Old Growth
Ryan Marino, USA, 2014, 16mm, 8m
“Amid the arboreal giants and temperate organisms of a primeval rain forest lurks an elusive luminous force.” —Ryan Marino

Babash
Lisa Truttmann & Behrouz Rae, USA/Austria/Iran, 2014, DCP, 9m
“Babash is a parrot. He lives in Los Angeles. Kept by an Iranian family, he speaks mostly Farsi. Sometimes Babash mixes English and Azeri into his conversations. Behrouz Rae has made friends with Babash over the years. The short film Babash is an associative portrait about a special relationship and the domestic surroundings in which it grew. Observing Babash and Behrouz, intervening upon them with color panels, inventing a common language, a focus emerges of a shared misplacement within this genuine friendship.” —Lisa Truttman & Behrouz Rae

Wayward Fronds
Fern Silva, USA, 2014, 16mm, 15m
“Mermaids flip a tale of twin detriments, domiciles cradle morph invaders, crocodile trails swallow two-legged twigs in a fecund mash of nature’s outlaws… down in the Everglades.” —Fern Silva

Theoretical Architectures
Josh Gibson, USA, 2014, HDCAM, 5m 
“The shadow landscapes on hard plaster secure the days.” —Josh Gibson

Canopy
Ken Jacobs, USA, 2014, DCP, 5m
“Abstract silent short. Still-shots of a Downtown NY street. Thin plastic drop cloths thrown over an armature of metal piping protects the sidewalk from pigeons and terrorists. The sun lights up the billowing plastic sheets. Each image is shown still and in 2-D, then activated (via a patented formula) in 3-D. No stereo projection technology required and this 3-D can be seen with only one eye.” —Ken Jacobs

Under the Heat Lamp an Opening
Zachary Epcar, USA, 2014, DCP, 10m
“An expanded view of the lunch crowd at an open-air restaurant, from a bird’s-eye of the exterior to the depths of the interior.” —Zachary Epcar

Against Landscape
Joshua Gen Solondz, USA, 2013, HDCAM, 4m
“Against Landscape was made partially as a response to what I perceived as the American West Coast obsession with naturalist landscape filmmaking, as well as processing an action that is rooted in bored American adolescence and a method of murder/torture favored by straight white supremacists. I wanted to experience what the automobile hides from the driver, to have a rope connecting me to the viewer/vehicle, to drag slowly so that the experience would be deliberate (and nonfatal). I wished to challenge myself both as an artist and as a physical being. I was very focused on the action/gesture and the formal framing. My belief was that if the gesture was performed within the correct frame then something might happen. I wished to indulge the local love for California landscape with a dose of agony. Naturalism should not breed complacency. Boredom is counter-­revolutionary. Maybe you would call this an action movie?”—Joshua Gen Solondz

Night Noon
Shambhavi Kaul, Mexico/USA, 2014, HDCAM, 11m
“Unmoving rock collapsed to ocean—geology’s “thrust and fold”—becomes the unlikely habitat for two actors’ shadowy encounters with sand, waves, night, desert, dread, calm, trepidation, and escape.” —Shambhavi Kaul