MOVIATE Underground Shorts #3: States of Disorder

MOVIATE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2025

SHORTS COLLECTION #3

82 minutes | 11 Short Films

featuring a post screening Q&A with filmmakers

“Riding Day” by Michael Alexander Morris, (USA), 3 minutes. -The music video for Black Taffy's Riding Day is a loving nod to British experimental filmmaker Malcom Le Grice's 1970 film Berlin Horse, an iconic work of Structural/Materialist filmmaking that featured a soundtrack by Brian Eno. Like that film, this film is an exploration of the material qualities of celluloid film in ways that are analogous to gestures in electronic music.

“Comply” by Padrick Sean Ritch, (USA), 3 minutes. -Comply is a satire of our relationship with mass communication in a post-truth era. Presented through a composite blend of found footage and emulsion painting, the film delves into the dizzying speed at which news breaks, distorts, and dissipates, challenging viewers to confront how we construct narratives to fit our beliefs and ideology.

“The Visible Material” by Ryan Marino (USA), 8 minutes. -Through means of rephotography and refracted projection, the movements and luminescent surfaces of Berlin’s Alexanderplaz are transformed into vibrant fields of moving color.

“Lunette” by Mark Street (NY, USA), 8 minutes. -Shot at night in Paris through various magnifiers, this most iconic city becomes unfamiliar, and then somewhat familiar again.

“Perpetual Disorder” by João Carlos Pinto, (Portugal), 5 minutes. -An immersive sensory journey through the bustling streets of Barcelona’s old town, where time, space, and human presence intertwine in unexpected ways. Shot on 16mm using in-camera multiple exposures, the film captures the tension between the sensory overload of the modern world and the slow, deliberate pace of analog filmic expression, inviting viewers into a fragmented yet hypnotic exploration of perception.

“One Hundred White Trucks” by Brice Goldberg, (Phila, USA), 4 minutes. -In Richmond, Virginia, a filmmaker's walkabout reveals a monochromatic landscape of behemoth motor vehicles.

“The Phalanx” by Benjamin Balcom, (WI, USA) 14 minutes, Filmed on the former site of Ceresco, a 19th-century agrarian commune in Ripon, Wisconsin, this lyrical, experimental film revisits the utopian aspirations of a community striving to live "in association," guided by principles of harmony and shared ownership. Founded in 1844 and disbanded in 1851, Ceresco was one of several communes across North America inspired by the writings of French philosopher Charles Fourier. These fleeting but potent attempts to imagine alternative ways of living now serve as a lens to explore the fragility of collective ideals.

“Monument” by Jeremy Drummond (VA, USA) 17 minutes. -Monument is an experimental documentary that pairs hand-processed and chemically-altered Super 8 footage of the decaying monuments of Presidents Park (Croaker, VA), with original and community-sourced video footage captured on Monument Avenue (Richmond, VA) between 2020 and 2025. Themes of registration and re-calibration, and metaphor and analogy, are explored through form and content and the distinct features of the media employed.

“Inundation” by Dominick Rivers, (USA) 4 minutes. -Inundation is a non-representational film that submerges the viewer in the ephemeral interplay of light and shadow. Employing cyanotype and eco-coloring techniques, the piece captures fleeting impressions and refractions, where illumination emerges only to be swallowed again by darkness. As much about erasure as it is about presence, Inundation meditates on the impermanence of light—its ability to imprint, dissolve, and transform the cinematic surface into a shifting, alchemical space.

“Pictures of a Negative Chair” by Magdalena Bermudez, (USA) 9 minutes. -An account of a scientist trying to teach machines how to infer depth from two-dimensional pictures. A parable of a prince trying to resurrect his lover by fashioning a chair out of his lover’s things. A question about the need for human beings, and the things they are in need of.

“The FLOWER CULT of Amelia Earhart” by Rebecca Barten, (AZ, USA) 6 minutes. -A synaptic celluloid requiem, propelling the High Priestess Aviator Earhart through far-sighted passages of flora, fauna, air, fire and water.
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