Permadeath green

Elijah Valter

Run time: 10:26 min.

Synopsis:
A shadow passes over a virtual forest. Memories are compressed - memories of rotting bodies, of laughing voices, of waves. A shadow passes through the leaves.

Bio:
Elijah Valter is a media scavenger and performer based in Chicago. He has a chip inside his brain that tells him what to do, and is searching for a surgeon that may be able to remove it.

The day the world went away

Mélissa Faivre | Germany

Run time: 14:00 min.

Synopsis:
A visual exploration of colors, kinetic landscapes and optical effects. An observation of nature through the vision of a macro world made of plants, insects, spider webs and debris. The ground crumbles in the crust of monochrome surfaces, the sea flies into infinite bits of pixels, the chameleon landscape suspends time.

Bio:
Mélissa Faivre, born 1989 in France, is an experimental video artist based in Berlin. Her rhythmic and mesmerizing work seeks to provoke questions on the nature of perception. The images she creates present blended and distorted realities that test the temporal and spatial coordinates foundational to the perceptive experience.

Parades

Alan Lake | Canada

Year: 2022

Run time: 17:00 min.

Synopsis:
Enter a world where fantasy and dream combine with the movement of the body, where time stops until rebirth.

Bio:
Alan Lake is a performer, choreographer, director and visual artist. He studied visual arts for five years (DEC and BAC in visual arts). He undertakes and obtains his technical DEC in Dance- performance in 2007 at the Quebec Dance School. Since 2007, Alan Lake has joined the companies: Harold Rhéaume's son, Adrien dances in NU, Jumeaux - a co-creation with the French choreographer Yvann Alexandre - and in the creation: Fluid, all as a performer. He participates in the first Grand Continental of Sylvain Émard Danse. He is an interpreter for Dana Gingras - Animal of Distinction in a video clip of Arcade Fire. It will be Adrian Rheaume’s son next work of the Rheaume White Partitions.

here and there, now and then

Cheryl Pagurek | Canada

Year: 2024

Run time: 7:11 min.

Synopsis:
While interacting with Cheryl Pagurek’s States of Being video and sound installation, dancers Rion Taylor and Wyeth Walker move fluidly through space and time. They traverse public and private locations, inhabit physical and virtual realms, and explore connections and relationships between the past, the present and an uncertain future. Their movements unite black and white film footage with contemporary video recordings, while building a compelling soundscape with composer Jesse Stewart's music. The States of Being interactive video and audio installation reimagines the possibilities for expressive self-representation in the internet age. Instead of the online identities that we perpetually craft and perform via social media platforms, avatars, and video calls, States of Being offers an alternative, experiential and experimental mode to enact virtual creations of ourselves, while straddling both real and digital worlds. The installation expands the artistic potential of interactivity by inviting dancers and the public to engage with it. The video and music components are mapped spatially to respond to peoples’ movements. Participants navigate and synthesize the evocative videos and rhythmic audio tracks through their actions, determining which of the paired videos appears within their moving body silhouette and which in the background of the projection, as well as how the musical layers build up into a soundscape. Video imagery evokes fleeting sensibilities: built environment and vast natural space, rushing speed and slow contemplation, immediacy and distance, isolation and freedom, past and present. The resulting immersive video and sound compositions uniquely express our precarious human condition amidst the fluctuating states of being we strive to balance.

Bio:
Cheryl Pagurek’s artistic practice highlights the constructed nature of lens-based media, while embracing the creative expression offered by computing and technology. Her work in video, photography and digital media has been shown widely in Canada and internationally, including exhibits at MSVU Gallery (Halifax), Patrick Mikhail Montréal, Vu (Québec), Gallery 44 (Toronto), the Ottawa Art Gallery, Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), and numerous video screenings in Canada, USA, Brazil, France, Columbia, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, the Netherlands, Norway and Ethiopia. Her 2024 exhibit States of Being at Art-Image (Gatineau) features her second interactive video and audio installation. She received the 2020 Corel Endowment for the Arts Award celebrating the integration of technology and the arts.

The Silken City

Thomas Pickarski | US

Run time: 12:58 min.

Synopsis:
An essay narration paired with old B&W found film footage, the story is set in an imagined future when the Gulf Stream having reversed directions fuels an atmospheric phenomenon known as Spider Rain.

Bios:
I am a multi-media visual and performance artist. The themes I work with include minor obsessions, the bizarre landscape, self-realization, and social justice. I often integrate storytelling into my work through text and spoken word. I hold a BFA in Painting and an MFA in Performance Art, both from Arizona State University. I have had solo exhibitions throughout the U.S. including at The Cultural Center of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Glazer Children’s Museum in Tampa, Florida. My first solo exhibition, "The Middle of Nowhere", which consists of 32 B&W photographic prints depicting primarily arctic landscapes, toured 7 U.S. exhibition venues and was then acquired in its entirety by the permanent collection of the Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California. My follow-up exhibition "Floating Blue", which features arctic icebergs photographed during the late evening light sometimes called "The Blue Hour", debuted at the 10th Annual Songzhuang Art Festival at the Czech China Contemporary Museum in Beijing, China, in the fall of 2017, and is currently touring 13 U.S. cities through 2023. In 2020 I wrote a monologue titled, "Under a Pandemic Sky". I performed a live reading of the monologue in an event presented by TMI Project (Kingston, New York). I then created a short film based on the monologue. The film premiered at the Oakland International Film Festival, Oakland, CA, in the fall of 2020, and then screened in New York at the Ocktober Film Festival, Brooklyn, and later at Monologues and Poetry International Film Festival, Vallejo, CA.

