(1989, 5 minutes, b&w, sound, 16mm)

Hard Core Home Movie is a frank and irreverent documentary that asks the question, “what is hard-core?” Seedy, grainy, and fast-paced, this is a nostalgic look at an ephemeral moment in the history of a subculture: punk rock in San Francisco in the late ’80s. Everyone from fucked-up teenagers to elderly Mexican tourists attempts to explain the allure and mystique of the scene. Filmed at SF’s historical petting-zoo/theater/punk rock emporium, The Farm.

(1989, 9 minutes, b&w, sound, 16mm)

My first film was made from editing archival footage I found at the old Film Arts Foundation. Futility is structured around the telling of two tales – the arrangements for an abortion and the dissolving of a relationship, loosely edited around a 1950s ingenue who stays at hotels, blithely visits the Berlin Wall, and makes an appointment at a clinic.

“Running water, a list of synonyms of lack, a personal account of an abortion, and a letter to an ex-lover. A body that is too sick to eat, and too uncomfortable to lie down, a lover that hears what he wants, and images that are more powerful when they lie. In Futility (1989), Greta Snider overlaps intimate stories with isolated images, reclaiming the autonomy between the visual and the auditory form.” (Almudena Escobar López, NY MoMA)

(1993, 9 minutes, color, sound, 16mm)

“This collage of found film footage, assembles porn movie, children’s instructional film, sports coverage and ’50s Hollywood musicals to construct an investigation of gay men’s differing attitudes towards the female body. A clever and contentious film.” (Melbourne International Film Festival)

(1993, 19 minutes, color, sound, 16mm)

“Greta S. incorporates a sprinkling of traditional Bay-Area style – cutting and pasting images from an obscure range of memorabilia footage and pop culture – as she guides us through the tribulations and ecstasies of life in the ’90s. No-Zone generates the feeling of reading a book, as a gamut of emotions are brought to life in a series of short fables. The disturbing issues of AIDS, nuclear waste in one’s front yard, and the ever-present mid-life crisis, are translated through gun visuals, manipulated text and in-your-face close-ups. Paranoia and discontent with the state of the world are coolly relayed in soap opera time, via two of the film’s episodes – Sickness and Toxin. Relief from this environment comes in the form of doing 30 kms on a skateboard, downtown and foraging for edible berries in the wilderness… Alas, no happy ending here, as a mini-doc focusing on The End of History, stakes its claim as the crowning glory.” (Sally Bonython, Melbourne International Film Festival)

(1996, 13 minutes, b&w, sound, 16mm)

This old story… A train, a plan, a camera, the rain: Portland. This film is a low-stakes journey through the Pacific Northwest, alighting on the constructs of memory and story along the way.

(1995, 5 minutes, b&w, silent, 16mm presented as a digital file)

Flight is my father’s photographic legacy, compiled and transformed into light. I wanted to materialize what spirit ephemera I have remaining from him. His family photographs, his hobbyist pictures of trains and roses, his airplanes and his obsession with birds circling … this material is shot through his eyes. The images are imprinted onto the film, like a fingerprint or trace. It’s his movie, really… Flight is hand-processed and hand-exposed without a camera (as with Ray-O-Grams) and runs at silent speed 18 frames per second.

(2015, 9 minutes, color, sound, digital file)

How do words, especially the carefully constructed parlance of legal arguments, contain all of the complexity of a single unique physical body, let alone the infinite possibilities of identity and relationship? Prayer for the Torture Memos explores the delicate, particular significance of the human body, poetics as a means to articulate emotions impossible to speak, and the loss that accompanies moral compromise.

(2019, 6 minutes, color, sound, digital file)

A Small Place is an homage to those surviving solitary confinement and was inspired by the survivor testimonies collected by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway, and Sarah Shourd in the volume, Hell Is A Very Small Place (2016). Particularly moving is the way individuals struggle with communication and connection, within the institutionally violent structure of the US carceral system in general, and solitary confinement in particular. The urge to connect does not diminish, but the person’s relationship to time, touch, sound, memory, and story is strained beyond capacity. Hand drawn ink on 35mm film and manipulated 16mm archival film.

The 6th Engauge Experimental Film Festival celebrates sprocket-driven, artist-made experimental film, presenting seven programs of shorts and one feature over the course of four nights at NWFF’s cinema in Capitol Hill. All work features in the festival originated on film stock.

The festival features a solo show by San Francisco-based filmmaker Greta Snider, and Lori Goldston and friends’ live score for a 16mm print of Anacortes-born, Beat Generation filmmaker Harry Smith’s feature Heaven and Earth Magic.

⚠️ Please note: NWFF patrons will be required to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. We are not currently checking vaccination cards.