, Quantum physics, Hadron colliders, Darwinian evolution, etc.

"Zoonomia" represents an imaginative investigation into how things might have evolved if events had followed a slightly different trajectory, allowing for hybrids of existing organisms, the return of extinct species and unpredictable motivations, interactions and outcomes.

All the inhabitants are monsters in a sense.

None of them belong comfortably in their environment or with each other.

Interactions are charged, outcomes unpredictable.

Meaning is elusive or non-existent.

The Gatekeepers by Zen Cohen

20 min

This eco-mythological video project was made in collaboration with performance artists who created visual personas based on the intersections of their own trans-cultural, and spiritual identities. The culmination of this footage as an installation is an attempt to magnify and illuminate these personas—to create a mythology inhabited by new idols and archetypes wherein these personas, or gates, are seen as symbolic figures at the threshold between the human and non-human world. Performers appear enacting rituals that merge body and land juxtaposed with layers of visual and auditory symbols. In other moments, the performers directly confront the viewer, staring towards the fourth wall. This convergence of projection and viewer initiates an awareness that Nature is not something outside the Self but inherently linked to persona.

THE STIGMA FOG SAINT Wards Off ExtinctionWards Off Extinction by Angie Jennings

6:36 min

THE STIGMA FOG SAINT Wards Off Extinction, documents "THE STIGMA FOG SAINT" engaging with tapestries representing the natural elements of fire, water, aether and earth in a Southern Californian backyard in hopes of saving us from destruction and doom.

This work references visual cues found in the experimental film Meshes of the Afternoon (1959) by Maya Deren. Probing forms of magical realism, circular narrative and memory.

The musical composition for this film was created by musician/composer Dr. Michiko Ogawa in reference to her studies on the musician/composer Teiji Ito, who composed the musical score for Meshes of the Afternoon.

Field Dances by Muyassar Kurdi

9:20 min

"Field Dances" is a short experimental 16mm dance film exploring embodiment, space, and anatomy. Contrasting sweeping fields with intimate close-ups, it captures a woman's frenzied, hysterical running amidst barren apple orchards, alongside nuanced studies of the human form. Recontextualizing hysteria through a woman's lens, the film weaves together ecology, movement and the body.

Our Mine by Shayna Strype

10:27 min

In a handcrafted world where nature exists in harmony, a handful of greedy businessmen exploit a mountain’s riches. The female body becomes both landscape and characters in an exploration of what happens when Man considers himself separate from Nature. This ecofeminist tragicomedy uses animation, live puppetry, and wearable sculpture to blur the lines between fable and reality.

Stroad Movie by Pablo Garcia

10 min

Streets, roads, and their bastard offspring the "stroad" are characterized by long stretches of durable material that provide a clear and safe route between destinies. They may contain markings that dictate behavior or inspire feelings of existential dread. If you can resist the powerful flow of commerce, even for a moment, you may discover that getting lost is the key to freedom.

This is a film about queering an otherwise soulless landscape and the inevitability of nature reclaiming humanity's mistakes.

“Even the simplest least interesting landscape often contains elements which we are quite unable to explain, mysteries that fit into no known pattern.” -J.B. Jackson

I Get to Have My Own Private Hope by Yue Nakayama

20:30 min

Fish and Pigeon go on a quest in search of the meaning of “work” prompted by the news of the extinction of bananas, and rent that’s passed due. The piece questions today’s work conditions and societal structure through the precarity of Fish’s life and disappearing bananas.

Fleeting but Prolonged by Ada Yueting Wu

6:05 min

"Fleeting but Prolonged" is a video project capturing my body in a heightened state of transformation and becoming. Being in front of a camera, I tried to synchronize my eye movements with those of various animal species. A light was put in front of my eyes to change my pupil dilation to simulate the different species. Through durational exhaustion and subversion of my body’s automatic function, I seek a new form of existence and the unity of being.