MOVIATE Underground Shorts #2: Identity Rituals

MOVIATE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2025

SHORTS COLLECTION #2

80 minutes | 9 Short Documentaries

featuring a post-screening Q&A with filmmakers

“Pure Magic” by Natasha Beste (USA), 3 minutes. -A crew of neurodivergent artists collaborates to document the unique creative process of Tamara Finlay, a stop-motion artist whose work blends family history, folklore, and personal healing. Drawing from her Ukrainian roots, Tamara incorporates her grandparents, the mythic Baba Yaga, and fragments of her past self to explore themes of identity, heritage, and resilience.

“Mother” by Wenhua Shi, (USA), 5 minutes. -This piece is a film portrait of my mother. all shot in-camera with 16mm.

“Fainter Echoes” by Brady Lewis, (Pittsburgh, USA), 6:30, -Image and sound memory and dream fragments define a man, a place and a relationship in rural Pennsylvania.

“My Canada Train Journey” by Sandy McLennan, (CANADA), 18min. -Up and down and across Canada by train, shooting Double8mm film. What do you think about when you're looking out that window? SHOWN ON 16MM!

“Hollowgram” by Laura Iancu (Romania), 7 minutes. -Hollowgram conjures varicolored clusters of swirling images and sounds from places real and imagined as if looking through a flip book in a dream. Narratively the film pilots the tension between the desire to share memories and possibilities with another and the failure of the attempt. Conceptually layered over, a defiant authorial selfhood responds to the outside interrogations that punch in, “Who do you think you are?”.

“Gan Tang, The Lake” by Tianming Zhou (China), 14 minutes. -In the summer of 2023, the government of Jiujiang launched the Gan Tang Lake Cleansing Project. Within weeks, this ancient lake with over two millennia of history was drained. Nearby in Gan Tang Park, a boy wakes up in the rain. There, the destiny of Gan Tang awaits.

“Panoramic Communion” by Théo Zesiger (France), 9 minutes. -From the big wheel in the seaside district, a number of axes come forth. A succession of buildings compose the backdrop. The silhouettes and shadows wander and sway: strangely enough, they seem to stand alongside the same horizon.

“Under the Tooth” by Bren Vienrich-Felling. (NC, USA), 4 minutes. -As an outdoor family gathering unfolds, so do unsettling decisions in alimentative practices. This film explores the paradox of consumption and care, where the presence of some animals makes others conspicuously absent. Drawing from Carol J. Adams’ concept of the absent referent, Under the Tooth meditates on the quiet erasures within shared rituals—where the act of eating is both deeply familiar and haunted by what, or who, is no longer there.

“Eighteen Mill Street” by Josh Weissbach (CT, USA), 14 minutes. -EIGHTEEN MILL STREET introduces Ukrainian artists Marianna Tarish and Nikita Gryshko soon after their relocation to Sweden because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The film explores Tarish and Gryshko’s relationships to intimate and domestic spaces and how they have been impacted due to their experiences at the start of the war while still living in the Ukrainian city of Kherson and as part of their journey to Sweden.