(Xiao Zhang | color | sound | 6:04 | 16mm to digital | 2023 | China)

A time remnant inhabits a personal space with a secret, private, unspoken word of one’s being. Sliding planes of window and time, throwing drifts of the inner and the outer self, the film seeks in the interval of memory for a transitory reunion with my family.

(Dominic Angerame | b + w | sound | 4:00 | 16mm to digital | 2023 | US)

For years I had been shooting with an iris attached to my lens, creating a circle. The sun seemed to be a natural progression of the circle, especially its revolutions. The film is an accession into the heavens. Leaving the grittiness of the streets of construction and destruction behind this film was magically created from the soul of my spirit. The music was also magic in that it glides the imagery into its many manifestations. This film is definitely the result of the magic of cinema capturing a spirit of space that would make George Melies cry in wonder.

(Wei Gao | color | sound | 8:10 | 16mm to digital | 2023 | China)

Do we dream of flowers, or do we enter into the dream of a flower? Flower Rain is an “organic” film that grew out of the soil, a film psalm that praises nature. Film director Gao Wei completed the film in three steps: planting, making the plants into photos, making the photos into a movie. During a year in Seoul without travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Gao Wei began to explore an art project called “Plant Light.” Photographic images are generated using organic materials such as plants, organic matter, and photosensitive particles. This film allows the viewer to look at plants and flowers at a microscopic level; it also uses surreal qualities of the plant photos, with glowing flowers drifting like nebulae, and transparent petals like jellyfish snorkeling in the deep sea. The energy that plants draw from the sun and the earth is projected into photographs and projected into films. It can be said that these images are a hymn to nature grown from the sun and the soil.

(Richard Reeves | color | sound | 4:00 | 35mm | 2022 | Canada)

Two abstract energies fall in love, unite as one then disappear into a vanishing point. Both sound and picture handmade onto 35mm film. This film expresses a symbiotic interplay between two cosmic energies contrasting the intersection of reality and self-expression. A film without words. No musical instruments or camera used. Abstract visual music film.

(Charlotte Pryce | color | sound | 13:00 | 16mm to digital | 2023 | US)

A mythological tale – the story of Persephone – is retold, recast and relocated on the periphery of a common. The entangled intrigues of the seen and the unseen conspire to disclose an underland at once enticing and threatening. But what are the consequences of such trespassing between worlds? The title of this allegorical story refers to the ecological process that occurs when organisms enter a dormant phase in response to adverse conditions. The film was made during the months and years of the pandemic. There were two aspects of this time that I was particularly struck by: firstly, that the virus occurred because of an extraordinary contact between the animal and human worlds, and secondly, that this contact resulted in a global “dormancy”. Such events seemed terrifying and inexplicable – and yet our folklore, myths and fairy tales are replete with such events and occurrences. In turn these stories drew from observation of natural processes. Filmed in England, Scotland and California. Hand processed 16mm, s8 and magic lantern slides

(Kate Lain | color | sound | 5:10 | 16mm to digital | 2021 | US)

Water Mining (Eaton Canyon) is a nature document(ary) made *with* a stream, rather than about it. Its images come from a combination of cyanotype, a blue-and-white photographic process dating back to the 1840s, and actual plant material adhered to physical film. I hand-coated clear 16mm leader with cyanotype chemicals, then used sunlight to make photogram-style, cameraless exposures of plant matter I had gathered in and around the stream in Eaton Canyon. Cyanotypes are processed using water, and for this film, I used stream water that I had also collected from the canyon. I approached the film as though the stream, what was in it, its surroundings, the film, the chemicals, and I were all extensions of one another.

(Ursula Brookbank | color | sound | 8:18 | 16mm to digital | 2023 | US)

As I child I spent summers in the San Juan Islands in Washington. My family came in a salmon pink volkswagen bus from Florida to the marine biology labs at Friday Harbor where my father researched embryos, plants and regeneration. Fifty years later I returned to my father’s lab and there was a storm. “Washington” will be presented using an overhead projector and found objects.

(Ryan Marino | color | sound | 7:00 | 16mm | 2022 | US)

Luminous forms merging in time.

(Bill Basquin | color | sound | 21:00 | 16mm | 2015 | US)

I shot this silent, in-camera edit a little east of the Sierras in Late December over the course of a couple of sunrises and a sunset. The film is languid, using landscape cinematography to evoke mood. “Late December, East of the Sierras” will be presented with a live musical score composed and performed by Frances Woods.

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.