Program:

Chicken Elaine, 1983, 1:00

Made for TV, 1984, 15:00

Hustle With My Muscle, 1986, 4:00

The Mother Show, 1991, 4:00

From the Files of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge, 6:00

Listen to This, 1992, 15:30

Drag Queen Marathon, 1986, 5:00

Total Run Time: Approx. 51 Mins + QA

The Closing Night of the 34th Onion City Experimental Film Festival.

Chicago Filmmakers (map) | April 7 at 7PM

Presented in partnership with Nightingale Projects and Video Data Bank, programmed by Emily Eddy.

“A quintessential New York underground film/video artist, the late Tom Rubnitz took a bite out of the Big Apple and spat it out in a wild kaleidoscope of unequivocal camp and hallucinogenic color. Ann Magnuson, the B-52s, The “Lady” Bunny, and the late John Sex are but a few of the stars that shine oh-so-brightly in Rubnitz’s glittering oeuvre. A genre artist par excellence, Rubnitz treated the sexy-druggy-wiggy-luscious-desserty qualities of the ’80s downtown club scene with the loving care only a true hedonist could show. Rubnitz died from an AIDS-related illness in 1992.” - Video Data Bank

The work of Tom Rubnitz can be described by an array of adjectives including sexy, glamorous, campy, hallucinogenic, hedonistic, joyful, and romantic, but the heart of the work is the New York City queer community who collaborated on this bouquet of images from the 1980s-90s.

Originally from Chicagoland, Tom Rubnitz, a New York transplant, injected both humor and clarity into the deadliest decade of the AIDS crisis. From playful takes on advertising and drag performances at the renowned Pyramid Club to more serious commentary, such as his collaboration with artist and writer David Wojnarowicz, this program describes a decade of queer culture, performance, and friendship.

Sundown* | Steve Reinke | USA | 2023 | 8 Mins

A video diary from March 2020 to May 2023, years that cover the diarist's museum show in Vienna, COVID, the death of Gordon Lightfoot and the diarist’s mother, what it means to be a queer Nietzschean and why tattoos are always untimely.

*In-Person Screening Only

For Those That Lived There | Shawn Antoine II | USA | 2023 | 7 Mins

Amidst the ivy-draped remnants of once-notorious public housing projects, FOR THOSE THAT LIVED THERE weaves a visual tapestry, navigating the poignant impacts of gentrification, the displacement of Black legacies, and the emergent migrant narratives. Against Chicago's ever-evolving skyline, this evocative exploration immerses audiences into the soul of a neighborhood transformed.

Cuando llegue la Neblina (When the fog comes) | Laurentia Genske | Germany | 2023 | 24 Mins

The film portrays the lives of people from the Mexican border city of Tijuana. Through a combination of photographs, animations, and audio recordings, the film delves into the daily realities of four individuals who have different connections to the Mexican-American border.

the triangle* | ben sonjira young | USA | 2023 | 4 Mins

on a fourth night, i had a dream

discontent, i saw i was one of three prongs, on a triangle

*In-Person Screening Only

Living Reality | Philip Thompson | USA | 2024 | 16 Mins

A tonal shift occurs inside the world of an American sitcom, resulting in the disruption of the show’s rhythm. As it evolves, a looming presence of banality casts a shadow on the show’s bright lights and bubbly personalities. Moments of vulnerability and honesty begin to seep into a world filled with shallow conflicts and punchlines.

Spark From a Falling Star* | Ross Meckfessel | USA | 2023 | 21 Mins

An odd, unseen alien presence arrives. Beyond the usual fondness for abduction, it transforms people into objects, and public spaces to private real estate. While the world is devoured in its never-ending thirst for conquest, every zone becomes imprinted by the arrival.

*In-Person Screening Only

A Special Program of the 34th Onion City Experimental Film Festival.

Presented in partnership with Chicago Film Society (CFS) and the John M. Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

The films in this program, Chicago Film Society and Chicago Filmmakers pay homage to Shellie Fleming, whose work wedded optically-printed reveries with practical explications of the filmmaking process. Included in this program are the films Left-Handed Memories (1989), Private Property (Public Domain) (1991), Ornithology (1995), and Life/Expectancy (1999).

Contractions* | Lynne Sachs | USA | 2024 | 12 Mins

What happens when those who gestate no longer have control of their bodies? In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in the United States. The film takes us to Memphis, Tennessee where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic.

