BIFF X0 Program 3: Icons + Apparitions

Remixed content, found footage, the cult of celebrity, and AI (yai yai)! A collection of shorts that approach culture as a canvas.

Total runtime is 78 minutes.

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“Vegetal Innocents”

Barbara Lattanzi (Dir), 2 minutes, USA, World Premiere

Director Barbara Lattanzi in attendance.

"Vegetal Innocents" expresses a threshold of intensity between the banal and the menacing, continuously moving back and forth across that boundary. "Vegetal Innocents" is a generative AI-assisted work.

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"The Stars Have Eyes"

Colleen Keough (Dir), 19 minutes, USA, East Coast Premiere

Director Colleen Keough in attendance.

In this body of work, suspense, thriller, and horror film stills, recorded performances, and animations are remixed and re-contextualized to create a subversive visual language. The artist inserts herself into iconic cinematic scenes, becoming both voyeur and participant. These interventions disrupt dominant narratives, drawing attention to the sexual, psychological, and phenomenological subtext often embedded in representations of femininity in media.

Referencing traditions of graphic novels, video art, and cinema, the work navigates feminisms, power dynamics, and creative agency. The imagery oscillates between the humorous, abject, and disturbing, recalling the oppressive history of women’s roles in media. Alfred Hitchcock’s films, long critiqued for their psychological complexity serve as key source material. At the center of this work is the artist's persona, Heady Desire, who infiltrates and reclaims acts of cinematic voyeurism. She embodies and embraces the feminine with her soft, folded fleshiness and dripping excess. As watcher, director, and creative subverter, she dismantles the passive female archetype, transforming notions of excess into a site of empowerment. What was once "too much" is reimagined as empowered desire and creative agency.

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"I Carry the Universe With Me"

Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu (Dir), 21 minutes, USA, New York Premiere

In a future dominated by technological images, how will human culture be rewritten? Will history be reset? Is the land beneath one's feet still habitable? Is the sky the same sky? Liu was curious about how artificial intelligence described the images she took of the world. Here a cow is seen as a horse, and a boat is seen as a vase. Realities and hyperrealities are woven together as if this is the prototype of the myth of modern life.

The work was inspired by the naturalist poet Alberto Caeiro. Slowly look at a flower; slowly listen to the flow of a river. Open the window, and the world is right before you, no matter what we call it. If you move, the world moves with you.

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"Amelia Starlight"

Laura Thomassaint (Dir), 20 minutes, France, Western New York Premiere

In French w/ English subtitles.

French chanson star Amelia Starlight is dying. More than a decade has passed since the singer abruptly retired from TV shows and concert halls. Tonight, on Danielle Villard's famous talk show, France reunites with her for a very special live show…

Many thanks to Manifest Pictures.

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"Xtended Release"

Joshua Gen Solondz (Dir), 15 minutes, USA, World Premiere

Director Joshua Gen Solondz in attendance.

A handmade sculptural collage film on 16mm offloading found footage Solondz accumulated from specific people/points in time; collaged with tape, ink, skin, semen, and various corrosive chemicals.

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Viewer discretion advised due to explicit language, smoking, nudity and sexual content.