Prismatic Ground 2024

Prismatic Ground, an annual festival centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film and co-presented by Screen Slate, will hold its fourth edition Wednesday, May 8 through Sunday, May 12, 2024, in-person across the Museum of the Moving Image, DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, Light Industry, and Anthology Film Archives, and online with wave ∞, a virtual selection free to watch at prismaticground.com.

Opening Night, co-presented by Middle East-focused cultural organization Bidoun, will kick off on May 8, 2024 at MoMI with a CINEMATEK (Belgian Film Archive) restoration of Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi’s Fertile Memory (1981). The film tenderly observes the lives of two Palestinian women of opposite generations living in Nazareth under Israeli occupation. “Khleifi has given the women’s lives an aesthetic clarity which, for me, a male Palestinian, sheds new light on our experience of dispossession,” wrote Edward Said of the film. A short reading by poet Hala Alyan will precede the film; a conversation between Bidoun’s Tiffany Malakooti and researcher/curator/writer Adam HajYahia will follow. An afterparty co-hosted by DJs Against Apartheid (DAA) will begin at 9PM at h0l0, featuring Sterling Juan Diaz, Yumi, Zarina, Ladiez Drink Free, and WTCHCRFT, with proceeds going to direct aid for Gaza and DAA’s organizing costs.

The full lineup of roughly ninety films features new work by dozens of artists including Larissa Sansour & Søren Lind, Razan AlSalah, Sky Hopinka, Onyeka Igwe, Isiah Medina, Svetlana Romanova, Aria Dean & Laszlo Horvath, Pablo Alvarez-Mesa, Sharlene Bamboat, Kamal AlJafari and Tsai Ming-Liang; world premieres of features by Audrey Lam, Melissa Friedling and Alexis Kyle Mitchell; newly discovered work by Raúl Ruiz and Aldo Tambellini; expanded cinema performances by arc and Tomonari Nishikawa; a Film Comment Live panel on avant-garde film writing; and a tribute to feminist Greek filmmaker Antoinetta Angelidi (73), who will appear in person to present a partial retrospective, most of her work screening in North America for the first time, on the occasion of her recognition with the Ground Glass Award— the festival’s sole, non-competitive prize— for outstanding contribution to the field of experimental media.

Visit prismaticground.com for a detailed program guide and to purchase tickets (Tickets for Light Industry events must be purchased at the venue night of; all other tickets and the all-access wristband can be purchased in advance).

Opening Night — Wednesday, May 8th, 2024

Museum of the Moving Image

Fertile Memory (Michel Khleifi, 1981, 99min)

Co-presented with Bidoun. Pre-film reading by poet Hala Alyan.

Post-film conversation between Tiffany Malakooti and Adam HajYahia.

Restoration by CINEMATEK

Thursday, May 9th — wave 1: blueprint of a pleasure machine

DCTV

12PM Blueprint of a Pleasure Machine (Amit Dutta, 10min) + Amma ki Katha (Nehal Vyas, 21min) + Let’s Go to the Mines (Advik Beni, 4 min) + No Stranger At All* (Priya Sen, 40min) + Q&A

*Year three encore screening w/ filmmaker in person

2:30PM Film Comment Panel: Writing About Experimental Film*

*Free Event

4:15PM Homing (Tamer Hassan, 34min) + Wolves (Aria Dean, Laszlo Horvath 26min) + Q&A

Light Industry

7PM conical signal (2 x 16mm performance, 6min) + ascensions (16mm, single channel, 8min) + breathing (16m, single channel, 11min) + ailleurs (16mm, single channel, 3 min) + infinite column (2 x 16mm performance, 14min)

9PM Just a Soul Responding (Sky Hopinka, 16min) + poetry reading + Q&A

Friday, May 9 — wave 2: only fascist mummies don’t jump

DCTV

12PM Listening In, Resounding Out (Eislow Johnson, Dominic Bonelli, 11 min) + The Sun is Missing (Advik Beni, 8 min) + Bleared eyes of blue glass (PARK Kyujae, 9 min) + in the interval (æryka jourdaine hollis o'neil, 24 min) + Behind the Sun (Bentley Brown, 18 min) + Q&A

1:45PM Both, Instrument and Sound (Sharlene Bamboat, 40 min) + barrunto (Emilia Beatriz, 70min) + Q&A w/ CART and ASL

4:30PM Capital (Basma Al-Sharif, 17min) + A Stone’s Throw (Razan AlSalah, 40 min) + Q&A

Anthology

7PM COP26FILM (Luke Fowler, 7 min) + He Who Dances Passes (Carlos Araya Diaz, 70min)

7:15PM Six Seventy-Two Variations, Variation 3 (For Charles) (Tomonoari Nishikawa, 23 min, 16mm performance) + Bolero Study (Cherrie Yu, 3 min) + Us and the Night (Audrey Lam, 67min) + Q&A

9PM El Realismo Socialista (Raúl Ruiz, Valeria Sarmiento, 1973-2023, 78min)

9:15PM Deep 1 (Philip Hoffman, 15 min, 35mm) + Black Rectangle (Rhayne Vermette, 16mm)* + Domus (Rhayne Vermette, 15 min, 16mm) + A shifting pattern (Isaac Sherman 16mm) + Measuring 500 Feet (Abigail He, 4 min, 16mm) + Light, Noise, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke (Tomonari Nishikawa, 6 min, 16mm) + Tricks are for Kiddo (Rhayne Vermette, 3 min, 16mm) + Glitter for Girls (Federica Fogli, 4 min) + Q&A

*Premiere of 16mm Rhayne Vermette prints courtesy of the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection at the Walker Art Center w/ special thanks to Patricia Ledesma Villon.

Saturday, May 11 — wave 3: mortality is a prison but to know it is the key

Anthology

11AM Entrance Wounds (Calum Walter, 18 min + Q&A) + He Thought He Died (Isiah Medina, 70 min)

11:30AM Camera Test (King Cadbury) (Charlie Shackleton, 7min) + Midwood Movie (75 min + Q&A)

1PM Social Circles (Eri Saito, 16 min, + Q&A) + Abiding Nowhere (Tsai Ming-Liang, 79 min)

1:30PM As close as your voice can call (Derek B. Jenkins, 14min,16mm) + The Treasury of Human Inheritance (Alexis Kyle Mitchell, 59min) + Q&A

3PM Intro* + Revolution Until Victory a.k.a. We Are the Palestinian People (Newrseel #65) (San Francisco Newsreel, 45 min)

+ Introduction to the End of an Argument (Jayce Salloum, Elia Suleiman, 41min)

*Guest curated with introduction by Nadine Fattaleh and Kaleem Hawa

3:45PM Let the Red Moon Burn (Ralitsa Doncheva, 7 min) + at the bamboo green (Xiaolu Wang, 11 min) + In the Wake of Loss (Aminata Ndow, 22 min) + Before seriana (Samy Benammar, 19 min) + Q&A

5PM 121280 Ritual (Antoinetta Angelidi, Rea Walldén, 16 min) + Idees Fixes / Dies Irae (Antoinetta Angelidi, 60 min) + Q&A

5:45PM In the Fishtank (Linnea Nugent, 3 min) + Extinction Story Origin Story (Terrie Samundra, 17 min) + Hinkelten (Svetlana Romanova, 18 min) + Unspeakable Heap (Kara Hansen, 14 min) + Landscape Suspended (Naghmeh Abbasi, 26 min)

7:15PM Thief Or Reality (Antoinetta Angelidi, 80min, 35mm + Q&A)

7:30PM UNDR (Kamal AlJafari, 15 min) + Familiar Phantoms (Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind, 42 min)

9PM A Visit With Robert (Luke Fowler, 3 min, 16mm) + Eros (107 min) + Q&A

9:15PM The Hours — A Square Film (Antoinetta Angelidi, 85 min) + Q&A

Sunday, May 12 — wave 4: ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong

Anthology Film Archives

11AM Trolley Times (Gurvinder Singh, 143min)

11:15AM Abefele (Amir George, 6 min) + On the Battlefield (Little Egypt Collective, 16 min) + Map to the Sirens (Demetrius Antonio Lewis, 14 min)

+ ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong (Daphne Xu, 9 min) + Khabur (Nafis Fathollahzadeh, 30 min) + Q&A

1:15PM Black Infinitude*: The Screw (1963) + Black Is (1965, 16mm) + Black Trip #1 (1965, 16mm) + Black Trip #1 (1965, 16mm) + Black Out (1965, 16mm) + Black Trip #2 (1967, 16mm) + Black Plus X (1969) + Listen (2007) + Black Video 3** + Black TV (1969)

*Aldo Tambellini tribute and lecture by mentee M. Woods

**Newly rediscovered

2:15PM Aida Returns (Carol Mansour, 77min)

4PM Few Can See (Frank Sweeney, 42 min) + A Radical Duet (Onyeka Igwe, 28 min) + Q&A

4:15PM Obsessive Hours at the Topos of Reality (Rea Walldén, 88 min + Q&A)

6PM The Soldier’s Lagoon (Pablo Alvarez Mesa, 75 min) + Q&A

7PM SYZYGY (Akbar Padamsee, 12 min, 35mm) + Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomenon: #59 (Joost Rekveld, 79min)

8:15PM Contractions (Lynne Sachs, 12 min) + Malqueridas (Tana Gilbert, 75 min)

9PM Topos (Antoinetta Angelidi, 35mm, 80 min) + Q&A

wave ∞: the future is still bigger than the past (virtual)

Ma’loul Celebrates Its Destruction* (Michel Khleifi, 1984, 30min)

CINEMATEK restoration co-presented by Bidoun

Dau:añcut (Moving Along Image)* (Adam Piron, 15min)

Even God* (Liz Roberts, 12min)

Map to the Sirens (Demetrius Antonio Lewis, 14 min)

Camera Test (King Cadbury) (Charlie Shackleton, 7min)

121280 Ritual (Antoinetta Angelidi, Rea Walldén, 16 min)

Homing (Tamer Hassan, 34min)

Hinkelten (Svetlana Romanova, 18 min)

In the Wake of Loss (Aminata Ndow, 22 min)

Listening In, Resounding Out (Eislow Johnson, Dominic Bonelli, 11 min)

Bleared eyes of blue glass (PARK Kyujae, 9 min)

in the interval (æryka jourdaine hollis o'neil, 24 min)

Behind the Sun (Bentley Brown, 18 min)

Entrance Wounds (Calum Walter, 18 min)

Unspeakable Heap (Kara Hansen, 14 min)

at the bamboo green (Xiaolu Wang, 11 min)

*Virtual Exclusive