SFCINEMATHEQUE

Gregorio Méndez (Spain) began his artistic work in the late ‘70s with painting, drawing, performance, happenings and installations. At this time, he begins to experiment with video art and continues to work in this medium, alongside producing and directing documentary films. He was a founding member of the action art collective El Afilador, with which he was involved in the construction of networks of Situationist artist groups in Spain during the ‘90s. He has also realized stage designs for professional and amateur theaters as well as posters and illustrations. He work has shown in museums and exhibition spaces such as the CAB in Burgos, Laboral in Gijón and the Feria de Arte Contemporáneo in Lisbon, as well as in galleries and art spaces in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Stuttgart.

Hua Xi Zi (China/US) works and thinks about light and the experience of seeing—in exploring the flowing life and one’s relation with outside systems. From celluloid film to analogue video to digital video processing, screen-based and optical projections, installations and performances, Xi Zi questions the existing methods of shadow-image production by experimenting alternative ways to “un-expose.” Her practice and research turn into materiality while asking questions about spectatorship and participation—seeking tenderness that withholds freedom and forgiveness. Xi Zi recently completed her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was known as “Cecilia.”

Charlotte Clermont’s (Canada) video and sound work addresses the concept of time through symbolic and emotional associations. Often collaborating with others, she uses analogue recording devices and works with the malleability of film and magnetic tape to build space-times that reside between imagination and memory, the past and the present. With a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Arts from Concordia University, she has exhibited in Canada and internationally at festivals and exhibitions including the Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma, Antimatter, the Paris Festival for Different and Experimental Cinema, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Künstlerhaus Bethanian, Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival (Norway) and Edinburgh International Film Festival. She has been selected for artist residencies in Japan, the United States and Italy. Her works are distributed by Vidéographe and Winnipeg Film Group.

Karissa Hahn (US) is a visual artist based in Los Angeles. Her work articulates the nature of contemporary image reproduction and dissemination through the use of analogue and digital technologies.

Laura J. Padgett’s (Germany/US) work explores unoccupied spaces, both real and imaginary, to reveal truths that are often overlooked. Like her subject, her work inhabits the spaces between photographic storytelling and installation, between language and image, between history and current affairs. While she uses photographic media the results are always more than photographic objects. Since the 90s Padgett has produced a wide-ranging body of work, adopting various genres such as architectural photography, still life and urban street photography while exploring our ideas of communal and cultural identity. Padgett’s work is often displayed in public spaces and plays with scale, material and the way we interpret images and their relation to history. The breadth of her work demonstrates an ability to move fluidly between genres, based on her background in painting, art history and architecture.

Onyeka Igwe (United Kingdom) is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation. She was born and is based in London, UK.  In her non-fiction video work Onyeka uses dance, voice, archives, sound design and text to create structural “figure-of-eights,” a format that exposes a multiplicity of narratives. Her works have been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and LUX, London; the Berlin Biennale; International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Smithsonian African American Film Festival, among others. She has exhibited at articule, Montreal; Trinity Square Video, Toronto; and Jerwood Space, London as well as other spaces. She was awarded the New Cinema Award at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 2019 and the 2020 Arts Foundation Fellowship Award for Experimental Film.

Kit Young (US) is an artist who produces video and performance art. He builds video systems that can be played in an improvisational way. He performs collaboratively with other sound and visual artists at venues that host expanded cinema events. Experimental sessions conducted in his studio become video essays and shorts. Though his work utilizes new media techniques, his practice is grounded in the experimental cinema thematic traditions of perception, awareness, social justice and humor. He has been an artist in residence at the Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Center, Buffalo NY and at Signal Culture, Owego NY. He is a guest lecturer at San Francisco State University and is a Berkeley Civic Arts Grant recipient. Recent screenings or performances have taken place around the country and abroad, most recently at the Coaxial Arts Foundation (Los Angeles), Elastic Arts (Chicago) and the Ann Arbor Film Festival 2020 (live stream).

Nisha Platzer (Canada) is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker who plays with analogue and handmade processes. She is interested in the melding of genres and artistic mediums and explores themes of identity and the intersections therein. Her films and photographs have been exhibited at festivals on three continents and she has attended artist residencies in South and North America. Nisha was a live-in artist resident at the James Black Gallery in Vancouver 2015–2016 and is a member of Iris Film Collective. Her work can be found in music videos, documentaries and narrative films.

Carl Elsaesser (US) is a filmmaker, programmer and scholar living and working in Maine. His work explores intersectional conversations on the politics and affects of the everyday. His work is informed by practice-based experimentation and a broad understanding of media theory. His practice is informed by the poetics of Tan Lin, Kathleen Stewart, John Durham Peters, Susan Lepselter and many others whose work uses broad, expansive, slow practices to critically think through histories without losing sight of a humanistic connection to the world. His films have screened internationally and won numerous awards including the Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Miko Revereza (Philippines/US) is an experimental filmmaker currently based in Mexico City. His upbringing as an undocumented immigrant in the United States for over 25 years informed his films, DROGA!, DISINTEGRATION ’93–’96, No Data Plan and Distancing. Miko’s films have screened widely and exhibited internationally at festivals such as Locarno Film Festival, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real. He was listed in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema in 2018. He was a featured artist at the 2019 Flaherty Seminar and is an MFA graduate of Bard College.