Weeds and Wildflowers (2023)

Nature morte

The tenth film from Shahriar Hanife's series of experimental etudes, an Iranian researcher.

The Third Rule

Plot unavailable

PRESENCE

Presence narrates the journey of Thati, a woman determined to overcome her anxiety attacks through surfing. She finds refuge in the waves, where the surfboard becomes her ally and personal therapy.

The Architecture of Love

Raia, a famous writer struggling with writer's block, travels to New York to get inspired. There, she meets River and becomes entangled in a love story haunted by the past.

ASTRAKAN

Plot unavailable

Preface to a History

A couple, Vlad and Sophy, navigate their relationship as well as their own struggles with mental health in the context of a highly connected, politically uncertain modern world while on a trip to a remote Canadian island in this avant-garde feature film. PREFACE TO A HISTORY, created with a tiny crew of four people, represents an experiment in using minimalist tools to create an overwhelming aesthetic experience in service of a simple, but specifically contemporary, story about two people attempting to navigate a fraying relationship amid all the anxieties and external pressures of modern adulthood in a technologically-interconnected and politically unstable era.

Astronomical Echoes

Made by film students, the short film is a tribute and authorial reinterpretation inspired by old Pink Floyd music videos as a psychedelic trip. Using overhead projectors to capture a liquid light show, the narrative is stitched together from a retro photograph, bringing a bit of 60s psychedelia with an air of nostalgia. With the combination of two of the band's songs ("Echoes" and "Astronomy Domine"), the music video brings the concept of the realism and ludic, of the present moment and insanity. Composed of characters who are part of a fictional band and travel through the delight of a mind that lives in the past while resting in reality.

Friend of the World

After a catastrophic global war, a young filmmaker awakens in the carnage and seeks refuge in the only other survivor: an eccentric, ideologically opposed figure of the United States military. Together, they brave the toxic landscape in search of safety... and answers.

House

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

Otro sol

Otro Sol is a group of real and invented characters trapped in a film. It is also a purgatory of retired thieves that takes place on the coast of the Atacama Desert. The film is circular and seeks to invent and verify the myth of Alberto Cándia, a Chilean international thief who stole the Cathedral of Cadiz in Andalucia in the late 1980s.

it's a mind game.

In a dimly lit room, two boys engage in an intense chess match. As tension rises and strategies unfold, the game becomes a battleground of wits and wills, leading to an unexpected climax that goes beyond the boundaries of the board.

WAR TIMES

An exploration of two souls inhabiting bodies from 1940's Hungary, and the beginning of the digital age.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

A group of "frolickers" reflect upon nature to find out what they are all missing in life.

Skagit

Four friends leave Seattle for a weekend in a remote, rain-soaked corner of Washington State's rustic Skagit Valley. The foreboding October landscape begins to warp their minds, plunging each of them into alternate realities where they must grapple with personal demons, sexual tensions, and a sinister natural world as they claw their way back to sanity.

PUTREFIXION: A Video of Nina Temich

PUTREFIXION: A Video of Nina Temich is the first feature to be entirely filmed on a 360 camera. Director David Torres utilizes the disorienting nature of a 360 lens to transform Mexico City, accentuate the ritual of dance, and open a new chapter of in-world-camera narratives. As Nina, model and dancer Dalia Xiuhcoatl controls the space and movement of the camera, giving this portrait of a young woman's brush with the supernatural a mesmerizing feminine energy.

African American Express

African American Express is an abstract animation exploring the impact of consumerism in the Black community. Told in the style of Soviet Propaganda, this animated short dissects the pattern of excessive materialism and consumption prevalent within the Black population.

Agent Jayne: A Woman with a Mission

Synopsis: Agent Jayne: A Woman with a Mission” introduces audiences to the unfortunate reality of the youth drug trade, exposing the harrowing consequences of addiction and exploitation. As the story unfolds, viewers are plunged into a world of greed, danger, and moral ambiguity.   Written and directed by Waqar Peter Gill, the concept of Agent Jayne is based on real events and personal visual experiences. The film aims to emphasize a prudent issue of substance abuse amongst teens, which portrays the use of candy-like opioids. The film is a blend of social awareness amongst the youth and woman empowerment. Director’s Quote: Agent Jayne is a film designed to raise the profile of local upcoming talent, as wella s create an awareness of drug abuse amongst the youth.  As a result of the release of Agent Jayne, we can recognize the contributions of all individuals involved in this project.

