MOVIATE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2025

SHORTS COLLECTION #1

80 min | 10 Short Films

featuring a Post-Screening Q&A with filmmakers

“[sun]film” by Derek Taylor, (CT, USA), 3 minutes. - An arrangement of found image sources from the 16th Century onward, the film looks at the changing representations of the giant star at the center of the solar system. From celestial maps to telescopic photos, the film traces the sun as a natural constant, a mirror of human curiosity, and a radiant symbol of mystery.

“Rain” by Vasilios Papaioannu, (DC, USA), 6 minutes. -Rain, as circular shapes of memory imprinted on the fast paced celluloid or as liquid moving sculptures of the present in digital form, documents a verbal interaction between two people.

“It felt like night” by James Hollenbaugh (USA), 2 minutes. The Great North American Eclipse occured on April 8th, 2024. Some things went according to plan. Some did not.

“La Colle Falls” by Mike Rollo, (Canada), 11 minutes. -At the beginning of the 20th century, a hydroelectric dam was partially built and later abandoned on the North Saskatchewan River near the city of Prince Albert. A century has passed and the concrete structures from this industrial folly continue to frame the surrounding river and forest. Through visual and sonic layerings of water, reflective surfaces, and transparency, this film mediates the consequences of colonial activity over time in a specific, ancient place.

“Plastic Aortas” by Malic Amalya (Mass., USA), 9:40, -Plastic Aortas is a portrait of the black plastic encasing the Fells Reservoir in the unceded land of the Massachusett, Pawtucket, and Naumkeag indigenous peoples. The lining was placed there by conservationists in order to mitigate the invasive Common Reed, which is killing native plants. However, the lining also interferes with wildlife and contaminates the water.

“Serene Hues” by Rita Tse (CANADA), 5 minutes. -Serene Hues, hand-processed, solarized, tinted, and toned, is a meditative journey into the tranquility and vibrant beauty of nature. The surprising and unexpected images created through process-driven filmmaking, which is improvisational and interactive, embody the wabi-sabi aesthetic of impermanence, incompleteness, and imperfection, emphasizing the creative process of producing the work.

“Butterfly Maneuvers” by Gor Margaryan, (GERMANY) 7 minutes. -Butterfly Manoeuvres’ is an experimental essay film based on old, private film footage of fighter planes. The film documents the preparations and training for war, recorded as historical evidence.

“Las Animas” by Matt Feldman, (USA), 14 minutes. -

“Burn Ceremony” by Alexander Girav, (Chicago,USA) 17 minutes. -An unsanctioned observation of [redacted]’s largest oil refinery, processing 440,000 barrels of crude oil a day. By night, the complex becomes a heaving edifice of flame and fog. We observe its operation from afar as the inferno slowly engulfs the frame, accompanied by an original hypnotic soundscape by UK club experimentalist Loraine James. A vision of industrial desolation in which dread turns to awe.

“Between the Leaves” by Andrew Frangella. (USA), 3 minutes. -First attempts at engagement with a small forest outside of the office. From strangers to partners, these arboreal visages had been reduced to mere subjects, often looked past.

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.

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.
8

Elliott and Schlemowitz's Magic Lantern Show

Come experience a MAGIC LANTERN SHOW!!! 

With Filmmaker Joel Schlemowitz performing LIVE

-From the late 17th century to the dawn of the 20th, the magic lantern transformed storytelling into an enlivened visual experience. By the late-Victorian era, the magic lantern was an important and ubiquitous visual medium. Eventually eclipsed by the coming of the movies, the wonders of this once-familiar entertainment are rarely experienced by the modern audiences.

-Magic lantern performers Dawn Elliott and Joel Schlemowitz have been bringing this fascinating medium back to life, presenting award-winning magic lantern shows using period-era glass slides, magic lantern projectors, music and narration.

-The program encompasses a variety of magic lantern entertainments: "Belle Belton's Bicycle Adventure," the anthropomorphic antics of "The Educated Cats" (reminiscent of the illustrations of Louis Wain), a magic lantern circus, and a variety of astonishing moving image mechanical slides: lever slides, slip-slides, gearwork slides, chromatropes.

-More information about Elliott & Schlemowitz Magic Lanternists, can be found on their website: https://www.magiclanternexhibition.com

MOVIATE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2025

SHORTS COLLECTION #4

87 minutes | 9 Short Films

featuring a post screening Q&A with filmmakers

“A Message From Humboldt” by Matt Feldman (USA) 7 minutes
Glances at an emptied apartment in Milwaukee drift into a psychodrama confronting fears of death and loneliness. Through the use of in-camera experiments, fractured imagery inquires into the hauntings and mysteries of the everyday

“The Garden Sees Fire” by Kiera Faber (USA) 15 minutes
A mystical tale of cloaked identities, systemic traumas, and insatiable consumption: The ecology burns, reclaiming its environs.

“A Place For Everything and Everything In Its Place”
by Sophia Stezala (USA) 3 minutes
Through the combination of rudimentary mechanical stop-motion and intricate disorienting collage created from archival women’s interest magazines, A Place for Everything and Everything In Its Place weaves together both jarring and lulling elements, evoking a sense of domestic neurosis.

“Immortals” by Mark Durand (Canada) 6 minutes
Immortals is an experimental documentary short film shot in 8mm that explores the introspection of an artist, Bettina Szabo. The film delves into her relationship with her sense of belonging, her body, her imagination, and nature. Sometimes one must lose oneself to find oneself better, and burn everything down to start anew on a solid foundation.

“Despite” by Kate Raney (USA) 12 minutes
A short experimental animation exploring the tension between the wonder of motherhood and the anxiety of illness. Through collage and fragmentation, this film reflects upon the habitats that sustain life and harbor disease.

