Sunday, April 7 | 5:00 PM | 90 Mins | Chicago Filmmakers

Swing and Sway | Fernanda Pessoa, Chica Barbosa | Brazil | 2023 | 82 Mins

Two girlfriends, separated by the north and south hemispheres of America, intend to dance in the tumult of images, violence, frustrations and desires. They do it through a game where registering themselves and the women around them enables a dialogue that becomes real and vivid, as an encounter and a hug determined to resist the distance.

Sunday, April 7 | 3:00 PM | 72 Mins | Chicago Filmmakers

I Was There | Chi Jang Yin | USA | 2023 | 14 Mins

A trilogy of experimental documentary films that explore the problem of radiation, our society's fading collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the unresolved debate between ethics and science. These series concern the immediate effects of weaponized nuclear technology, as invisible poison, on the human body.

This Train is Invisible until it Crashes | Oona Taper | USA | 2023 | 5 Mins

An animation inspired by train delay messages and their poetic potential. An examination of all the things that can go wrong: on the train, in the urban environment, and in our lives. All drawings done while riding the Chicago metro system.

I Can No Longer See | Raine Yung | USA | 2023 | 8 Mins

A collection of films facing facets of self-revolting indulgence to sustain, oil and water of truth and artifice, perpetuated objectification, an external tragedy self-imposed, and an attempt to wash it all away. Trauma dilutes one’s grasp of reality.

The Princess and the Peacock | Daniel Baker-Wells | UK, Germany | 2024 | 14 Mins

A rare and intimate glimpse into the transformative role freak show performance can play in the FLINTA (Femme, Lesbian, Intersex, Non-binary, Trans, A-gender) community, as a powerful ritual space for catharsis, connection and healing.

Saturday, April 6 | 9:00 PM | 86 Mins | Chicago Filmmakers

The film you are about to see | Maxime Marinot | France | 2023 | 11 Mins

Please note that the film you are about to see is taken from real material of film history, namely the disclaimers and warnings that frame the existence of many films. However, any collusion between art and industry, any conflict of interest between freedom of creation and the law, or any hint of moralism on the life of images, would be purely incidental and unintentional.

Portrait 001: Security Guard | Tanner Masseth | USA | 2023 | 12 Mins

An aging security guard walks his beat along an abandoned strip mall, contemplating the suburban landscape and his purpose in guarding the vacant property.

Stress Eating Time | Michael Bucuzzo | The Netherlands | 2023 | 10 Mins

Crushed under the unbearable weight of time, an airplane has an existential crisis and hijacks itself. Exploring the suspended space in the air as a zone between life and death, anxiety and calm, technology and spirituality.

Nobody Wants to Fix Things Anymore | Joseph Wilcox | USA | 2023 | 4 Mins

A short film about a lost man who finds a special rock. The narrative uses AI generated images and speech, surveillance photographs, and original video to weave together a story of the search for a kindred spirit.

Nowhere Stream | Luis Grane | USA | 2023 | 7 Mins

A nowhere man swimming with the Nowhere Stream seeks meaning in the virtual world and fails. When he gets a second chance, he finds that the answer was closer than initially expected.

Saturday, April 6 | 5:00 PM | 74 Mins | Chicago Filmmakers

Hemorrhage | Ruth Hayes | USA | 2023 | 4 Mins

Animated agitprop against the end of Roe and the evisceration of women’s rights to choose.

Otherhood* | Deborah Stratman | USA, Jordan, Brazil | 2023 | 3 Mins

Mother and child confront the other. Meanwhile, some ladies are thinking.

