Presented in association with Pacific Film Archive and the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival

Curated by Vanessa O’Neill and Kathy Geritz

Dive into a program featuring recent experimental cinema that observes the world subjectively, drifting between rural and urban landscapes, expansive deserts and watery depths, interspersed with contemplations of historical events, from the sinking of the Titanic to the exploits of Houdini. When you come back up for air, you’ll be invigorated.

Trypps # 7 (Badlands): A hypnotic portrait that transforms a vivid landscape into a psychic experience. (Ben Russell, USA, 2010, 9:30 mins)

Minong, I slept: A subtle tapestry of resonant images of life on a remote island serves as a meditation on place and the past. (Vera Brunner-Sung, USA, 2010, 5 mins)

last resort: The depths of an abandoned space are excavated, creating an abstract animation with a rich palette of mossy hues. (Katherin McInnis, USA, 2010, 2 mins)

I Swim Now: A story of survival frames a visceral rendering of shipwrecks as the tumult and ferocious beauty of the sea are imparted through layered and expressive abstraction. (Sarah Biagini, USA, 2010, 8 mins)

Slave Ship: Innovative pixel painting brings to subtle motion a mesmerizing and luminescent re-visioning of J. W. Turner’s 1840 masterpiece. (T. Marie, USA, 2010, 6 mins)

a little prayer (H-E-L-P): Images of Houdini bound in chains flicker and spin amidst laceration marks created through hand processing. (Louise Bourque, Canada, 2010, 10 mins,)

Burning Bush: A shrub bursting with dazzling fall colors is at once real and unreal, natural and created. (Vincent Grenier, Canada/USA, 2010, 9 mins)

Tokyo – Ebisu: People and trains speeding through busy stations in Tokyo, are collaged in-camera into a vibrant checkerboard of multiple and fragmented images. (Tomonari Nishikawa, Japan, 2010, 5 mins)

Victoria, George, Edward and Thatcher: A dizzying journey from east to west London is captured in over 3,000 images taken on a cell phone. (Callum Cooper, United Kingdom, 2010, 2 mins)

Hell Roaring Creek: The conflicts inherent in the western landscape are framed in a filmmaker/anthropologist’s pastoral portrait of a seemingly endless herd of sheep crossing a Montana stream. (Lucien Castaign-Taylor, USA, 2010, 20 mins)

(Kathy Geritz and Vanessa O’Neill)

Total running time: 77 mins