“Wherever Street Piece” by Pan Johansson (Finland) 9 minutes
Wherever Street Piece is a found footage film that describes impersonal and fragmented memories that cannot be directly linked to the life of one particular individual. Simultaneously the film documents the way these past realities - forgotten people in forgotten situations - blend together from the perspective of the present.

“Paris Model” by Brittney Appleby (Canada) 6 minutes
Paris Model was created through the use of found striptease footage and experimental analogue film manipulation techniques. By using a combination of experimental techniques to create a macabre and haunting image, Paris Model asks the audience to contemplate mortality and the temporality of the flesh.

“As I Belong To My Life” by Sarah Bliss (USA) 5 minutes
An exploration of the ways older bodies and psyches engage eros, gender, creativity, sexuality and desire. In a culture in which aging bodies are assumed to be sexless and considered neutered, what does it look and feel like to reclaim our erotic power?

“The Dissolution of the Landscape” 

by Ann-Marie Bouchard (USA) 24 minutes
Through visual metaphors, the film offers an incursion into an inner landscape, a dive into subconscious, a mix of childhood memories and recurrent dreams, between surrealism and automatism.

MOVIATE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2025

SHORTS COLLECTION #5

87 min | 8 Short Films

featuring a Post-Screening Q&A with filmmakers

“On the Second Floor” by Neil Ira Needleman (USA) 5 minutes
This work is part of a video series that was shot in an apartment building that provides subsidized apartments for residents who are mostly elderly and infirm. Each of the videos in the series explores the spaces and characteristics of a different floor of the building.

“Fake” by Stephen Crompton (USA) 23 minutes
A lone man travels to universities bearing a message that the moon landings were staged and warning that the earth is not what it seems.

“Kid With The Pearl Earring” by Abigail Holland (USA) 8 minutes
Obsessed with forgiveness, filmmaker Abigail Holland builds a self portrait through men and objects they left behind.

“Marking The Ends” by Mireille Tawfik (Canada) 19 minutes
Three women talk about the difficulty they have in recovering from their last breakup.

“A Poem” by Vasilios Papaioannu (USA) 3 minutes
In an underground garage, a voice message becomes the testament of a love left in limbo, while fleeting images allude to the moment that led to it.

“Full Out” by Sarah Ballard (USA) 15 minutes
In 19th century Paris at the Salpêtrière Hospital, patients were hypnotized on stage to reproduce the symptoms of hysteria for public audiences. Over a century later, high school cheerleaders are fainting en masse.

“Choreography of Light” by Homa Sarabi (USA) 7 minutes
The mechanical production of the camera is articulated through the mechanics of the body. This choreographic journey of a film strip overlays the physicality of the analog filmmaking process and the anatomy of the human body.

“The Motherfucker’s Birthday” by Said Alsaegh (Iraq) 7 minutes
Through dancing, the film shows the evil of the dictator and the horror people endure under powerful political leaders. Saddam dances, Bush dances, so what's left for the Iraqi people except to join in.

with a Post-Screening Q&A at the Harrisburg TOYNBEE TILE at the corner of 3rd and Reily St. with researcher JUSTIN DUERR in person!

Documentary description: An urban mystery unfurls as one man pieces together the surreal meaning of hundreds of cryptic tiled messages that have been appearing in city streets across the U.S. and South America.

MOVIATE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2025

SHORTS COLLECTION #6

83 min | 9 Short Films

featuring a Post-Screening Q&A with filmmakers

**Closing Night Shorts Program**

“A Beautiful Day” by Justin Dean, (USA), 6 minutes
A nice man has a nice day.

“Magic with small apparatus” by Paul Tarragó, (UK), 8 minutes
Super 8 stop motion, south London style.
Includes feats with cards and ropes, legerdemain, sleights of camera, a perky river, and rare insights into the activities of a local magician-ventriloquist from the 1930s.

“Dumpling: A stop motion comedy” by Laura Lewis-Barr, (USA), 8 minutes
When depressed cook HaHa chases a runaway dumpling, she finds a parallel world. Inspired by an Japanese fairy tale.

“Quietus” by Marissa Hernandez, (USA), 4 minutes
Quietus is a visual poem about the invisible you. The thing that separates us from life the moment we die. It's a stream of consciousness that provokes unanswered questions of the unknown the moment you fade into darkness or perhaps light?

“Bunny’s Family” by Chuming Wei, (USA), 18 minutes
A sister Isabel and brother Leo discover that that their parents are scientists who use black magic, and realize that they are the products of their parents' experiments to create them. So, they rebel against their parents, in order to protect themselves

“Toll and Spin” by Maureen Zent, (USA), 5 minutes
Cast off from shore. Into the dim, the dark. Away, away. Adrift in an oarless boat. And deep, deeper below the mirror surface. Then snap. Caught in eddies of regret, past slights, tasks undone, worries fresh and aged. Ever searching for a channel back to the elusive elsewhere.
Toil and Spin uses the visual language of minimalism to describe sleep and sleeplessness.

“Balancing on a Molecule (Dirt: Part Three)”
by David Finkelstein, (USA), 17 minutes
Balancing on a Molecule uses animation, music, and incantations to enact a series of video rituals, trying to strike a balance between rapture and vulnerability. In order for rituals to be effective, we need to place our trust in them, which can open the door to revelation, but also leave us open to manipulation and madness.

“Foot to Ground” by Christopher Thompson, (USA), 9 minutes
Minimalist frontiers proliferate from acquisition. Larping utopia, shedding skins, forging new luxury amidst shards of past lives. Embracing shadows, sculpting stagnant futures in the flicker of ancient flames.

“Untitled Unended” by Nicolas Novak, (France), 8 minutes. Vague details surround the situation of kids stuck in a house looking for their father. Suspense builds as the kids try everything, leading them to an unexpected reality.