*In-Person Screening Only

First Aid – Test Series 1 | Maria Anna Dewes, Myriam Thyes | Germany | 2022 | 9 Mins

Care and violence, acknowledgement and reprehension, to give or withdraw support: the video finds performative, sculptural, bizarre and poetic images for this range of diverse gestures and actions. They line up like a series of tests reflecting interpersonal relationships and current social conditions.

legs | Jennifer Still, Christine Fellows, Chantel Mierau | Canada | 2023 | 15 Mins

Three artists work in stride to translate, in sound and motion, the heart of a poem. They collaborate with life’s unexpecteds – snapped clotheslines, drained swimming pools, terminal diagnoses – and learn what falls away is not necessarily gone.

Saturday, April 6 | 3:00 PM | 72 Mins | Chicago Filmmakers

Parasite Family* | Prapat Jiwarangsan | Thailand | 2022 | 5 Mins

Constructed from film negatives discovered in an out-of-business film lab the film traces a journey from analog to digital, to the world of AI-generated images. These faces represent a certain kind of family that is parasitic on Thai society, the kind of families and institutions that absorb wealth and power, gradually evolving into a new species of monsters.

*In-Person Screening Only

Say Something | Agustina Aranda | USA | 2023 | 10 Mins

A short experimental documentary exploring filmmaker Katie Agustina Aranda’s relationship with her father, Panfilo Aranda – a Paraguayan immigrant, workaholic, and amateur videographer. Using material that he shot throughout the last forty years, archival footage, and interviews, the story follows his journey from passionate filmmaker to distant father.

I Would've Been Happy | Jordan Wong | USA | 2023 | 9 Mins

An attempt to map a fraught relationship through the use of intricately coded pictographs and schematic abstractions applied onto glazed ceramic tiles and quilted cyanotype fabric. The aesthetics of architectural language are used to reconstruct memories of the filmmaker’s family's domestic spaces in the hope to uncover logic or reason to a broken home.

Friday, April 5 | 7:00 PM | 81 Mins | Chicago Filmmakers

Leaned Back | Adam Jason Cohen | USA | 2022 | 20 Mins

In a city where citizens often stay in their districts for fear of violence and designed segregation, Chicago Bike Life is facilitating the building of communities from across its neighborhoods.

Superfund | Charles Cadkin | USA | 2023 | 3 Mins

A camera roll and investigation into the landscape of West Chicago’s former Rare Earth’s Facility, Kress Creek and Reed- Keppler Park. Commissioned by Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive as part of Century of 16mm.

Anti Social Studies | Jose Luis Benavides | USA | 2023 | 15 Mins

A video collaboration with Chicago industrial band Conjunto Primitivo. An exploration of the ills of industrialization and urban decay, this essay film works as an anti-city symphony, while toeing the line as a dark love song to the gritty cityscape, Chicago, which the artists call home.

Glitter for Girls | Federica Foglia | Canada | 2023 | 4 Mins

A handmade tattoo film that utilizes a camera-less direct-on-film animation approach to collage multiple layers of water tattoos (commonly used by children).

Ardent Other* | Alice Brygo | France | 2022 | 16 Mins

A stunned crowd faces a fire. The threat has no name, a diffuse anguish spreads. Fear needs to be conjured, fire must be turned into a sign.

*In-Person Screening Only

Lion in the Wind | TT Takemoto | USA | 2023 | 5 Mins

A fugue for forgetting windmills in the West. This cameraless “emulsion lift” film was made from a discarded 35mm reel of a Hong Kong martial arts Western featuring Jet Li as a Kung Fu master who loses his memory and fights bandits and windmills as he makes his journey to Chinatown.

HYPNOSUGGESTION | Per Bifrost | Sweden | 2023 | 8 Mins

After the technological singularity dissolved man into time and space, a fragment of human memory lives on in a computer-like consciousness. HYPNOSUGGESTION is a collaboration between a human and an AI, a hypnotic sci-fi thriller consisting only of still images generated by an AI, an examination of our memory and subconsciousness.

The Winged Stone | Colectivo Los Ingrávidos | Mexico | 2023 | 10 Mins

Through the floating garden, into the mountain of signs and chants, arises the path of the winged stone. A stone that used to be a fossil.