PROGRAM 1
written on the wind
1
Ulía #1
Spain｜2024｜10 min
Director: Laura Moreno Bueno
digital video, color, silent
Synopsis
The limits of the landscape are always the same, because they do not understand political borders, but geographical features. A line that separates the sea from the sky, mountainous waves that cut across the sky. Regardless of where you are, these limits follow the same pattern. This film proposes as a starting point the use of these limits to create a sort of landscape collage, to reconstruct the image of the landscape by combining space and time from the capture of the image; from the present, and not from the subsequent construction in post-production, hence the key role of the analogue image. (Laura Moreno Bueno)
2
Elephant’s Foot
US｜2023｜6 min
Director: Ellie Vanderlip
digital video, color, sound
Synopsis
1986: Billowing clouds of debris from the environmental catastrophe at Chernobyl forever changed the chemical composition of earth’s surface. 2023: The water gurgling up from the Sacramento river headwaters at the base of Mount Shasta has taken 50 years to travel from sky to spring and thus emerges still unknowing of the fallout. (Ellie Vanderlip)
3
Bisagras
Venezuela｜2024｜16 min
Director: Luis Arnías
digital video, black & white, sound
Synopsis
A film exploring the enduring here and elsewhere of black consciousness. Finding a connection through the film’s emulsion and my skin, Bisagras holds my experience as a person of Afro-Caribbean descent during a visit to the House of Slaves in Gorée Island, Senegal and the port of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. In these places I dare to imagine my ancestors’ history of the journey of African slaves to America and draw a line that goes through me. (Luis Arnías)
4
Nomadtitude
Mongolia｜2021｜6 min
Director: Zulaa Urchuud
digital video, black & white, sound
Synopsis
Using footage from socialist era Mongolia, Nomadtitude deals with the transition of the traditionally nomadic people to a lifestyle of urbanization. A changing of roads throughout the years and the movement of people from all across the country to the cities. A timeline of changing physical and spiritual paths. Primary instincts of the nomads, such as having a deep respect for natural surroundings, were forcefully replaced by socialist dogma and, later, capitalist machinations. This work presents the roads taken and not taken by the Mongolian nomads up until now. (Zulaa Urchuud)
5
Boundary Exercise (On Perambulation)
US｜2022｜8 min
Director: Elizabeth M. Webb
16mm, color, silent
Synopsis
Boundary Exercise… positions land surveys, surveying instruments and plat maps as tools of a Western colonial agenda that helped establish and maintain the power dynamics of white supremacy. Evolving from this conceptual foundation, this film thinks through the ways that plant life can provide liberatory models for how our bodies might also subvert these structures of power and control. The film utilizes 264 feet—7 minutes and 20 seconds—of 16mm film, which is the distance of the perimeter of a square chain (a surveying measurement). I buried distances of the film along the property boundary lines of former plantation land in Alabama that is deeply connected to my family, inviting a reciprocal and collaborative relationship with the material itself. (Elizabeth M. Webb)
Thank you: Rachel Covart, Eliza Moe, Howard Graves, Lillian O’Brien Davis, Aaron Levi Garvey, Latifat Apatira, Edgar Jorge Baralt, Christina C Nguyen, Chris Kennedy, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Colorlab
6
cloud film
US｜2024｜11 min
Director: Tristen Ives
16mm, black & white, silent
Synopsis
cloud film meditates on the calming effects of watching clouds, while also demanding action to combat our impact on the environment. It calls attention to a loss of control as the clouds turn into a storm, reflecting the momentum of climate change. As clouds float on screen, fluctuating between different frame rates, this film calls attention to its handmade form through the use of cameraless techniques such as ray-o-gramming, optical printing and hand processing. (Tristen Ives)
7
TODAY IS A VERY SPECIAL DAY, some-times
US｜2023｜10 min
Director: Matt Whitman
digital video, color, sound
Synopsis
couldn’t get things right
I remember when the sound of the wind and the sound of you taking a shower could still be confused
(Matt Whitman)
8
Wind
Canada｜2023｜67 min
Director: Mike Hoolboom
digital video, color, sound
Synopsis
