13th ANNUAL ALCHEMY FILM AND MOVING IMAGE FESTIVAL
13th Annual Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival Hawick, Scottish Boarders 27 – 30 April 2023
A Thousand Sighs UK Premiere
Program: TAKE ARMS AGAINST A SEA From ocean to moon, six films wrestle with nothing less than life, death and birth and self-expression 10.00am, Friday 28 April https://alchemyfilmandarts.org.uk/festival/
Oceano is portrait of the Oceano Dunes, a telling of their many stories: ATV riders and their RV village, the Chumash of the past and present, the Dunites (artists, poets, astrologers, mystics and hermits living in the dunes primarily in the 1920’s-40’s), the recently unearthed plaster sphinx from Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 Ten Commandments movie set, and a reimaging of Edward Weston’s modernist dune photographs.
HODO + SCOTT + WATTS TOWERS + OC presents the first of a dual-citizenship double-header locus-focused on the Southwest of the continent, with a compelling cadre of makers from Mexico as well as an audio-visual feast of provocative shorts from the North. Greg Berger‘s outrageous Joe T Hodo project demonstrates how a SF expat activist has managed to construct a potent satirical character on the margins of contemporary Mexican politics, Charles Fairbanks/Saul Kak‘s Echoes of the Volcano surveys the Oaxacan soundscape, and the PostcommodityCollective bisects the border wall with beautiful balloons! Whereas the psycho-politics of the LA area, layered in time and grounded on Simon Rodia‘s landmark sculpture hand-wrought in Watts, is echoed in Noah Purifoy‘s junk-art-park in the desert of Joshua Tree and reverberates through the mesmerizing Cali-fire reveries of San Luis Obispo‘s Lana Z Caplan. PLUS the legendary Matt Wolf/Guadalupe Rosales coverage of Latinx resistance to neighborhood gentrification in Boyle Heights, Georg Koszulinski‘s rhapsodic on-the-road collage-essay Continental Drifts, and Jake Scott‘s transformative farewell-to-Frisco hybrid performance.
FISURA, INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM & VIDEO
Program 12: Drift April 22, 2022 Municipal Cineteca of Durango, Mexico Mexico City May 29 – June 29 – Streaming on Mexican Institute of Cinematography’s FILMINLATINO
No Emoji for Ennui: Lana Z Caplan, Ross Meckfessel, Alison Nguyen, Matt Whitman
January 27 – March 26, 2022 Thursday – Saturday, dusk – 11pm Everson Museum of Art Plaza 401 Harrison Street
Plaza Projection Schedule Jan. 27-Feb 5: Lana Z Caplan, Autopoiesis Feb. 10-19: Ross Meckfessel, Estuary Feb 24-March 5: Alison Nguyen, My Favorite Software Is Being Here March 10-19: Matt Whitman, CAN’T ANSWER YOU ANYMORE (ON FACES) & HOW MUCH LONGER March 24-26: combined loop
In-person Screening Thursday | February 24 | 6:30 p.m.
Screening + Q&A Thursday, March 10 | 6:30 p.m. EST Streaming Online
About the Program
No Emoji for Ennui is a group show featuring the work of Lana Z Caplan, Ross Meckfessel, Alison Nguyen, and Matt Whitman that explores the difficult-to-define emotional tenor of our time—one that often leaves us overstimulated and underwhelmed at the same time it demands endless positivity. The seductive surface of the touchscreen shatters and the polygon meshes underlying our shared social reality peek out from under the digital skin.
What does it feel like to be a person in a world in which our sense of self has been thoroughly disoriented by technological entanglement and co-opted by neoliberal capital?
By turns unsettling, contemplative, humorous, and filled with existential dread, the resulting show is a collective selfie of who and what we are now.
A Jurist for Nothing has been selected to participate in the MuVi International Award of the 67th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, which will be screening from 1 to 4 May 2021.
Now approaching its twenty-seventh year, CUFF is officially the LONGEST RUNNING UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL IN THE WORLD. The fest is an internationally recognized program that screens documentary, experimental, avant-garde and cult cinema, and showcases films that explore new approaches to established practices.
‘Collected Dispersal’ Rosemary Taylor | ‘Patches of Snow in July’ Lana Z Caplan | ‘ Residual Minority’ Mieke Vanmechele | ‘Boy and the Sea’ Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian | ‘Ruru’ Denise Batchelor | ‘ Emotion Over Raisin’ Ruth Waters | ‘Frozen’ Adonia Bouchehri | ‘The Hearing of the Eye’ Alessia Cecchet | ‘River Ghosts’ Jonathan Johnson | ‘Passage’ Richard Ashrowan
Area Code Drive In Digital Showcase Friday August 14, 8:30-10pm Salem State’s O’Keefe Sports Complex
Including Lana Z Caplan’s film play and repeat.
Juried by Leonie Bradbury and presented in partnership with LuminArtz, works in the Video and Digital-Art section of the fair will be screened for drive-in viewing events.
About Unequal States Stories of the continued struggle against oppression through movements, resistance, and solidarity are often documented and presented in many forms as acts of resistance themselves. In these stories, the notion of “inequality” draws together different worlds, cultures, and dimensions/scales (micro/macro). From animations to documentaries, these films shed light on the pervasiveness of this inequality on all fronts by exploring social, scientific, and political perspectives in our fight against racism, injustice, and inequality.
“Trauma and horrific histories are held in landscapes in every corner of the globe. For the past twenty years photographer, filmmaker, and educator Lana Z Caplan has been documenting sites of public killings in her project, Postcards from the Hanging: Sites of Public Execution. She shares some stunning statistics in her statement, “The United States is one of only 20 countries in the world that continues to employ state sanctioned killing. In 2019 we ranked 6th in the world in the number of executions following (in order) China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt (execution totals not known for Vietnam, North Korea, and Syria).” Her thoughtful examination of why our country continues to allow the death penalty adds another layer to its history of pain and suffering.” Lenscratch.com
After the success of our recent collaboration with the Society of Scottish Artists at the Open SSA + VAS exhibition earlier this year, CutLog are delighted to offer our online audiences the opportunity to view a selection of these works through our upcoming online screening program.
“During covid19 crisis (and even after), some films from our distribution catalogue are available to watch in their entirety. Enjoy, and stay safe ! www.cjcinema.org”
Including links to full length versions of 2 films: ERRATA 20:40 min, 2017 (Meditative and Calming playlist)
Sound by Alan F. Jones and Lana Z Caplan
Rhythms of the mundane become a meditation on leisure, work, and time. As the visual cycle repeats – passengers load, unload, reload, boats arrive, depart, arrive – the reading of the Italian ferryboat schedule – town names, times, and departures – morphs from announcement to chant, boats transform, deconstruct, and twist into a mindscape, rendering the unseen, the errata, seen.
ROAR 3:30, 2007 (Animals playlist)
Footage from the 1933 film “The Big Cage” stripped of sound and re-edited onto clear leader followed by the removed optical soundtrack, also affixed to clear leader. Each strip of sound acts as a character, mimicking the actions in the film.
THE 39th ANNUAL BLACK MARIA FILM FESTIVAL GOES VIRTUAL
The Black Maria Virtual Film Festival in partnership with the Hoboken Historical Museum presents over 100 award-winning short films completely free of charge – no strings attached – for as long as the pandemic lasts.
Watch play and repeat (Director’s Choice Prize 2015 Festival) and many other films here