BIFF Shorts: Experimental

Cinematic poetry and essays in pixels and celluloid. 77 minutes.

Ancient Sunshine

Jason Livingston (Dir), 20 minutes, USA, NY Premiere

BIFF 2021 Best Documentary Short Award Winner

Ancient Sunshine traces a meandering path through coal extraction and climate defense in the American West, in a captivating political and ecological essay.

the gleaners, and: ritual for signaled bodies

Benjamin Rosenthal & Eric Souther (Dir), 9 minutes, USA, Special Presentation

This experimental animation blurs the boundaries between interior/exterior, the few/ the many, etc and permiates surfaces, skins, projections and inferences.

A ritual for creating new worlds and situations for fragmented bodies, signals pass through the joints of animated and genderless bodies and body parts entangling the body-signal-actions both materially and conceptually as these control mechanisms interfere with pre-animated content.

The Lake

Tyler Hubby (Dir), 13 minutes, USA, NY Premiere

Bathing in the murky depths of folklore, this surrealist horror short uses hypnotic techniques to recount the gruesome appetite of Los Angeles' Echo Lake in this darkly comic mediation.

Action Potential

Caitlin Mary Deibel (Dir), 3 minutes, USA, World Premiere

An interpersonal performance shot in 16MM that merges the oneiric qualities of Maya Deren with the humor of Charlie Chaplin in a ballet mecanique.

Probes and Burrows

Barbara Lattanzi (Dir), 4 minutes, USA, WNY Premiere

A hypnotic simulation and riff on the behavior of some organisms interacting with their environment - an abstract population that probes and burrows.

Fracture

Laura Kraning (Dir), 4 minutes, USA, WNY Premiere

Images gathered from two years of walks through forests and the suburban landscapes of Western New York create a mosaic of intersecting slices of time in this exploration of stillness, motion, cracks and fissures.

Diachrony

Jason Bernagozzi (Dir), 4 minutes, USA, WNY Premiere

Framing historical records as a fragment between signifier and sign, this dispotian essay film explores the entanglement of data, images, narrative and land rights in Utah’s Sanpete Valley.

Scary Places/Shapes & Sizes

Pamela Falkenberg & Jack Cochran (Dir), 6 minutes, USA, NY Premiere

BIFF alum Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran return with an indictment of American car culture and the alienating urban environments that result from cities designed around freeway systems, turning their lens on the urban sprawl of Austin, TX.

The Wind and The Kite

Robert Machoian & Keely Song (Dir), 7 minutes, USA, NY Premiere

An evocative tale of marital strife told through dance.

Volcano Rondo

Barbara Lattanzi (Dir), 7 minutes, WNY Short Film, USA, World Premiere

In a process analogous to unstable chemical mixing, "Volcano Rondo" stirs up a photographic arrangement - a fire, a fire stoker, fuel for the fire - with a rondo.