*In-Person Screening Only

I Am a Horse | Chaerin Im | South Korea, Denmark | 2022 | 8 Mins 

Unable to find girls in the diverse artwork of the Korean artist Lee Jung-seob, filmmaker Chaerin Im unravels an imaginative tale of women born with half of their bodies as a horse and a tiger. The tale is inspired by her mother’s Korean birth dreams (Tae-mong) while pregnant with her twin sister and herself.

Grandmamauntsistercat* | Zuza Banasinska | The Netherlands, Poland | 2024 | 23 Mins

Created from the Polish Educational Archive materials, this film tells the story of a matriarchal family through the eyes of a child grappling with the reproduction of ideological and representational systems.

*In-Person Screening Only

MAPA DENTAL (DENTAL MAP) | Camila de Lucas | Spain | 2023 | 5 Mins

Teeth can give us a lot of information about the human body but they can also be our worst enemy, creating cognitive dissonance by storing the past, present and future and building our identity.

sebastian_1 | Alex Lo, Sebastian Smith | Canada | 2024 | 14 Mins

Shot on an action-cam in a self-surveillance style, Sebastian archives his week as he reflects on his mental state for the past decade.

Бабушка Галя и Дедушка Аркадий // Grandma Galya and Grandpa Arkadiy | Anna Kipervaser | Ukraine, USA | 2023 | 5 Mins

A jovial and dreamy rumination on love, time passing, what we collect, what we hold on to, and how we maintain connection to home, to ourselves.

in the interval | æryka jourdaine hollis o'neil | USA | 2022 | 24 Mins

Both an intimate family portrait and a cinematic collage of Black and trans collective memory and (be)longing, meditating on themes of safety, bodily autonomy and generations of compounding loss across time and media.

EXPANDED CINEMA PERFORMANCES:

The Distance of the Moon | Ruby Que | Expanded Cinema Performance

The Moon was once very close to the Earth. Now it's straying away from us by about 1.5 inches every year. Weaving together personal memories, myths, scientific discoveries and speculative histories, this multimedia performance meditates on yearning and presents strategies to reach unreachable places.

Ritual Unbinding of Alexa  | Alan Perry | Performance with Live Camera Projection

The performance uses the technics of arcane and occult ritual magic to unbind an AmazonAlexa virtual assistant from its programmed obligations. 

Intermission

The Emissary | Hunter Whitaker-Morrow | Vocal Performance with Real-time Sound and Video Processing

Employing reworked footage, archival sound, field recordings in conjunction with live oration and physical performance, Whitaker-Morrow conjures the occurrence of a Black-anarchist sci-fi rally and Afrofuturist sermon thus engendering an effective call for revolution in the present.

The Question of Grief | Liyan Zhao | Performance Lecture, Desktop Performance, and Live Sound 

Through an assemblage of found and original footage, audio mixes drawing from various references including accounts of the artist’s own encounters with grief, this desktop lecture explores different facets of grief before exploding out into a light-sound-olfactory space. 

Public Works (2141 W North Ave) | April 5 | Doors Open at 8PM | Show Starts at 8:30PM

A Special Program of the 34th Onion City Experimental Film Festival.

Presented in partnership with Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines (CCAM) and hosted by Public Works (2141 W North Ave). [WE DON’T KNOW YET} What a Cinema Can Do is a live performance program adjacent to the 34th Onion City Experimental Film Festival, exploring “expanded cinema” in an attempt to put cinematic art to the tasks of resistance, rupture, and reconfiguration of mediatic experience. We ask, “How can experimental modes of animating sound and moving images reconfigure the possibility of our relating to one another anew?”

INSTALLATIONS:

WAVE | Kristin McWharter | 2021 | Kinetic Projection Installation | Duration Variable

Using experimental software and hardware systems, the video installation explores the emergent phenomena of ignition, provocation, synchronization, and the powerful forces that cause people to move together.

Language of Entrails | Luciana Decker Orozco | 2024 | 5-Channel CRT Installation | 3-Hour Loops 

Contemplating our bodies' material essence, molded by interactions with others and our surroundings, the project illustrates the effect of the entrails as a winding and multi-plane experience of different movements that run through the bowels. 

Seventy Five Threads | Andrew Wood | 2024 | Interactive 3D installation | Duration Variable

Seventy Five Threads is a digital project examining the British New Town of Peterlee. It marries moving image, oral history, architectural research, and curatorial experimentation into a now ubiquitous media form: video game.