Once Faithful

Ottimismo democratico

A girl reads during a bus ride

A compilation of TV news about black culture.

Metropia

One day, as you leave work and head home, something unexpected happens. Everywhere you go, paths begin to open and multiply. You can go anywhere you want, and with each place you choose, a new version of yourself emerges. You begin to disappear and in that disappearance you feel free: no longer being one, but becoming another, becoming many others. Individual experience gives way to the collective. A constant search for a place in the world. Walking toward the other, toward the unknown—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

A continuously running two-channel installation, presented on 9" and 13" CRT monitors atop pedestals and overlooked by a green Kit-Cat clock. The smaller CRT bears a painted green square and is framed by a pair of crossed silver opera gloves, at whose intersection rests a vintage push-puppet of two boxers sharing a single red stand. Together, the two monitors display distinct video collages interweaving footage from Emerald Square Mall and the strike during its 1989 construction with remixed interferences from Channel J's Emerald City TV (1976–1979), Huge Video's Heat in the Night (1989), Genet's Un Chant d'Amour (1950), various cigarette commercials, The Wizard of Oz (1939), and a performance of a mylar-clad entity wrapping one of the televisions in videotape. The work has most frequently circulated publicly through its primary video channel.

"Soap Opera of a Frozen Filmmaker" project is a series of seven episodes of cinematic diaries. It is the unique point of view of an anonymous artist whose entire essence of existence is to make films, but he is rejected on every front time after time. During the process he ponders his life as an artist, the nature of material society and life in general, in which his owm life eventually become a tragedy.

In 2007, a teen girl from a posh L.A. suburb must deal with the grizzly murder of her family while trapped in the company of their killers.

These are the dancing bodies in an agitated rapture: prelude to trance, invocation of the gods, consecration of intermittence. Here our point of view sparkles under the spell and trance of things gathered, fallen, yielding, pluvial, Mesoamerican wind, goddess breath, breeze of sticks. percussive woods. Here the audiovisual diagram that guides us, the kinetic breath that inspires us, the serpentine spear that snatches us away, the agitated plumes that trembles at us are the sound and rumbble of Teponaztli, a Mesoamerican percussive instrument: serpentine, dancing, bouncing sticks, trunks, branches and wood. Kinetic and audiovisual serialism from the embers of the Earth. This is the Earth in a Trance.

AGULHA

Waiuku Vistas is observational documentary exploring the feeling and mana of Waiuku, New Zealand. Follow two filmmakers as they shoot, capture and document the beauty of the land in the space of a day.

Die Liebe stört der kalte Tod

This experimental short traces the lifespan of the graffiti and murals present at the occupation of NYC’s City Hall in June and July of 2020. The encampment formed to demand the abolishment of the NYPD and the reallocation of its resources to housing, education, and other social programs.

Seven actors are brought to an isolated house where they must stay in character for three days under constant surveillance.

A cinematic impression of Vietnam, told through the eyes of Vietnamese immigrants.

On the island of La Gomera, children imagine stories while they examine archeological remains. An ethno-fictional journey in which past and present coalesce, creating resonances between the volcanic landscape and Silbo, the whistled language of the island.

This short experimental diary film reveals my struggles with mental illness in my adolescence and queer adulthood while simultaneously reflecting upon my joyous childhood experiences. I investigate when and how my depression began and explain that my relationships with the people I love have supported me through my harder times. The film incorporates footage shot over May and June 2023 and archival home videos. Overall, I aim to resolve my "growing pains" through the medium of diary film and by reconnecting with my younger self.

A short documentary and character study about a woman's complex relationship with religion and family.

This film combines original 16mm footage with 16mm film found on ebay, called “Gauchos and Rancheros in Argentina”. This is an American documentary of Argentina commissioned by the Philadelphia department of education in 1969, it contrasts city and suburban life in Argentina through scenes of gauchos and ranch life, scientific farming methods, and examples of Spanish architecture and furnishings.This film was manipulated by dying it, sewing on it and combining it with an original 16mm film. The resulting composition explores the artist’s personal relationship to her home country of Argentina through an American gaze, thinking about the American dream, displacement and the passage of time.

Daily observations and reflections of the second year of living in a pandemic. Our lives are limited to visits to the local Windmill Hill City Farm where animals and humans seem to live in harmony. I came across articles and videos about horseshoe crabs and their amazing survival through centuries and their impact on our survival. The farm shuts down and reopens as the vaccines roll out. The horseshoe crabs are on the verge of being added to the endangered species list. Like the old Farsi rhyme that Jonah tries to learn, we are in a circle tightly entangled.