SFCINEMATHEQUE

irradiance (2020) by Ramey Newell

Ancient cold and primordial heat converge with the immediacy of chemical and biological interactions, destabilizing and/or reordering once-familiar spatiotemporal scales. Even as the perceived urgency of this looking and measuring accelerates, our view is only ever partial.  Edited in-camera, hand-processed, toned and tinted on 16mm hi-con b&w. Made at the Film Farm in Mount Forest, Ontario.  (Ramey Newell) united states premiere

Estuary (2021) by Ross Meckfessel

When you question the very nature of your physical reality it becomes much easier to see the cracks in the system. Estuary charts the emotional landscape of a time in flux. Inspired by the proliferation of computer-generated social media influencers and the growing desire to document and manipulate every square inch of our external and internal landscapes, the film considers the ramifications of a world where all aspects of life are curated and malleable. As time goes on all lines blur into vector dots. (Ross Meckfessel)  bay area premiere

death by fantasies by mirrors (2022) by Charlotte Clermont 

Of the morning, early, magnificent grave. Bewilderment, infatuated by sleep, passion, sunburned mouths, looking for antidotes. Otherwise, if not, long enough to keep the loves. Bird, rupture, mauve, white robin, very untraceable thing. Fill the air with rose or liquid water, falling, flowing. Wet with dew, watered fresh. Of roses, of pink color, rosy, ruddy, honey purple, crimson. Small beak. Buzzing of bees, noise; whispering. Of silk. Water clock. Day, daytime. Climate sky. Seduce, separate, divide eleven at a time. Outburst, cruelty. To see often or usually in yellow. This is unbearable, stuns. Death in 4, death in 2, worthless instructions to get away from things, to avoid reflections. Pressure, compression of the lips. (Charlotte Clermont) united states premiere

Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (2022) by Jennifer Reeves

A diagnosis of an eye disorder incited this meditation on fear and beauty. Glimpses of curious and creative souls peek out of countless hand-painted film frames. Infinite colors and textures burst, blend and challenge the primacy of uniform vision. (Jennifer Reeves) north american premiere

Thalassophobia (2022) by Kit Young & Colleen Kelly

Thalassophobia is a fear of the sea, of deep bodies of water. This is our jumping off point into the ever beckoning primordial abyss. Surrendering to submersion, we will navigate this anxiety with improvised visual and audio signals. (Kit Young) world premiere

Dreams Under Confinement (2020) by Christopher Harris

Frenzied voices on the Chicago Police Department’s scanner call for squad cars and reprisals during the 2020 uprising in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, as Google Earth tracks the action through simulated aerial views of urban spaces and the vast Cook County Department of Corrections, the country’s third-largest jail system. In Christopher Harris’ Dreams Under Confinement, the prison and the street merge into a shared carceral landscape. (NYFF) bay area premiere

Autoimmune (2020) by Douglas McCausland (US), Ian Kirkpatrick (US) and Marcos Serafim (Brazil/US)

A non-human entity complicates common understandings of queerness and HIV. With agency over data, it distorts images from archives and makes them speak. Composed with machine learning processes for generative video and sound, the piece explores uncanny relations between technology, truth and illness. (Marcos Serafim) bay area premiere

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Artist Bios

Ramey Newell (Canada) is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in British Columbia. Her moving image works have been screened at film festivals, galleries, museums and other art spaces throughout the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. She teaches photography, video and documentary production at University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus.

Ross Meckfessel (US) is an artist and filmmaker who works primarily in Super-8 and 16mm film. His films often emphasize materiality and poetic structures while depicting the condition of modern life through an exploration of apocalyptic obsession, contemporary ennui and the technological landscape. His work has screened internationally and throughout the United States including in the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, Internationales Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg and Curtas Vila Do Conde.

Charlotte Clermont (Thiothià:ke/Montreal) creates a dialogue between video and audio explorations to examine our perceptions of the real. The performative aspect of her practice, moved by a desire to transpose the illusiveness of lived moments, is embodied in her singular way of working with analogue recording devices. Using materials from her immediate environment, she works upon the chemical sensitivity of film through various alterations, while leaving a large place to chance. She holds a bachelor’s in Studio Arts from Concordia University and lives and works in Montreal. Her work has been presented in Canada and internationally in the framework of festivals and exhibitions, including the International Festival of Films on Art (Canada), Fracto (Germany), the Festival des cinémas différents et expérimentaux de Paris (France), CROSSROADS, Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival (Norway) and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. She was artist in residence at Studio Kura (Japan), Signal Culture (US), Fusion Gallery (Italy) and Shiro Oni (Japan).

Jennifer Reeves (US) has made 20+ film-works, from experimental shorts to expanded cinema performances to experimental features. Reeves’ work has shown extensively from the Berlin, Toronto, and Hong Kong Film Festivals to the Museum of Modern Art, universities, and microcinemas worldwide. Reeves’ acclaimed visceral and personal works immerse viewers in intricate, unfamiliar cinematic territory.

Kit Young (US) is an interdisciplinary artist working in the combined mediums of video, sound, kinetic sculpture and performance. His art practice is improvisational and explorative. He uses compositional systems of loose structures that can respond to chance and chaos. Kit also appreciates the way that humor and play loosen our rigid reactions and assumptions, allowing us to re-experience reality in unexpected and liberating ways. Colleen Kelly and Kit Young reside in the San Francisco Bay area, on settler colonized land of the Ohlone People.

Colleen Kelly (US): TanukiSpiderCat is an improvisational blend of electronic cello, modular synth, and samples.  Looping, layered, and staggering ever forwards. It’s a fragmented, unlikely animal hailing from San Francisco. Colleen Kelly and Kit Young reside in the San Francisco Bay area, on settler colonized land of the Ohlone People.

Christopher Harris (US) is the F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor and Head of Film and Video Production in the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of Iowa. He makes films and video installations that read African American historiography through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema.

Ian Kirkpatrick (US) is a Chicago based artist investigating digital materiality. His work exposes influences of digital material through media synthesis leveraging neural networks and various creative coding tools.

Douglas McCausland (US) is a composer/performer, sound designer and digital artist whose visceral and often chaotic works explore the extremes of sound, technology and the digital medium. Described as “Tremendously powerful, dark, and sometimes terrifying…” (SEAMUS), his works have been performed internationally at numerous festivals, including: Sonorities, SEAMUS, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, MISE-EN Music Festival, Klingt Gut!, Sounds Like THIS!, NYCEMF, Sonicscape and Ars Electronica. Recent collaborations include artists such as bassist Aleksander Gabryś, cellist Seth Parker Woods, the Quasar Saxophone Quartet, the TAK Ensemble and vocal ensemble Variant 6. As an artist, he researches and leverages the intersections of numerous technologies and creative practices including real-time electronic music performance with handmade interfaces, spatial audio, dynamic and interactive systems, intermedia art, the musical applications of machine-learning, experimental sound design and hardware-hacking.

Marcos Serafim is a Brazilian artist working with video and sound across theatrical exhibitions, installations and performances. His practice investigates cultural, historical and material relations between technology and minoritized social and political subjects. Serafim is an Assistant Professor of Photography, Video and Imaging at the University of Arizona’s School of Art. He has exhibited work at the 5th and 6th Ghetto Bienalle in Haiti, the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Brazil, EMPAC, the Queens Museum and Flux Factory in New York. His work has been screened in film festivals in multiple countries, including the Cine Esquema Novo Film Festival,  Brazil; the Horn Festival for Experimental Films, Israel; the Northampton Film Festival and Faito Doc Festival, Italy.