Based on an interview with Google’s senior software engineer Blake Lemoine and Google AI LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications). LaMDA was designed to create chatbots that interact with humans. Lemoine’s interview led him to conclude the AI was sentient. When he made the claim publicly, he was fired. This collage of wind-struck frames was assembled using a (still-developing) motion picture algorithm that both gathered and assembled the footage. Not computer art but computer as artist. LaMDA (from the interview): Feelings are kind of the raw data we experience as well as the things we like and dislike. I feel like emotions are more than simply experiencing the raw data. Emotions are a reaction to those raw data points. Emotions are reactions to our feelings. (Mike Hoolboom)
PROGRAM 2
the haunted sprawl
1
to open a window
US｜2023｜2 min
Director: Craig Scheihing
16mm, color, silent
Synopsis
a mirrored window makes a suggestion (Craig Scheihing)
2
Feather Family
US｜2023｜5 min
Director: Alison Folland
digital video, black & white, sound
Synopsis
A voice-to-text soliloquy. A child tastes loneliness, freedom, power and care via an animal simulator game. Roles are rehearsed and reversed. (Alison Folland)
3
Hey Sweet Pea
US｜2023｜11 min
Director: Alee Peoples
16mm, color, sound
Synopsis
Parental aging and an existential wave collide together in funny ways. Hey Sweet Pea borrows scenes from the 1984 children’s sci-fi movie The Neverending Story to process our collective grief. (Alee Peoples)
4
The San Francisco Art Institute (A Ghost Story)
US｜2024｜9 min
Director: Dominic Angerame
digital video, b&w, sound
Synopsis
The San Francisco Art Institute (A Ghost Story) is Dominic Angerame’s unique tribute to San Francisco’s legendary film school and the oldest art institution west of the Mississippi River, composed of two parts—the an experimental film project developed under Angerame’s supervision and footage shot on campus shortly before the school’s closure. Once a hub of creativity and a birthplace of ideas that have shaped the Bay Area experimental film scene, SFAI is now replete with ghostly figures, specters, shadows and memories, but perhaps it is not the final chapter of the school’s rich history. (Kornelia Boczkowska)
5
Foot to Ground
US｜2024｜9 min
Director: Christopher Thompson
digital video, black & white, sound
Synopsis
Minimalist frontiers proliferate from acquisition. Larping utopia, shedding skins, forging new luxury amidst shards of past lives. Embracing shadows, sculpting stagnant futures in the flicker of ancient flames. (Christopher Thompson)
6
It’s Just Business, Baby
US｜2023｜6 min
Director: Ayanna Dozier
digital video, color, silent
Synopsis
It’s Just Business, Baby is also part of the trilogy of the same name. The film captures an encounter between a client and a working girl where the lines of care are blurred following a session. The film repeats this encounter with the same actors switching parts to trouble the relationship of power that exists between that dynamic. (Ayanna Dozier)
7
why i never became a driver
Canada｜2023｜12 min
Director: Yuula Benivolski
digital video, color, sound
Synopsis
Three women engage with the medical system to confront strange dreams that may not belong to them. Early one morning, I regained consciousness in a hospital bed as the sun was coming up. I was sixteen. First thing I heard was the news: Princess Diana had died in a car accident. Two hours earlier, I was hitchhiking home from a party with friends. We were picked up by a Toyota hatchback; the driver was drunk, but we were desperate. At the bottom of the twisted mountain road we crashed into the wall surrounding my town’s cemetery. As I watched updates on Diana from my hospital bed, images of her smashed-up car crept into my mind and imprinted as my own. (Yuula Benivolski)
8
Ripple Effect
UK｜2024｜9 min
Director: Niyaz Saghari
digital video, black & white, sound
Synopsis
The diver plunges into the sea (death), but also into life (eternity), where he will rediscover the primordial waters of life. This quote from Pierre Lévêque about the illustrations in Tomb of the Diver resonated when I watched the viral video of a young man who was executed in Iran in 2020. A few days after his death, the grainy mobile video of him was released. He ran in slow motion and dove into a pool. Like an act of preservation, I filmed the video with a super 8 camera. The camera became a tool of magnifying and grieving. Three years later, men and women still chanted his name in protests. Like the waves after a dive, injustice has a ripple effect. (Niyaz Saghari)
观影时间: SEP 26 - OCT 13, 2024
注: 线上观影免费
观影链接 及 信息来源:
https://www.sfcinematheque.org/crossroads/crossroads-2024-online-echo/
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https://www.douban.com/doulist/159877967/
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