Butterfly Tears (2023)

Old Man's hell chess

Plot unavailable

The Tuba Thieves

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

Cochlea

Plot unavailable

Echo

A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?

Escargots

An adaptation of a children's poem called Chanson des escargots qui vont à l'enterrement by Jacques Prévert, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Filmed in Paris, France and Los Angeles, California.

Rift

Daniela (24) is a ghost in pain. Her life ended suddenly and painfully, leaving her friend and roommate, Mónica (22) alone in their shared apartment in Santiago, Chile. Daniela feels her frustration grow within her, as she fears that her time in limbo will never end.

Yo, Diablo

Joey works as a waiter for a hedonistic community of summer holiday makers in a small Mediterranean paradise. It is unclear if their exaggerated behaviors are due to the fact that the summer is coming to an end or if its just the last of their summers.

Ground Control

A journey to an unknown star, a children's theatre play, an untalented writer and the fear of becoming the worst version of oneself. A mixture of live-action footage and animated scenes. A stream of (un)conscious stereotypes.

Seance of the Past

A person spends most of their life mourning the things they have lost, unable to move on. They frequent a silent but helpful medium and embark on a spiritual journey where they linger among their past lives.

October Is Yours

A man in distress.

Thunderstruck

Flashing lights explode across an apartment as images of a naked woman in bed flicker in and out. Light paintings and projections illuminate a space of confrontation and an assault on the senses.

Shaye & Kiki

A bizarre mix of early Tod Hayne's and Phyllis Diller!

Nexum

Questions how we as individuals are psychologically relying on our inhabit spaces and how we as society are influencing and being influenced by our surroundings.

Ophelia

Plot unavailable

Cormorant

A 16mm experimental short film loosely following a cormorant as it attempts to dry its wings.

The Grass Dwellers

Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.

Michelle

Plot unavailable

In Search of Something Slightly Complicated

The story of an invisible man who travels in search of an idea, told by a questionable narrator.

Negativ

A photographer during the Soviet-Afghan war becomes obsessed with a mysterious figure that appears in his images every time the person photographed dies.

Rosewater

A solitary man struggles to cultivate beauty in a desolate urban world. Lonely and dislocated, he drifts in and out of a dream state envisioning the promise of regeneration. ROSEWATER tells a story of hope sustained through perseverance, ritual and, ultimately, revelation.

The Iron Sea

An experimental short shot on a f0.3 equivalent large format lens

Dumula ng Isa, Dalawa, Tatlo...

A theater group begins their rehearsal on a play about a witness' account of a massacre eventually leading to a confrontation and inner conflicts of the actors portraying their roles.

The Train Conductor And The Cross Dresser

The lives of both a train conductor and a cross dresser become mixed within one another.

Ego

The permanence of awareness and the transient nature of ego. An external look into an internal awakening. The stark realization, the sudden death, and the everlasting peace.

Dirt

Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.

Fungi

As he falls down the spiral of personal obsession; a delusional mycologist finds himself in the midst of seeking the unattainable. Morals won't play a role in his relentless pursuit of transforming his being into fungus.

Insomnia

In the solitude of night, the veil of reality slips away to reveal our deepest fears.

Flooding Memories

Haunted by flooding memories of their parents' verbal abuse, an insecure person decides to stop reflecting and start living the life they never knew they could have.

Lonesome

Zach, a 16-year-old, endures his internal emotional struggles on one saturday.

MMM

A spec observation showcasing the movement, shutters, and potential thoughts

What remains

one-minute video made by students of the UNA Artes Audiovisuales

Lost Footage

How would a found footage film look if the footage was never found? This conceptual art experiment questions the very nature of film and cinema while serving as an ironic tribute to the found footage horror pop culture. The found footage format provides the narrative justification for such a film to exist: the non-existence exists because the footage existed yet it was lost and never found.

Butterfly

A short experimental film, exploring the concept that one small change can have a profound impact on a person's life.

Project Channelocity

Three friends create an artificial intelligence to generate new TV shows, however the AI turns on them and begins torturing it's characters.

Flaming Creatures

Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a “comedy set in a haunted movie studio.” Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for an indelible, heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake. After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.

Touch Air

An homage to the influential practice and philosophy of artist Nasreen Mohamedi. The film incorporates Mohamedi’s personal notes and her unique singular vision, drawing upon the aesthetics of the bare line, and its metaphysical journey eliminating physical borders/barriers.

The Tragedy of an Artist

The Tragedy of an Artist, is an experimental short shot over the course of a week. This film is meant to illustrate who Hero Foltz is as a person and his struggles with self identity

Three Mirrors Creature's Flashes of Flesh

In the aftermath of an emotional shock, a ruthless high-class manager faces her own abyss, becomes pervaded by a sensory spirit and undertakes a purifying voyage.

Sink

An experimental horror film told entirely from above the bathroom sink.

Between You and You All

A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.

DARKMAN

Seeing himself as a form unable to experience intimacy, he is given the chance when brought to the household of twin sisters.

The Psychedelic Experience

Experimental movie, where a man comes home and experiences LSD. His kaleidoscopic visions follow, with readings inspired by the Tibethan Book of the Dead.

What Are Your Memories?

An abstract exploration of memory and loss.

1989

A poem in tap.

Closer Now

A photographer explores a city, contemplating the ethics of her medium.

Drifting

A teenager contemplates his relationship with God and others as his days are filled with loneliness.

The Man Out Back

A pathetic love letter.

Chimera

Lost in the woods, a panicked Griff desperately tries to find his way home, but as he moves deeper into the depths of the woods he faces more nauseating uncertainties. Bewildered and disoriented, he must leave the woods.

A Sad, Sad Ghost Picking at the Hairs of Their Knuckles

A wandering young woman explores the crevices of her apartment, of her corporeal creases, as well as the shadows made up of those things. Through her journey, she comes into contact with fellow vagrancies: a nondescript man of around similar age; a young girl with similar, even familiar, eyes; streets that can only exist during those brief moments of glazing stares. The rain comes and goes, but the A/C never turns off.

Black Mask

A father must face his dark past when his gifted daughter has visions of a young girl reborn from her deceased mother. This award-winning metaphysical thriller combines elements of art house, avant-garde, surrealism, and experimental horror.

I Am a Forest

A winged creature begins the precarious return from the city to the forest. There she will meet a group of mysterious beings who guide her to the heart of the forest. Step by step, they push her to transform, to leave herself behind. What happens when you decide to return to the forest?