surrealities, Almost Lynchian
Saturday, April 12
7:00 - 8:00 Pm
Canady Creative Arts Center
Bloch Hall Theater
A Veil of Sadness
Anton Maxwell Burek | United States
Year: 2025
Run time: 7:53 min.
Synopsis:
A woman stands alone in an empty room, the weight of her thoughts growing heavier with each passing minute. At first, it's just the silence that surrounds her, but soon her mind begins to play tricks. As her thoughts spiral out of control, the room seems to trap her. Forcing her to face the terrors within her own mind.
”Film has a way of bringing audiences together to experience different perspectives. “A Veil of Sadness” is an experimental horror short influenced by Expressionist playwrights August Strinberg, Alfred Jarry, and the early work of Eugene O’Neill.
It is my first 4K shoot, and features a cast and crew entirely from NYC; shot in Brooklyn; produced in Long Island City. It would mean a lot to premiere at your festival.
Creatively speaking, I wrote this short with the main character struggling in her creative process. More broadly, Millennials and others are trying to get unstuck from two decades of geo-political conflict and economic instability. There is a despair that has gripped us as we try to break free from inner demons rooted in the past. I’ve personally felt that struggle. This is the energy I’ve tried to express in the collaborative short film “A Veil of Sadness.”
Bio:
Blonde Game Show - Short Film 2023 (Writer/Director/Producer) . The West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival (West Virginia) - Premiere -April 2023
Venus on Broadway Int'l Film Festival (New York City) - May 2024 . Beyond The Screen Festival (Belgium) - Feb 2024 “Best Short Film” . Sofia International Film Festival (Bulgaria) - Dec 2023 “Best Short Film”. Creative Horizons Festival (Poland) - May 2023
FUN FACTS: I was born in Chicago, IL and grew up in Eugene, Oregon. I have a BA in theater from Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY. I am fluent and literate in Japanese.
Website
Instagram
The Circle Children
J. Cody Spellman | United States
Year: 2024
Run time: 17:01 min.
Synopsis:
On a night of celebration during the Vietnam War, Esther has a
premonition that her brother is in danger.
Bio:
J. Cody Spellman (He/Him) is a director for theatre and film currently residing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has directed and production-managed theatre, special events, and film throughout the country for over a decade and served as the Artistic Director for Throughline Theatre Company from 2022 - to ‘24. Cody holds a B.A. in Theatre with a concentration in Directing from Columbia College Chicago. For more information, visit jcodyspellman.com and follow jcspells on Instagram.
Relics
Carl Knickerbocker | United States
Year: 2025
Run time: 1:40 min.
Synopsis:
Journey to find something.
Bio:
Upstate NY born. Longtime Florida resident. Started doing art a little later in life. Been doing video since 2010.
Shadows
Emerson Minor | United States
Run time: 8:18 min. Year: 2024
Synopsis:
A young woman wants to cleanse herself of the shadow that stalks her.
”I wrote this project to explore the idea of people who are trapped in guilt for something that they have done. They have these feelings that they can't quite understand, and instead of facing that guilt, they would rather just be cleansed (by a 'witch' in our case), or run away from it. Does this allow us to forget about what we have done, or just fall into an emotional loop?”
Bio:
Hailing from Morgantown, West Virginia, Emerson Minor is a young filmmaker currently working in film production in New York City. Emerson studied theater at West Virginia University where he received his bachelors.
she came to me in a noir fever dream
Neil Ira Needleman | United States
Run time: 2:54 min. Year: 2024
Synopsis:
A brief nightmare that leverages my favorite shot from one of my favorite noir movies, "Cry of the City" (1948), Robert Siodmak, director; Lloyd Ahern, Sr., cinematographer.
Website
"A Little Holiday" - This Space Space: Issue #3
Daniel Gonzalo Nosal | United States
Run time: 15:00 min. Year: 2024
Synopsis:
An alien visits The Smooth Beta Fig Tree 4, a coffee house at an intersection of the multi-verse, in hopes of getting some much needed R&R. He and the other patrons soon discover that they are stuck in a time loop, and must follow planetary protocol in order to discover and break the mechanism causing the loop, even if it means ending their own existence.
Bio:
A filmmaker who just graduated from the MFA Film Program at The City College of New York. After graduating Marist College in 2012, he started working for NBCUniversal as a studio camera operator. With the help of like-minded coworkers and friends, he started producing his own small films including the first two shorts in his This Space Space series, which have been featured at the Chattanooga Film Festival, Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival and Portland Unknown Film Festival. Nosal has finished his graduate thesis film, “A Little Holiday,” which will act as the third movie in his This Space Space series.
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