Single File (2023) by Simon Liu
Friday, August 30, 2024, 7:00 pm
CROSSROADS 2024 — program 1
utopia springs from fertile soil
A haunted elegy to the late great SFAI opens the 2024 CROSSROADS commencement, a program presenting urban luminances and dystopic crawls within the walls of the encroaching and increasingly virtualized city, the contemporary cosmopolis as a state of mind. Envision yourself waking up. Recall the history you once inhabited.
SCREENING:
The San Francisco Art Institute (A Ghost Story) (2024) by Dominic Angerame (US); digital video, b&w, sound, 9 minutes. ESP (2024) by Laura Kraning (US); digital video, color, sound, 3 minutes. hampaat (teeth) (2024) by Ville Koskinen (Finland); digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes, exhibition file from AV-arkki. Foot to Ground (2024) by Christopher Thompson (US); digital video, black & white, sound, 9 minutes. Single File (2023) by Simon Liu (Hong Kong/UK/US); 35mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes. Spark From a Falling Star (2023) by Ross Meckfessel (US); digital video, color, sound, 21 minutes. TRT: 62 minutes
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)
program community partner: Canyon Cinema
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CROSSROADS 2024
The San Francisco Art Institute (A Ghost Story) (2024) by Dominic Angerame
The San Francisco Art Institute (A Ghost Story) is Dominic Angerame’s unique tribute to San Francisco’s legendary art 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)
ESP (2024) by Laura Kraning
A brutalist monument to the Empire State as manifested by a malfunctioning inkjet printer. Chroma and luminance are made audible as architectural and printed lines converge and dissolve into pattern and noise. Photographed in the Capital City of Albany NY. (Laura Kraning) world premiere
hampaat (teeth) (2024) by Ville Koskinen
In popular culture, the escalator has been depicted as a path to the afterlife. teeth portrays the metro station’s escalators as an intermediate space and peeks to the other side of the conveyor—to the engine room where the workers who maintain the machinery are having lunch. (Ville Koskinen) bay area premiere
Foot to Ground (2024) by Christopher Thompson
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) north american premiere
Single File (2023) by Simon Liu
In the wake of cataclysmic regional change in the artist’s homeland of Hong Kong, this Cinema-Strobo-Scopic film features a laborious sequence of analogue darkroom practices and dense shrouds of video processing techniques which actively work to both conceal and reappraise approaches to personal expression in the face of censorship. Times ahead and behind collide; the glittering lore of the way things were; generations lost to resolution errors. Sifting through new realities of misinformation, digital consciousness, and cultural disappearance, Single File seeks new lexicons of disobedience through formal experimentation. (Simon Liu) bay area premiere
Spark From a Falling Star (2023 by Ross Meckfessel
In Spark From a Falling Star, an odd, unseen alien presence arrives, one that, beyond the usual fondness for abduction, transforms people into objects, public spaces to private real estate. At home in a world of windows and reflections, it floats unmoored through the real and virtual alike. While the world is devoured in its never ending thirst for conquest, every zone becomes imprinted by the arrival. Where, finally, are you going to run? (Ross Meckfessel) bay area premiere
Dominic Angerame (US) has created more than 45 films. Angerame has taught at institutions including the San Francisco Art Institute; New College of California; University of California, Berkeley and University of Nevada, Reno. Angerame was Director of Canyon Cinema 1980-2012. His recent exhibitions include screenings at Anthology Film Archives and the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in New York. The soundtrack to The San Francisco Art Institute is by Kevin Barnard, a visual artist, musician, seeker. Kevin is perpetually drawn to a life of wonder, with the notion that writing clever tunes for people who like to sit still and dream with their eyes open might be seen as a truly noble vocation.
Laura Kraning (US) is an experimental non-fiction filmmaker who creates atmospheric visual and sonic portraits of landscapes at the intersection of nature and machine. Her work has screened widely at international venues such as the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, BFI London, Visions du Réel, MoMA Doc Fortnight and the National Gallery of Art, among others.
Ville Koskinen’s (Finland) works have been described as adventure films where the adventure never begins. Everlasting battles and emotions are ongoing themes in his work. His films have been screened and awarded internationally.
Christopher Thompson (US) is a contemporary American artist and filmmaker whose work examines desire, capital and the seemingly supernatural forces that govern its acceleration. His films and video works have been featured in film festivals and exhibitions worldwide, including CROSSROADS, the San Diego Underground Film Festival, Frontera Sur International Non Fiction Film Festival, Prismatic Ground and Mimesis Documentary Film Festival. He holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis where he studied video art and experimental film.
Simon Liu (Hong Kong) is an artist/filmmaker whose practice centers on the rapidly evolving psychological and sociopolitical landscapes of his homeland of Hong Kong through material abstraction, speculative history and subversion of documentary cinema practices through short films, multi-channel video installations and 16mm projection performances. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Whitney Biennial 2024, the Museum of Modern Art, MOCA Los Angeles and SFMOMA among others. The M+ Museum and MoMA recently acquired Liu’s Quadruple 16mm Projection Highview, along with other recent works, for their Permanent Collections. He is currently editing his first feature film, Staffordshire Hoard.
Ross Meckfessel (US) is an artist and filmmaker who works primarily in Super 8 and 16mm film. His films often emphasize the materiality of analog film and poetic structures while depicting the complex conditions of modern life. Through an exploration of apocalyptic obsession, contemporary ennui and the technological landscape his work has been described as “provocative considerations of the way we look at the world.” His work has screened internationally and throughout the United States including in the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, Media City Film Festival and Curtas Vila Do Conde, among others.