SFCINEMATHEQUE

The Silver Reel (2022) by Joshua Gibson

A film reel found in space, damaged by radiation and space dust, suggesting a possible contact. (Joshua Gibson) bay area premiere

A Valley Without Trees (2021) by Janelle VanderKelen

In A Valley Without Trees, the lowly onion that burrows into the soil and spends most of its life underground is cast as an interpreter or potential sensory prosthetic that offers a different way of understanding (and perhaps communicating with) the land, planet and cosmos in which it grows. (Janelle VanderKelen) bay area premiere

Curve the Night Sky (2021) by Peggy Ahwesh

The summer of 2020 I spent most nights outdoors alone transfixed by the theater of the stars and the dance of the fireflies. My sense of time expanded and slowed but the time-lapse camera condenses and speeds up the experience, in seeming contradiction. I waved my arms to trip the neighbors’ motion-sensitive lights to magical effect on the trees in my backyard. (Peggy Ahwesh) bay area premiere

Looking Backward (2022) by Ben Balcom

Filmed on the former grounds of Black Mountain College, Looking Backward is a brief elegy to the legacy of a utopian college and other impossible projects. (Ben Balcom) bay area premiere

Missing Time (2019) by Morgan Quaintance

Through a focus on alien abduction, cold war history and Britain’s colonial history, Missing Time is a film that considers the relation between amnesia, concealed histories, state secrecy and the constitution of the self. (Morgan Quaintance) bay area premiere

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Artist Bios

Josh Gibson (US) is a moving image artist and Director of Cinematic Arts and Associate Professor of the Practice at Duke University. His films have screened internationally at such venues as The National Gallery of Art, The Documentary Channel, Edinburgh International Film Festival, SXSW, Tribeca, Slamdance, LA Film Festival, Full Frame, New York Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam among many others.

Janelle VanderKelen (US) is an artist, curator and educator currently based in Milwaukee WI. Her films and intermedia installations imagine alternative acts of relation between imperfect bodies (human, vegetal, geological or otherwise) and make visible the agency of plants through experimental time-based media processes. She co-curates the monthly screening aCinema and teaches film and video at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she received both her MFA in Film, Video, Animation and New Genres and her MA in Intermedia Art.

Peggy Ahwesh (US) is a Brooklyn-based media artist whose work has traversed a variety of technologies and styles in an inquiry into feminism, cultural identity and genre. She was featured in Whitney Biennial Exhibition (1991, 1995, 2002) and is represented by Microscope Gallery, New York. Vision Machines, a survey of media works, was presented at Spike Island (2021) and traveled to Kunsthall Stavanger (2022). Now Professor Emeritus, Ahwesh taught media production and history at Bard College, the Bard Prison Initiative and al-Quds Bard College, West Bank, Palestine.

Ben Balcom (US) (he/him) is a filmmaker currently living and working in Milwaukee WI. He is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is the co-founder and co-programmer of Microlights Cinema.

Morgan Quaintance (UK) is a London-based artist and writer. His moving image work has been shown and exhibited widely at festivals and institutions including MOMA, New York; the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco; Konsthall C, Sweden; David Dale, Glasgow; European Media Art Festival, Germany; Alchemy Film and Arts Festival, Scotland; Images Festival, Toronto; International Film Festival Rotterdam and Third Horizon Film Festival, Miami. Over the past ten years, his critically incisive writings on contemporary art, aesthetics and their socio-political contexts, have featured in publications including Art Monthly, The Wire and The Guardian and helped shape the landscape of discourse and debate in the UK.