Story of the Dreaming Water

Maybe there was an opening and they wandered through…

“Not really that cool or weird, but this film was hand-processed at the AgX Film Collective lab in the Boston area” – Brittany Gravely

YEAR 2018 RUNTIME 3 minutes COUNTRY United States PREMIERE Chicago Premiere

FILMMAKER Brittany Gravely

Appalling Nature

Erin is on her way home after a long day’s work. She follows the elongated shadows of barren trees as she struggles to find her way, battling her own inner voice. Unsure if she is being hunted, her thoughts align with a nearby doe, whose instincts are sparked by carnal awareness.

“There is some hand-drawn animation made with magic markers featured throughout the video. Also, it features movie star, Erin Nixon ” – Emilie Crewe

YEAR 2020 RUNTIME 9 minutes LANGUAGE English COUNTRY Canada PREMIERE World Premiere

FILMMAKER Emilie Crewe

Jeano

Circling around two figures — a New England housewife, the wisher — and a character in a more mythic waiting space, perhaps collecting all the wishes — the film considers the potential power in the wishes of those waiting for the war to end. Created with support from Smithsonian Folkways, it is an imaginative exploration into how we engage with the dreams of the past.

“In 1941, Vermonter Helen Hartness Flanders visited the home of Margaret Shipman, an octogenarian living with her sisters in the small town of Lee, MA to ask her to sing any old songs she knew, for her recording machine.

Margaret, a woman with a beautiful, understated voice, delivered a song with a simply voiced wish for the end of all wars —

“Oh, if i were queen of france, or still better pope of rome

I’d have no fighting men abroad, nor weeping maids at home

All the world should be at peace and the might should be the right

I’d have those that made the quarrelling, the only ones to fight”

This song was recovered in historic archives by Anna & Elizabeth and recorded on their album with Smithsonian Folkways before making this film. All of it stems from the same starting point: Margaret Shipman singing in her kitchen an old song she had heard somewhere in her past.” – Peter Coccoma

YEAR 2019 RUNTIME 15 minutes COUNTRY United States PREMIERE Midwest Premiere

FILMMAKER Peter Coccoma, Anna Roberts-Gevalt

Searching for Beauty in Student Loan Debt or at Least the Envelope in Which They Come

Don your 3D glasses, open your mind, allow the denial of questionable financial decisions made by an aspiring young artist to dissolve on your tongue, and take a trip over 10 years to a delusory destination where the student loan debt crisis and one advanced art degree converge. Lean into the darkness of capitalized interest or remove your glasses and dream in color of solvency that may never come. Energetically steeped in student loan pay-off balances that exceed original borrow amounts and dedicated to all artists who understand but cannot bear to speak of it.

YEAR 2020 RUNTIME 6 minutes LANGUAGE English COUNTRY United States PREMIERE Chicago Premiere

FILMMAKER Nicky Tavares

The Other Night

Dreams and memories merge together at the moment of disappearance. Recurring visions and gestures are drawn into the void within the portrait of a fading self.

YEAR 2019 RUNTIME 18 minutes COUNTRY Finland PREMIERE Midwest Premiere

FILMMAKER Joel Autio

A Demonstration

“A Demonstration” is a monster film with no monsters. Inspired by the existence of taxonomies of monsters at the heart of Early Modern European science, the film explores and reinterprets a way of seeing the natural world that is almost impossible to imagine from today’s vantage point. The word ‘monster’ comes from the latin ‘monstrare’, meaning to show, to reveal, to demonstrate.

YEAR 2020 RUNTIME 25 minutes COUNTRY United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands PREMIERE Midwest Premiere

FILMMAKER Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner