BIFF Shorts: Experimental

Exciting, avant-garde expressions, essays and reflections. (104 minutes total runtime) Various filmmakers in attendance for Q&A.

Love Song on Liberty Crossing, Sophie Hamacher (Dir.), 11 minutes, USA, 2018

The Staten Island Ferry becomes a place of contemplation as filmmaker Sophie Hamacher reflects on motherhood, geography, language and culture.

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Teddy Roosevelt and Fracking, Pamela Falkenberg & Jack Cochran (Dir.), 30 minutes, USA, 2018

Teddy Roosevelt’s writings on landscape and conservation are juxtaposed against current rural landscapes in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, in Pamela Falkenberg & Jack Cochran’s visual essay.

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Look Around You, Lauren Cook (Dir.), 3 minutes, USA, 2018

His end is her beginning in Lauren Cook’s captivating narrative remix.

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Service Industry, Annette Daniels Taylor (Dir.), 6 minutes, USA, 2018

A poetic documentary exploring African-Americans’ past experiences within America’s moving images with music.

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Kansas Ice Storm, Tiffany Deater (Dir.), 8 minutes, USA, 2018

A visual essay that explores existence, longing and the limits of human knowledge.

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165708, Josephine Massarella (Dir.), 7 minutes, USA, 2018

Exploring the capacity of the film medium to express various notions of time, 165708 uses 16MM in-camera techniques and hand-painted imagery as a semiotic point of inquiry.

Screenings: Ann Arbor

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Fragments 83, Richard Millen & Corentin Koskas (Dirs.), 19 minutes, USA, 2018

A personal memoir repurposing past footage as the filmmaker explores the hunt for sex and love in the early days of the AIDS crisis in Brooklyn and the West Village.

Screenings: Ann Arbor

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Sonic Scores, Laurie Kwasnik (Dir.), 6 minutes, Canada, U.S. Premiere, 2018

A visual and sonic tapestry of a sound-singing performance by Nobuo Kubota. Kwasnik’s visual layering becomes an experiential corollary to Kubota’s unique improvisations, which incorporate looping techniques in combination with his live ’singing’.

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Two Cats and Two Pianos, Laurie Kwasnik (Dir.) 11 minutes, Canada, U.S. Premiere, 2018

A rigorously structured film composition that retains the richness of two free-improvisational performances. Featuring duet piano with Michael Snow and Casey Sokol and a duet analog synth performance by Michael Snow and Mani Mazinani.

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BIFF Offscreen: Michael Snow Plays Piano in Buffalo follows immediately afterward at Burchfield Penney Art Center at 3:15PM