Program 2: Strategies for Renewal

Q&A with Alan Segal, Zachary Epcar, and Ross Meckfessel on October 6

Key, washer, coin by Alan Segal
World Premiere, Argentina, 2018, 14m
The formal and semantic languages of advertisements are dissected in this investigative essay that breaks the marketing model down to its component parts, highlighting the complex capitalist infrastructure that fuels our economic reality.

Words, Planets by Laida Lertxundi
USA/Spain, 2018, 10m
An ode to motherhood and nature’s cosmic energies, Laida Lertxundi’s enchanting diary film presents disparate scenes gathered from rural locales ranging from Havana to Devil’s Punchbowl. Inspired by the compositional strategies of Chinese painter Shih-t’ao, Lertxundi links her warmly saturated imagery through the words of Lucy Lippard and R.D. Laing and the recurrent skip of an infectious pop song, and in the process offers a gentle reminder of (mother) Earth’s boundless gifts.

Life After Love by Zachary Epcar
North American Premiere, USA, 2018, 8m
In this serene study of lost love and natural light, parked cars in public spaces become sanctuaries for emotional renewal. Paired with reflective voiceover and strangely comforting self-help recordings, Zachary Epcar’s casually inventive images, highlighting sun-baked glass and asphalt surfaces, imbue the mid-afternoon heat with the promise of a better tomorrow.

I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead by Beatrice Gibson
U.S. Premiere, UK, 2018, 20m
Reframing our current political moment in intimate terms, Gibson’s urgent snapshot of worldwide social calamities doubles as a document of practical resistance. In Gibson’s hands, the music of Pauline Oliveros and the words of poets CA Conrad and Eileen Myles imbue images of street riots, the Grenfell Fire, and the mass refugee migration with complexity and grace.

The Air of the Earth in Your Lungs by Ross Meckfessel
U.S. Premiere, USA/Japan, 2018, 16mm, 11m
The real and the virtual fold together and apart until space itself is rendered immaterial in this slipstream of digital-modulated environments that brings together landscape photography, video game interfaces, and drone-conducted land surveys in brisk montage.