Currents Program 8: Vibrant Matter

earthearthearth
U.S. Premiere
Daïchi Saïto, 2021, Canada, 35mm, 30m
The hand-processed celluloid of earthearthearth explodes with oranges, purples, and aquamarines, transforming the sweeping desert mountain ranges of the Andes into a world of green-gold dawns, vermilion sands, and dense, granular atmospheres. Accompanied by an undulating improvised soundtrack by Jason Sharp, Saïto’s film depicts an alien, irradiated world that is at once interior, cosmic, and fiercely material.

Tonalli
U.S. Premiere
Los Ingrávidos, 2021, Mexico, 16m
Drawing on the ancient Nahuatl concept of the animating soul or life force, Tonalli engages the ritualistic powers of the cinema, summoning fire, flowers, and many moons into a frenetic and mesmerizing in-camera collage. Here, amid thickly swirling images and textured abstractions, the gods of creation and fertility manifest, dissolving into iridescent colors and dense, corporeal rhythms.

Fictions
North American Premiere
Manuela de Laborde, 2021, Mexico/Germany, 16mm, 22m
Fictions conjures representations as if imagined from the perspective of the plant world. ‘Lithic’ lifeforms made out of ceramic and organic matter were filmed in motion by a mobile of film cameras. Layered in Laborde’s superimpositions, these objects become performers alongside other images—sunlight through jungle flora, scintillating film grain—interacting in their own fictive world of pulsating matter.

Six Seventy-Two Variations, Variation 1
World Premiere
Tomonari Nishikawa, 2021, USA, 16mm, 25m
In this live projection performance for 16mm film, Tomonari Nishikawa explores the material specificity of the cinematic apparatus through a real-time manipulation of its physical elements. Scratching directly onto the emulsion of a looping filmstrip in the midst of projection, Nishikawa creates animated abstractions in a pattern of horizontal lines, and also generates the film’s score, a percussive throbbing of noise.