The First Light Show (2024)

Make a Cup of Tea

A depressed man is told to make a cup of tea by his therapist.

DRIFT

DRIFT is a collaboration started in 1991 between visual artist Leah Singer and musician and poet Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. DRIFT is an immersive sonic/visual environment consisting of music, sounds and texts by Ranaldo in response to two 16mm analytical film projectors performed in real time by Singer. Much as a DJ scratches a vinyl record, Singer manipulates her films in a live improvisation with Ranaldo's guitar, poetry and soundscapes.

The Artist and His Canvas

An experimental film revolving around how an artist perceives a man and a woman.

Borgoño

Sienna struggles with dreams of an unknown and scary place after receiving a dress that belonged to her late grandmother, who commited suicide years ago

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story

A comic study of 20th-century history, reconstructing the life of writer, creator and professional prisoner Tulse Luper. Born in 1911 Newport and last heard of in 1989, Luper’s life is pieced together from the evidence found in 92 suitcases scattered across the globe. In the first of three parts, we follow Luper through three distinct episodes: as a child during the First World War; as an explorer in Mormon Utah; and as a writer in Belgium during the rise of fascism.

Ray's World

A guy named Ray tries to go to sleep and a sasquatch gets into funky business.

Bunnyhood

What could possibly be more important than feeding your daughter?

Escape

An experimental short film that follows a man who arrives home alone during the holidays after a long day of work. Finding himself consumed by his loneliness he looks for a way to escape.

Only Human

A tale of people unfolds under the night sky. These doomed couples and lost individuals begin journeys and attempt to find resolution in their lives. Love is observed from a distance, sadness is in the air. With little sympathy for the loss and destruction caused to the characters, the stories progress and become neatly woven into a minimalistic portrayal of modern life.

Where Is Amy Pressman

In 2007, a teen girl from a posh L.A. suburb must deal with the grizzly murder of her family while trapped in the company of their killers.

Prospero's Books

An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of the 'The Tempest'.

LIMINAL

Plot unavailable

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.

Day Watch

A man who serves in the war between the forces of Light and Dark comes into possession of a device that can restore life to Moscow, which was nearly destroyed by an apocalyptic event.

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.

Alternate Earth

A scientific expedition travels to an alternative Earth in hope of finding a new home for humanity, which has destroyed its own planet. But is it even possible to escape old patterns?

Becoming Air

Breathe deeply: in 3 years, your molecules will circle Earth, as today’s oxygen came from nature.

Intertwined

Ezra (M19) and Awan (F19) are two melancholic teenagers who one day meet by chance in the Library. In their meeting, they both feel they have the same memories and speculations. In the memories and speculations created between the two of them, they are lost in feelings of love in their minds. Those thoughts make them feel the complexity of love that they have never felt before.

Queen of the Damned

Vampire Lestat awakens from his slumber and becomes a rock star. But chaos strikes when his music awakens Akasha, the vampire queen, who may not rest until she makes Lestat her new king.

A Man Walking Backwards and Forwards

Plot unavailable

A Common Sequence

An interconnected look at tradition, colonialism, property, faith, and science, as seen through labor practices that link an endangered salamander, mass-produced apples, and the evolving fields of genomics and machine learning.

Intento de vuelo fallido

Its production seems like a game: throwing a Super 8 camera, turned on and recording, from what was, at that time, the tallest building in Caracas. The film films the shots of its own accelerated fall, a succession of chromatic shots that cannot be identified either in terms of what is “recorded” in each one (windows, columns, walls, sky or floor) or in its own formal configuration as an image (color, composition, shapes or figures). What is perceived and apprehended is the impotence of vision – of perception – to distinguish this extreme and exhausting mobility, this vertigo of “free fall.”

Proyecciones del Limbo

Plot unavailable

At First Light

High school senior Alex has an encounter with mysterious lights that appear over her small town. She soon develops dangerous, supernatural abilities, and turns to her childhood friend Sean. The authorities target them and a chase ensues as officials try to discover the truth behind Alex's transformation.

Green Pink Caviar

Models are seen licking brightly colored candy on a sheet of glass. The video illustrates the moment where clarity becomes abstraction and beauty commingles with the grotesque.

One Minute Reharsal

Actors Isabella Lafin and Rafael Grendene reharsing a scene from the movie Marriage Story (2019).

Inspection 01

A closeup examination of a tree in the morning light.

Mirror

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Begotten

Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.

Tempo Rubato

The night before her eighteenth birthday recital, an overworked and undertalented pianist is abducted by three ghouls.

La robe rouge

Plot unavailable

R52.9 Pain, unspecified

Period pain varies greatly in terms of its form and intensity. It is not easy to describe in words, and it is often trivialized and dismissed. This film aims to break this taboo and visualize the feeling of having a period based on personal experiences, making it more tangible.

The Blue Light

Hans the farmer is drawn into war as a soldier. Returning from the front, having been defrauded of his pay by his own king, he makes his way home. On his trip, he encounters a witch who asks him to fetch the light from a spring. He keeps it when the witch tries to deceive him and he discovers her foul magic. When the light is ignited, a little man appears who must serve the owner of the light, but it only has power if the owner has faith in himself. His courage bolstered, Hans goes to the king once more to demand his wages be paid.

Wide Open

After awakening in her basement, the protagonist finds herself cursed by an object, rendering her unable to blink. Haunted by a sinister silhouette creature that appears from various locations, she realizes her only chance of defeating it lies in mastering the ability to confront the creature without averting her gaze.

Kino Kopf

Born from steel and glass Kino Kopf is created by two inventors. They are assembled by their mother, a nurturing artist, and their Father a greedy entrepreneur. Kino Kopf is the first of its kind a sentient humanoid VHS camera. They are given a life by their mother but presented to the world by their father. Kino Kopf is the next big sensation and spurs a technological revolution. They are soon forgotten and alone as new models surpass them. Kino Kopf is left alone to contemplate if they ever had a soul, as visions of an electric cowboy dance through their dreams.

Plague Mass

A conceptual live concert by Diamanda Galás, "Plague Mass" continues the themes of the suffering and misery of the infected found in her "Masque of the Red Death" trilogy.

Ten Lives of a Cat: A Film about Chris Marker

Ten years after the death of iconic French filmmaker, Chris Marker. A filmmaker, hoping to rediscover that unique sensibility against the uncertainty of the new century, returns to the places synonymous with those incomparable and unforgettable films-- From the cat cemetery of Sans Soleil, to the mausoleum of The Last Bolshevik; The caves of Level Five to the rooftops of The Case of the Grinning Cat. A biographical portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest and most misunderstood filmmakers.

Trials and Initiation

Here is an actor, one who has been asked to dwell in the perilous gap between text and image. In the voids where traces of the past have been erased by an unknown error, she begins to assemble her own script.

I’d like that corner seat over there

An omnibus film based on Kim Oki's album Hip Hop Retreat. Twenty characters share the same table at different times, in different emotional states, each with their own story. Shot in one day, edited in one day.

Il telefonetto

A killer hates and punishes people who are using the small phone.