[sun]film

Derek Taylor | United States

Run time: 3:10 min.

Synopsis:
A meditation on light, power, and perception, the film explores humanity's changing connection to the sun. Using hundreds of found images from the 16th century onward, the film shows how the sun has been depicted in art, science, and culture. It moves from ancient celestial maps and Renaissance images of divine light to telescopic photos and modern simulations. Through this movement, the film reflects on how the sun has inspired shifting meanings and myths, acting as both a constant in nature and a mirror of human inquiry, and offering a radiant homage to the mystery and majesty of this giant star.

Bio:
Derek Taylor's moving image work focuses on the intersection of documentary and experimental filmmaking, particularly as it relates to history and landscape. He maintains a very defined interest in the hybridization of both these styles of filmmaking, and a clear focus on the investigation of both the ephemeral and the permanent in the human experience. His work has been screened at a number of festivals both nationally and internationally. He studied film, video and new media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently lives and works in Connecticut.

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Comet 

Zen Cohen | United States

Run time: 6:22 min.

Synopsis:
A video collage about the ways of seeing and perceiving existence through media technologies of the past, present and future. Source material includes digital video, still photography, stop motion animation, found footage, Risograph prints, digital scans and found sounds.

Bio: Zen Cohen received her MFA in Art Studio at the University of California at Davis and BFA in Film, Video and Performance at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the deYoung Museum (CA), SFMOMA (CA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (CA), ARTSpace New Haven (CT), Vanity Projects (NY), Wavepool Gallery (OH), Public Space One (IA), and internationally at the Museo de Arte Moderno (CDMX, Mexico), Ex Teresa Arte Actual (CDMX, Mexico) and Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (Canary Islands, Spain). Her photographs have been published in Hyperallergic, Art Practical, Artnet, Routledge and Southern Illinois University Press. She is the founder and director of the Open Air Media Festival, an outdoor media arts program in Iowa City. This program received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) to support the 2024 festival.

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Waiting up to meet the wolf

Anthony Carr | Canada

Run time: 6:40 min.

Synopsis:
This debut 3-channel short is a quiet call to action for humanity to reverse the decline of dark skies, told via memories from the director’s childhood and adult life. Coalescing the past, present, and future, the film weaves these stories around those of the Moonlight Tower, a short-lived 19th-century lighting technology.

The film’s shaky visuals and day as night audio track are part of a deliberately off-kilter viewing experience, echoing the nocturnal ‘jet-lag’ felt across the natural world when darkness is lost. Shot on 16mm and hand-processed using eco-reversal techniques that complement the subject matter and message, the film poses the question but leaves the audience to decide the fate of our attitude towards darkness.

Made with the help of a 2022 Greenlight Grant from MediaNet (Canada).

Bio:
Born in London (UK), Anthony Carr is a Canadian-based visual artist working in photography, sculpture and moving image. Having exhibited widely, in 2021 Carr was awarded the inaugural Glover Rayner Prize (UK) for sustainable photography and a Greenlight film production grant from MediaNet (Canada).

His debut short film Waiting Up To Meet The Wolf (2023) has been selected in a handful of film festivals including amongst others Buzz Cinema Festival, UK; Bideodromo International Experimental Film and Video Festival, Spain; Antimatter (Media Art), Canada; and the Canberra Short Film Festival, Australia. Whilst his micro short timelapse animation Observing A Baker's Dozen: A Lunar Study in Variations of Size and Shape is featured in haus a rest’s online zine (issue no. 51, 2024) on the theme of Art and Science Collaborations. It has also been shown in Desaturated with Analogue Ensemble, Ramsgate, UK (2024) and at The Desert Festival, Central Australia (2020).

Notable recent shows of his artwork include born of isolation (after Eric), arc.hive artist run centre, Victoria, BC, Canada (solo) and You Are Welcome, Pat Martin Bates Gallery, Victoria Arts Coun-cil, BC, Canada (both 2024).

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No Matter What

Carolyn Lambert | United States

Run time: 11:00 min.

Synopsis:
This essay film weaves together memories of hawk babies outside my window, my shortcomings as a wildlife observer, and Hollywood's use of the red-tailed hawk cry to signal danger and threat. No Matter What draws parallels between this slippage in auditory representation and the ongoing mass extinction event.

Bio:
Carolyn Lambert is a video artist and filmmaker. Her work engages with the vulnerability of living in a time of environmental turmoil and mass extinction. Lambert has exhibited at venues such as the Drawing Center, Eyebeam, and SculptureCenter (New York) and La Mirage (Montreal). Screenings of her work have occurred at the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück (Germany), Bomb Factory (UK), and MUMOK (Vienna, AU). Her body of work has developed out of a need to survey the scope of ecological collapse and sift through the complex human responses as the living world disappears. She lives in the Hudson Valley in New York.

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