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.

Ossessione

Two Italian brothers, Franco and Giovanni, are marked by envy and resentment. While Giovanni, a talented painter, gains recognition in Brazil, Franco stays in Italy, enjoying the attention of their parents —attention that was always denied to the younger brother. When Franco asks Giovanni for a painting during a brief trip to Brazil, the bitterness between them reaches a breaking point, revealing a truth as painful as the artwork created.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

Black Box Investigations

Cracking open the human-camera body.

Happy End

A dark comedy about a murder and its consequences presented in a backwards manner, where death is actually a rebirth. The film starts with an "execution" of the main protagonist and goes back to explore his previous actions and motivations.

Amelia 2.0

After his wife Amelia suffers an aneurysm that leaves her bedridden and slowly dying, police officer Carter Summerland searches for a way to revive her. He's approached by Wesley Enterprises pioneering a new program to extend life through robotics, they get caught in a public debate over human’s relationship with technology and her right to exist.

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.

Old Man's hell chess

Plot unavailable

Children of Happiness

Plot unavailable

Bramayugam

Thevan, a folk singer of the Paanan caste, has a fateful encounter when escaping slavery, leading to discover an ancient tradition altering his destiny.

The Pig and the Society

"The Pig and the Society," symbolizes the stark contrast between the excesses of wealth and the plight of those left behind. It invites viewers to reflect on their perceptions and prejudices, challenging them to see beyond the surface and understand the systemic issues perpetuating homelessness.

Blocked Together

Whilst a boy mourns the passing of his younger brother, hope of unity is found in his grief.

115

Emily enters a reverse time loop while creating incorrect fuel (element 115). JT, a boy she meets daily, helps her gather DNA, plants, and water. She creates a wormhole, but the fuel fails, causing a quantum collapse that reverses her through time.

Remastered Brutality

Alinur, a student filmmaker, tries to make a film about the apocalypse for his capstone project. The movie itself happens to be about a mercenary named M who inadvertently causes an apocalypse. As he tries to “create” the destruction of this supposed apocalypse through utilizing technical gimmicks that he has enforced onto the production of the film, this supposed effort also creeps in as a force that starts to “destroy” him, piece by piece. The outcome of it tests the sincerity of not only the film itself but also of the performative efforts that Alinur has made as a filmmaker—even this test might not be as sincere as it seems.

He Who Dances Passes

A being from the beyond returns to Chile in 2019, embodied in a worker who dreams of social upheaval. Viral videos intertwine with fiction to narrate the experiences of a polarized country that wanders between drama and absurdity, illusion and failure.

Gemini

Sarah and her two cats go about their separate lives. The cats have strange dreams about their desires, and Sarah develops an unshakable paranoia that something is wrong with them. Sarah's paranoia bleeds into her social life, and her two cats have their dreams come true.

Star

In this experimental short film, a young man and woman enter into a relationship with one another and quickly learn the ups and downs of intertwining their life with the one they love.

Money, Fascism, and Some Sort of Acid

A collection of five short films tackling the military industrial complex, the rise of fascism, political polarization and various issues in modern society.

99 days

Two instants separated by 99 days conflict with each other.

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?

It’s Only a Film

Bobby breadcrumb lives a terrible life of hitting his head on doorways, running out of milk, and slipping on banana peels. In an effort to find meaning and change the script of his life, he journeys beyond the fourth wall to fight against the powers that be.

1/2 Man

A visual documentary of Einstürzende Neubauten, the German underground band, by Japanese cult director Sogo Ishii, made during their 1985 tour of Japan. The band makes an elaborate and remarkably choreographed appearance in the ruins of an old ironworks which was scheduled for demolition; footage of same was incorporated into the movie and a brief appearance on stage.

behind the scenes

An experimental documentary/animation hybrid exploring likeness scanning, AI, and what that means for identity.

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.

Possibly in Michigan

A musical horror story about two young women who are stalked through a shopping mall by a cannibal. He follows them home, and here the victims become the aggressors.