In 2021, in conjunction with the 20 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, The Cultural Center of Cape Cod invited me to create and exhibit a short film that reflects on that day from my street-level vantage point beneath the Twin Towers, and the unusual and beautiful ramifications that ensued through recurring and evolving dreams over the months that followed. I will promote this film for further exhibition beginning in 2022. In the fall of 2021, the Oakland International Film Festival invited me back to premiere my short film, “Out My Window”, which explores in a unique and beautiful way some of the ramifications that ensued as a result of the protests and uprising following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. The film was also included in the North Dakota Human Rights Film Festival where it screened at the historic Fargo Theatre, Fargo, North Dakota, and then later won Best Monologue Film in the Monologues & Poetry International Film Festival, Vallejo, CA. I am currently promoting my new photographic solo exhibition, “Snow, Sand, Ice”. I live in New York City.

CarpeLucem: France in SuperBlue - seeing France in a different light

Gary Schubert | US

Run time: 12:58 min.

Synopsis:
In the camera used for the images in the video, the normal IR-blocking filter was replaced with a Super Blue filter, which allows only specific blue, infrared, and ultraviolet light frequencies to pass. The resulting color Super Blue interpretations and monochrome photographs are exhibited together in this video, minimally edited, allowing viewers to see France in a different light.

Bios:
Gary Schubert is a multidisciplinary artist who works in traditional and non-traditional media and is known for blending approaches to artmaking in experimental ways. He finds freedom within self-imposed limitations and often asks, “What can my camera see that I can’t see?” Gary Schubert studied under Tom Nakashima at West Virginia University where he earned an MFA in painting (1980) and an MS in computer science (1980). He also studied with acclaimed French photographer Lucien Clergue. He has exhibited widely, and his work is represented in public collections such as the Huntington Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He retired from Alderson Broaddus University, Philippi, West Virginia, as an Associate Professor after more than three decades teaching art and computer science. He lives in Morgantown, West Virginia, with his wife, Alice.

THE LABYRINTH: Solastalgia

Sylvia Toy | US

Run time: 8:35 min.

Synopsis:
Silent, experimental performance art movie, with sound created from recordings of breaking, ripping and shredding plastic. This film is a proof of concept for THE LABYRINTH by Sylvia Toy, a mid-length film scheduled for release in July 2021.  LOGLINE: One, a woman driven to the point of psychosis by plastic pollution, escapes from the known world into The Labyrinth, where she encounters a pure, perfect environment that is nevertheless filled with invisible obstacles and threats, as well as supernatural creatures.

Bio:
I am a perfomance artist and filmmaker in San Francisco who makes movies and animation in my livingroom. I am interested in the Climate Emergency, plastic pollution and gender equity.

Spiral Garage

David Finkelstein | US

Run time: 14:00 min.

Synopsis:
A visit to a hypercritical world, where people continually lob insults at one another, creating a poisonous atmosphere which leads to a spiral of violence. In a symbolic downward journey through a garage, this animated film takes the viewer past junked cars, pizza pies used as missiles, and freakishly overgrown flowers, finally arriving at a level where the shared pain of loss offers a way to connect peacefully with others.

Bio:
DAVID FINKELSTEIN received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022. He recently presented his first feature film on a tour which included Bilbao, Portland, San Francisco, Asheville, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Harrisburg, London, Porto, and Austin. He was an Invited Artist at the Traverse Vidéo Festival in Toulouse, France in 2013. His video work has been featured in one man shows at Artist Television Access (San Francisco), CRS (New York), Robert Beck Memorial Cinema (New York), Echo Park Film Center and LA Filmforum (Los Angeles), Medicine Show (New York), MSU Moorhead, and with Ross Wilbanks at Light Factory and Pura Vida in North Carolina. His work has been screened in the Brainwash Film Festival, Traverse Video (France), Leeds International Festival (UK), Cinesonika (Canada), Experiments in Cinema, Les Instants Vidéo, Les Inattendus, Denver Underground Festival, Brick Theater, 1078 Gallery, Arthouse Festival, Outer Film Fest, Free Form Film Festival, Ybor Festival, Rubric Video, WRO (Poland) Festival, New Vision Cinema, Athens (Ohio) Film Fest, Dahlonega Film Festival, VideoBardo, Exground, Valleyfest, Big MiniDV Festival, Park City Film Music Festival, the Puget Sound Cinema Society, the Downstream Film Festival, the Silver Lake Festival, EXP2, New Filmmakers, Bearded Child Festival, X-Fest, SinCiné, and Gemini CollisionWorks. Altogether, his video works have won sixteen awards at 6 different Festivals, including the Grand Festival Award from the Berkeley Video and Film Festival for "Born in Mid-Flight" and "Best of Festival: Experimental" from the Brooklyn Arts Council Film Festival for "Earth and Moon in Love." He has been commissioned three times to create videos for the Outmusic Awards, and these videos were subsequently shown on the PrideVision cable network and the PBS series "Under the Pink Carpet." His work has been funded by The Fund for Creative Communities, The Field, Movement Research, Meet the Composer, The Brooklyn Arts Exchange, BACA, and other sources.

The Passion of Hercules

Daniel Brody | US

Run time: 11:30 min.

Synopsis:
"The Passion of Hercules" re-imagines Hercules as an existential figure trapped in the suffering, madness, and rage of his mysterious incarnation.  With only a cube for a head, he is never fully able to know his own identity. 

Bio: Daniel Brody animates, paints, draws and does architectural rendering in upstate New York.