Project a World: Experimental

Experience the radically inventive approaches to image-making from these young visionaries, who create a cinematic language all their own.

Note: Films in this program may not be suitable for all ages.

Films

I Am He Who Created Himself

Emma Penaz Eisner | California | Age 17

Joining with his shadow, the first god creates himself as the progenitor of humanity. This surrealistic mix of stop motion, time lapse photography, and live action sequences re-imagine the Heliopolitan creation story.

Wonderland

Ella Fields | California | Age 15

Waking up on the beach, a young girl battles peer pressure to find her own happy place in an absurd, dreamlike world full of animal masks and eyeball munching loonies.

Home(sick)ness

Daria Litvichenko | Estonia | Age 18

Observational photography finds poetry in the everyday as Estonians living abroad share their memories of home, reflecting on their old routines and the wonderful quiet.

Life’s a Blur

Shaun Louis Calleja | Malta | Age 21

A visual, abstract expressionist piece that finds vivid street lights meshing and colliding together to create a transcendent experience out of ordinary objects.

The Rose of Manila

Alex Westfall | Rhode Island/The Philippines | Age 22

Archival footage and reenactments evoke a formative moment in the life of young Imelda Marcos, the infamous wife of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, to investigate the nature of beauty and love.

CELEBRITISM

Mia Neumann | Chicago | Age 22

Hundreds of celebrity faces align in this kaleidoscopic collage, where endlessly generated media images create icons whose reality degenerates when fed to us at incredible speeds.

Same Everything

Rachel Bowman | Chicago | Age 18

Chaotic text, music, and multiple exposed images represent the inner state of two teenage girls discussing feelings of fear, apathy, and uncertainty about growing up as they get ready for a New Year’s Eve rave.

Wash Day

Kourtney Jackson | Canada | Age 22

As they prepare for the day ahead, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their cultivation of a strong sense of self.

I look back and it’s gone

Teona Galgoțiu | Romania | Age 21

Hoping to find a way to keep important memories from disappearing, three subjects interact with an experimental device designed to reconstruct memory fragments.