Surrounded by Colors We Could No Longer See (2023) by Abinadi Meza
perpetuum mobile
Sunday, September 10 | 8pm at Gray Area
Opening with two films on familial displacement and solitary inward questing, CROSSROADS 2023 concludes with notes of belief—works of visual and poetic philosophy considering repetition, change, velocity, perpetual motion, desiccated leisure and displaced labor. Time, formed from stars, acretes, flows, freezes, even stagnates and festers at the horizons of the oscillating universe.
SCREENING: A throwing forth (2023) by Xiao Zhang (China/US); digital video, color, sound, 6 minutes. Surrounded by Colors We Could No Longer See (2023) by Abinadi Meza (Mexico/US); digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes. water, clock (2021) by Zack Parrinella (US); 16mm, b&w, sound, 9 minutes. let the blind lead those who can’t see (2023) by Sebastian Vaccaris (Australia); 16mm, color, sound, 6 minutes. bigbang (2023) by Karissa Hahn (US); digital video, color, sound, 3 minutes. Repetitions (2022) by Morgan Quaintance (UK); digital video, color, sound, 24 minutes. The Enlightenment (2023) by Stephanie Barber (US); digital video, color, sound, 12 minutes. TRT: 64 minutes
program community partner: BAVC Media (Bay Area Video Coalition)
PROGRAM TICKETS
$12 General/$10 Cinematheque Members, Gray Area Members & students (with ID)
FESTIVAL PASSES
$110 General/$88 Cinematheque Members, Gray Area Members & students (with ID)
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CROSSROADS 2023
A throwing forth (2023) by Xiao Zhang
A time remnant inhabits a personal space with a secret, private, unspoken word of one’s being. Sliding planes of window and time, throwing drifts of the inner and the outer self, the film seeks in the interval of memory for a transitory reunion with my family. (Xiao Zhang) bay area premiere
Surrounded by Colors We Could No Longer See (2023) by Abinadi Meza
A passage through landscape, surfaces, the desert and night. This experimental short film is a flowing dreamscape of textures, fragments, images and afterimages—a terrain of memory that is corporeal as well as optical. This diaristic personal film moves through the spaces of the filmmaker’s diasporic family history, where the desert is a collection zone for scattered pieces. (Abinadi Meza) US premiere
water, clock (2021) by Zack Parrinella
water, clock is an interpretation of the velocity of our modern world. Through layering of images, sounds and text, the film explores how rapidly human society has been moving for the last century plus. Industry, building, and “progress” of humankind onto newer and newer frontiers of innovation never cease. At least, if anything we can seek some beauty within the absurdity of all the perpetual movement constantly surrounding us. (Zack Parrinella)
Let the blind lead those who can't see (2023) by Sebastian Vaccaris
A blind man in a dark room melts into celluloid, feeling with his hands the messy layers of processed reality. Consisting of four different processing methods, a triple pack of film types and post massaged via hands passed through algorithms. (Sebastian Vaccaris) north american premiere
bigbang (2023) by Karissa Hahn
a distraction of simple thoughts while waiting on hold and aging. (Karissa Hahn) bay area premiere
Repetitions (2022) by Morgan Quaintance
An exercise in observing repetition, following patterns and deciphering loops. Drawing focus through the lull of recurring images and repeating sounds, a clearer image emerges of industrialised labour and the vulnerable bodies of those performing it. This film finds a rhythm, much like a machine, to manifest the misgivings of the working class. (Cristina Kolozsvary-Kiss, International Film Festival Rotterdam)
The Enlightenment (2023) by Stephanie Barber
Listing dangerously into poetry, philosophy and sound art, Barber’s The Enlightenment finds Yon and Payola in a Victorian conservatory. They are companionable, disoriented and petulant—they whip wildly through these disembodied states. Payola reads an excerpt of their considerable tome on the Age of Enlightenment to Yon. Payola’s research, and presentation of this research, is a purposeful affront to empirical data, the scientific method and other enlightenment ideals, while reveling in the desire for the revolution and intellectual expansion those thinkers championed. The concepts are undermined by the form and register of their delivery OR the concepts are strengthened by the poetry through which they are presented. (Stephanie Barber) bay area premiere
Xiao Zhang (China/US) is an artist-filmmaker from China, currently living in Los Angeles. Her practice centers on personal poetics which derives from cross-generation memory and diaristic approaches. It continues by employing methods drawn from handcrafted celluloid film and expanded cinema. Her work often offers a complex fluctuation between material reality and subjective experience. She received her BFA at Beijing Film Academy in 2020 and holds an MFA in Program in Film/Video at CalArts.
Abinadi Meza (Mexico/US) is a sound artist and experimental filmmaker based in Austin TX. He studied art, creative writing and architecture; he primarily makes film/video, sound art and live performances. Meza’s works seek to create “other spaces: for viewers or listeners to inhabit, with a focus on transformation and poetics.
Zack Parrinella (US) is a filmmaker based in Oakland. His work often centers around dissonance and decay, sometimes more lighthearted and sometimes more anxious.
Sebastian Vaccaris (Australia) is originally from Chile and is currently based in Melbourne, Australia. He works with his hands and experiments with celluloid and poetry.
Karissa Hahn (US) is an filmmaker/librarian based in Los Angeles. Hahn has shown work in various cinemas, galleries and institutions such as the New York Film Festival/Projections, TIFF/Wavelengths, MoMA, CROSSROADS, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival and Anthology Film Archives, among other venues.
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.
Stephanie Barber (US) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been focused on an expanded poetics resulting in the creation of films, books, installations and songs. This work sits between cinema and literature, science and spirituality, philosophy and comedy and manifests as a corpus that moves beyond allegiance to media and works hard at defying classification. Her work is shared consistently around the world.