The past year has led to a rise in unique digital film programming, in particular greater accessibility for short-form and experimental films globally. Festivals like Prismatic Ground, and our own Femme Film Fest, as well as year-round showcases like the revolving Another Screen, have been providing fantastic lineups and a space for discussion for films that have often slipped by in showy, star-studded major festival season. This month is absolutely stacked with free limited-time programs (including a few to fundraise for those on the ground in Gaza right now), so here is a brief preview/roundup.
Screened in three blocks, Long Distance Film Festival is a free stream, with live chat, through Spectacle Theatre highlighting a new wave of filmmakers working in a rapidly changing cinematic landscape. The program is divided into Past, Present, and Future blocks of shorts, as well as special presentations in between, and highlights a wide range of mainly BIPOC, queer, and otherwise unique cinematic perspectives. The festival particularly looks to center films made with lower budgets, limited crews, and other similar limitations. The entire lineup is non-geoblocked, and runs from May 28th-31st.
I’ve had the privilege to screen the LDFF lineup already, and there are some absolute gems. In the Past block, To the Girl That Looks Like Me (Ewurakua Dawson-Amoah) is a visual poem celebrating Black women, and existing through a world not made for that, using hair as an entry point to these ideas (shown above). Time (Ben Creech) is oddly satisfying, highlighting every use of the titular word in Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema writings, and The Lights Are On, No One’s Home (Faye Ruiz) is a fascinating journey into grief, gentrification, and trans existence. Animated entries Instants of Cindy Sherman (Federica Faccin) and Those Who Drown Cling to Foam (Urtina Hoxha) are highlights as well.
Special presentation Intimate Views (Joseph Barglowski) is a gorgeously-shot dark depiction of relationships, and Trouble (Camille Pueyo) is a highlight of the final block, about the director’s experience with bipolar disorder. For those who still haven’t seen Canadian filmmaker Sophy Romvari’s thesis film Still Processing, a mini-masterpiece I have sung the praises of many times (and would consider my favorite film of last year), it is screening to close out the festival.
The first of two programs on Another Screen, a series of televised interviews with writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras, lies at the intersection of documentary and film history. The writer, who had once said “Watching [the television] is like sleeping upright”, interviews a variety of characters, including a stripper, Jeanne Moreau, and a zookeeper and his animals. Each interview from the series is probing, and delves into events like Mai ’68, and the prison industrial complex.
These are followed by a documentary entitled Les lieux de Marguerite Duras (Michelle Porte), cut with excerpts from her films Nathalie Granger and India Song (shameless plug for the last time I wrote about the film) allows her to speak about a variety of subjects in her usual laconic manner, but what stands out is the film’s dedication to a voyeuristic idea of interior spaces and appearances, shamelessly letting us insert ourselves into the day-to-day lives of great artists. The two halves of the program, featuring essays by Lili Owen Reynolds and Alice Blackhurst respectively, follow up a fantastic discussion last month on Marleen Gorris’ A Question of Silence, as well as films by Anita W Addison and Mara Mattuschka, that all centered around that dilemma of silence.
For experimental film lovers, This Long Century is streaming five short films by Jodie Mack via Ecstatic Static. Many may be familiar with her feature The Grand Bizarre, which debuted on Mubi last year, but the rest of Mack’s work is equally a pleasure, acutely sensory, highlighting color, texture, and motion for a visual feast. The program, which runs until May 25th, highlights some of her shorter, more abstract films than pointed favorites like Dusty Stacks of Mom and Yard Work is Hard Work.
In light of recent IDF attacks and an increase in discussion of settler colonialism in Palestine, two events aim to make Palestinian cinema more accessible. The Arab American National Museum, Arab Film and Media Institute and ArteEast are holding a retrospective of It Must Be Heaven filmmaker Elia Suleiman’s work. The program is geo-locked within the United States, and includes a livestream talk and four features, available starting May 21st.
The second Another Screen lineup consists of films by Palestinian women. At the moment, ten films are online, with more updating in the coming days. Films and writing by Jumana Manna, Basma Alsharif, Rosalind Nashashibi, Razan AlSalah, Mahasen Nasser-Eldin, Larissa Sansour, Emily Jacir, Mona Benyamin, Lokman Slim/Monika Borgmann, Pary El-Qalqili, Layaly Badr, Shuruq Harb, and Mai Masri are available, with a donation request attached towards on the ground medical and legal aid as well as a secondary fund to support filmmaking and restoration in Gaza. I will preface that I have not viewed all of this series yet unlike the Duras one, but will be in the next week. Another Gaze, Another Screen’s host site, is also asking for donations to be able to continue their virtual cinema program, as well as to pay writers and continue to support an alternative feminist film criticism.
