All Films in Competition

A weary young man thinks he found the perfect patrons for his rickshaw tours, but he soon finds out that his new customers can be very demanding.

The drawings of this film were made blindfolded, that is, without looking at them while drawing but using only tactile cues. This constraint deconstructs the individual drawings, which are then assembled into a whole in the viewer’s mind. The film gropes along like a blind man. This reflects the writer’s perplexity, who questions dogmas and certainties. Faced with the complexity of the world, eternal questions concerning the relationships among people, political and metaphysical questions arise:
– Who created the universe?
– God.
– And who created God?

Set several decades in the future, The Interrogation is a cat and mouse game between a corporate media executive performing a “loyalty test” and a savvy news director harboring a potentially game-changing secret.

The Interrogation explores a mind-bending and often-psychedelic world where an all-powerful media company sets all the rules and demands religious like devotion from its employees. In just 6 minutes, this short animation takes the audience on an unexpected ride full of twists and turns.

Based on the award-winning The Cloaked Realm Universe created by Peter Issac Alexander and Marisa L. Cohen, The Interrogation features hand-drawn animation, an original score by John Baxter, and sound design by Dara Crawford.

The Mirror Neuron (poetry mix) is an art rock film divided into three vignettes that investigate complexities of interconnection beneath an awakening of the sun. Mirror neurons activate when we observe the actions of others. They allow us to empathize through feeling, not thinking. Their discovery confirms our evolutionary path to see others as similar to ourselves. The Mirror Neuron celebrates our biology through a series of musically driven gestures intended to activate our neural networks.

This work is focused on the theme of grief and the leftover vestiges following destruction. A polaroid series altered with rum, lemon, oven and hot water is brought together with digital photographs and video that document the same space over different days. The sound design is created from field recordings and analogue tape manipulation.
Both the digital space –photographs, video and field recordings- as the analogue space –polaroids and analogue tape- are subjected to destructive processes. Image and sound are manipulated in an exploration of daily space as a space charged with subjective sense.

The water reached up to our necks, and very soon, over our heads. The mountains became islands and the islands became hills in the darkness of the deep. The palms became sea anemones and the sea anemones remained what they were. The Wall Street was still full of sharks. Venice floated a while longer, and then…
If a global catastrophe is a state of mind, then music is the raft.

Image and mind are intertwined. But where does the zoomed in photo stand?

What happens to us in the moments of our lives when we go in one direction instead of another? How small a motion would create waves in our lives?
‘There Alone’ takes a magical realism turn and asks: What happens if we split apart at that moment, and became two?
And how does that sound with two scores?
Version 1 score by Elizabeth A. Baker

Chasing flops of gauze,
Ostensibly knotted, amuck,
Things in between other things,
Clean up as best they can.
Will they make it in time?
Probably not.

Pride and Permutations.
Inspired by the joint Jasper Johns retrospective exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Philadelphia Museum of Art, I created three permutating pride flags.

Animation short “‘Til We Meet Again” talks about the tragic history of a small Ruhnu Island. Fearing for their lives, its entire population abandoned their homes while escaping the war in 1944. Decades later they had a chance to finally return, only to find out that the strangers had settled in. In addition to the twists and turns of the history, “‘Til We Meet Again” looks deeper into the meaning of home – is it merely a location or a place that gives one a peace of mind.