Short Films
Art videos, films and motion graphics form this collection of shorts that celebrate queer and femme filmmaker artists. A spiky lemon, a pond as a sex toy and all things outside binaries considered.
Cassils reinterprets Eleanor Antin’s 1972 Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, in which Antin crash diets for 45 days and documents her body daily through stark full-body photography. Cassils inverts Antin’s process, using their mastery of bodybuilding and nutrition to gain 23 pounds of muscle over 23 weeks.
Tai chi master and mosaic artist Wasentha Young is profiled in "The Dragon Mosaic", a short documentary named after her flagship mosaic piece and tai chi school. Wasentha explores what brought her into the worlds of mosaic art and tai chi while reflecting on the charms and challenges of her journey so far.
A Place to Rest, Syncopated is a visceral abstract portrait, a story of the rhythms of life told through the eyes of a single room.
A meditation on the eroticism of queer intimacy.
Piñata People is a short documentary by South Texas filmmaker Charlie Vela. It explores the work of artist and activist Josué Ramírez. Josué deconstructs and reimagines one of The Rio Grande Valley’s most ubiquitous cultural objects: the piñata through craft and movement. He asks us to not only question how these totems come to us historically and emotionally, but also challenges us to imagine new cultural futures for these ephemeral sculptures.
An artist suffering from writers block finds imaginative help from their dog in this hybrid animation and live-action short film. Based on many true stories, Canis Major ruminates the relationship between dancing, care, and survival at "the end of the world.
16mm & 8mm transferred to digital.
The San Gabriel Mountains lie Northeast of Los Angeles and create the base of what is known as the Angeles National Forest. An area rich in geological wonder, the mountains contain waterways that flow downwards into the cities below. One of the most influential waterways is the Arroyo Seco, which flows from the foothills of Altadena through Pasadena, Eagle Rock, Highland Park and finally, feeding into the Los Angeles River at a confluence at Avenue 19 and Riverside This film is a landscape meditation on the Arroyo Seco and the water that runs through it. The space where rock meets flow / rigidity and fluidity / rippling past our current era / carrying the shapes of many others / before our own.
A naked man reads journal entries and reminisces about past relationships and experiences while he attempts to sand paint matching his skin tone off a white wall.
Xandra Ibarra animates the figure of the zombie with text from Slave Sonnets (1984), a the poetry book written by artist and "super masochist" Bob Flanagan.* The short multi-channel video features a trio of zombies that carry flowers, express their condition of “bottomhood” in their own tongue, and maintain a slow togetherness on the sunny seaside cliffs of the Marin Headlands.
The BOI's Failed Crown" is a poetry film that delves on longing and desire through the angle of reclaiming the Black Trans body. It was shot at the protagonist's house, MARS' house, and the Detroit Abloom flower garden.
This biographic poetic visual follows Chris Jakob through the inner workings of his personal story with explorations spanning the origin of self and identity, and ponders the dynamics of existence, thought and connection.
A short film by Mairtza Bautista based in the border.
