Genres: experimental

  • Characters

    Hú Zhǎng Zū writes ancient Chinese poems with water on the ground in Fuxing Park, Shanghai. After a few minutes, the characters dry out and disappear. She comes to the park almost everyday and practices her handwriting with her friends and colleagues. Together they have lively discussions about the strokes and shapes – both amongst each other and with the many spectators. Hú Zhǎng Zū is the only woman within the bustling crowd of men, and due to her calligraphy skills she is respected and highly admired. I come back to see her often, in order to learn from her…

  • OUT

    OUT, colour, QuickTime, Pro Res 422, stereo, 1 minute Two animated male figures are drawn together and pulled away until they fall into a pit of protesters. Then, a frightened look quickly disappears into the darkness. OUT is a one minute film that touches on the rising fear of being out during a global climate of growing hatred and pushback against LBGTQ rights and freedoms.

  • Landmarks of Memory

    A tattoo ritual and hookah session memorializes a pre-war flower shop. After seeing its storefront in archival footage of the Lebanese Civil War, a first-generation daughter seeks information and connection to place. Scenes of 1976 Beirut are paired with today’s developed landscape, while roses are etched and coconut coals burn in a snowy diasporic setting.

  • FIBERS

    This 15-minute hybrid non-fiction/experimental documentary essay blends Lida Mkrtchan’s voiceover testimony about her time in bomb shelters in Shushi (Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh) with a layered audiovisual landscape. The film moves between tactile close-ups of the narrator’s hands preparing zhengyalov bread and staged studio compositions in which objects, textures and performative gestures metaphorically reimagine the narrated events and inner states through dark video tableaux. The interplay of documentary and poetic imagery illustrates the resilience of the community under siege, the rhythm of daily life and the quiet actions that sustain hope. Moments of beauty, ritual and shared labour coexist alongside stark reflections on…

  • Memory Rituals [Part Two]: Memory of Trees

    The second in an ongoing, annual series. Thinking about remembering, about forgetting, and about the memory of trees.

  • Both, Instrument & Sound

    Both, Instrument & Sound employs tension as an aesthetic strategy, to explore solidarity, collective struggle, and the transformation of these values under neoliberalism. The film follows the life of Tony over 3 years as he describes his process of political activism from the 1970s onwards, which cannot be disentangled from his friendships and his lovers. The film’s score – co-written with musicians, the film’s cast and crew – sonically explores different interpretations of tension—both in response to Tony’s narration and to the musicians’ existing approaches to tension as a musical, cinematic, scientific, and political experience. Everyone translates, performs and remixes…

  • Arabic Numeral Series – Arabic 0 + 10

    This series of films, each extraordinarily unique from every other (except “0 + 10” going together) is inspired and governed by strata of the mind’s moving-visual-thinking different from that of the “Roman Numeral Series” or perhaps one should say that the Arabic Numerals come to fruition thru some tree-of nerves separate from that which gave birth to the Romans (as it is physiologically deceptive to think of thought as existing in “layers”). The Arabics range in length from approximately 5 min. to 32 min. and may be projected at 24 fps as well as 18, tho’ the latter speed seems…

  • Him and Me

    “‘Him and Me’ has Benning’s hallmarks: pristine cinematography, a quasi-autobiographical stance, and a minimalist structure that juxtaposes concrete realities with off-screen mysteries. This is one man’s journey through the American landscape as he has experienced it since the 1950s: a richly hued vision punctuated by sexual, musical and political mores of three decades.” – Karen Cooper, Film Forum 1982

  • A Fiscal Life

    Capital is unavoidably ingrained into every day life. Influenced by the quote attributed to Fredric Jameson; “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” A film created from the frustration and struggle of how it’s nearly impossible to imagine surviving without money in the world today. It’s such a necessary part of living that that you could say it’s part of our DNA, and for art it’s no different. It’s physically, violently, part of everything we do and see.

  • Ecopoiesis

    In moments of monstrous pareidolia, all the things that we don’t consider alive form a new world, a world in our image. Ecopoiesis explores the concept of terraforming, reimagining it through the lens of cosmic horror. Blurring the lines between terrestrial and extraterrestrial, the film invites viewers to challenge their perceptions of human impact on an alien environment, as the visual and auditory landscapes evoke a sense of planetary unease. Within its abstract representation, Ecopoiesis delves into the ethical and existential dilemmas posed by transforming foreign worlds by infecting them with humanity.