(Cecilia Araneda | 4:37 | Canada | b + w | sound | 16mm to digital | 2024)

In the space between sleep and wake, hallucinations and moments of paralysis take hold. Hypnagogia is an exercise in eco-processing, with the film footage processed with multiple different organic material, including apples, avocado peel, coffee, grapes, peaches, pomegranate and wine.

(Brandy Creek | 5:12 | USA | Color | sound | Super 8mm to digital | 2024)

Experimental film set to “Aphrodite In Alba” by Jeffrey Campbell. A sunny afternoon on Baltimore City where little girls play in pink bathing suits. The sky above is not just blue and sunny, it also seemingly dances with them and mimics their day.

(Daniel Maldonado | 12:45 | USA | Color | sound | Super 8, 16 & 35mm to digital | 2024)

Embracing the eternal harmony of light and darkness’ ephemeral dance, “…in darkness there is light” draws upon the fragility of life and celluloid. It is a handcrafted film elegy told as a textured visual haiku centered on the iconic #7 subway train in New York City. A literal manifestation of sound and light, It is also a portrait on healing through time, bathed in silhouettes and locomotion. Celluloid and subway tracks merge through emotional color abstractions for which “hungry ghosts” find transcendence. Recorded sound vibrations and pinhole cinematography capture a time & place forever etched in our history. With a score masterfully crafted by composer, Mike Vernusky, the film is a cinematic lament on presence within absence dedicated to a community.

(Billy Palumbo | 3:36 | USA | b + w & color | sound | 16mm to digital | 2023)

Through the thresholds and portals of memory, spaces and time blur and shatter.

(Baba Hillman | 3:45 | France | color | sound | Super 8mm to digital | 2023)

Remembering my last visit with Mary in her garden of light, trees, glass and stone.

(Teresita Carson | 9:00 | USA | b + w | sound | Super 8mm to digital | 2023)

I approached this project as a performance—an embodiment of Albers as a Modernist from a distant future. I went on excursions to discover the built environment in Chicago’s South Side. The main question became: “How would I, as an archeologist from the future, treat modernist ruins?” I took more than 1,000 photos, cut them up and arranged them in photocollages. I made abstract drawings by extracting the lines and forms suggested by the collages. Through a process of quotation, I aimed to recycle and break down an existing form, and to construct a new text, a counter-archive, with the debris. I took it even farther. I filmed the Modernist buildings, explored them with an induction microphone, and recorded their electromagnetic sounds. The result is a moving collage entitled, “Promised Land.” The manipulation of the moving image resulted in a new, productive form for me and expanded my understanding of cinematic movement through an ensemble of scores, abstractions, and rhythms. My intent now is to create experimental cinema of temporal, political and ecological agitation—one that creates and appropriates parallel sensory, perceptual, poetic and speculative structures within existing structures.

(Sheri Wills | 8:47 | USA | color | sound | 16mm found footage to digital | 2023)

‘Iris’ uses found 16mm footage, original tape loops, and vintage recordings to explore attention, suspension, and the slippage between language, music, and aural phantoms – all focused outside of the boundaries of the recommended range. In early cinema the iris shot was used to gradually begin or end a scene and to focus audiences’ attention on something of importance in the shot; it mimics the opening and closing iris in the human eye.

(Panu Johansson | 5:00 | Finland | color | sound | Super 8mm to digital | 2023)

How does it feel to live next to 170 year old creatures? This short impressionistic film documents an old forest area called Mortin männikkö in Rovaniemi, Northern Finland. As an array of glimpses and moments the film tries to summarize a decade of life next to this vivid & forested tableau vivant. The Poem: Who Has Seen the Wind? Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. –Christina Rossetti, 1872.

(Sebastian Vaccaris | Australia | color | sound | 16mm | 2024)

Observing all the world in a flower; an ecstatic study of colour, a hum of petals opening, a cacophony of bells and saintly icons. ‘Ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte’ is a hymn to the universal found in the minutiae of nature

(Mike Stolz | 5:15 | USA | color | sound | 16mm | 2023)

STROBE/FLICKER WARNING

A domestic swirl filmed while the building was being sold. How much longer can we afford to stay? A kaleidoscopic portrait of destabilization during the struggle to stay in a rent-controlled apartment amidst an affordable housing crisis. Shot frame-by-frame, moving the camera between every image. Single frames move forward in time, creating after-image combinations without superimpositions. A phased drum machine soundtrack emphasizes the percussive quality of the image. (With gratitude to neighbors and the Los Angeles Tenants Union Northeast Local.)

(Karel Doing | 3:44 | United Kingdom | b + w | sound | 16mm | 2022)

An unfiltered stream of perception: small objects and grand panoramas appear simultaneously. The certainties of near and far, detail and overview, inside and outside are deliberately thrown into confusion. Aided by ‘in camera’ superimposition and travelling mattes a near abstract experience is created. Sunlight filters through semi-transparent surfaces, while small holes and cracks allow the light to travel unrestrained. The work was conceived and shot within a few hundred yards from my house, focusing on the plants, flowers, trees and ferns that grow around me.The soundtrack is composed with noises and voices from that same area, revealing a further abundance of life.

(Isaac Sherman | 6:00 | USA | color | sound | 16mm | 2023)

THIS FILM CONTAINS SOME STROBING IMAGES. 

A collected geography of local flora; appearing, disappearing, reappearing, enmeshing. Afterimage becomes before-image, physiology and pathology at play. The will to walk aimlessly, rejuvenated, as stasis turns to movement and back again. *Please note* – The afterimage effect in this film is drastically improved when viewed in a very dark room. – Music: Nicole McCabe—saxophone; Alex Babbitt –flute;  Isaac Sherman—synthesizers, composition. Thank you: Mike Stoltz, Alee Peoples, Colin Brant, Natalja Kent, Farhad Ebrahimi.

(Hogan Seidel | 3:14 | USA | color | sound | 16mm | 2024)

This piece continues my exploration of nature alongside significant queer individuals in my life. Filmed across various forests, arboretums, and gardens in Seattle and Vancouver with artist and friend Gabby Follett, this film employs intricate visual layering, hand-processed film, and biofeedback sound to delve into themes of queer ecology. The work celebrates the beauty of non-hierarchical, non-binary, and non-human-centric ways of experiencing queerness in and as part of nature.

(Craig Scheihing | 2:19 | USA | color | sound | 16mm | 2024)

A mirrored window makes a suggestion.

The 7th 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 featured in the festival originates on film stock.

The festival features a 35mm presentation of Kathryn Ramey’s El Signo Vacío (the empty sign), and a closing-night live performance from Lori Goldston and friends’ of original compositions over six films, presented on 16mm.

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