Nine programmes of the best of contemporary experimental cinema free to stream worldwide September 14th-27th
All programmes will be available to watch at this page from September 14th
CineSalon Artist in Focus: David Matthew Johnson aka The Octopus
A double bill of films by David Matthew Johnson followed by a specially recorded online Q&A. His feature The Sublime Hubris is accompanied by his recent short Cicada, I Love You – Cicada’s Too Late; the Wind and Other Things. His drastically minimal yet passionately and often unnervingly human filmmaking marks him as a hauntingly personal outsider auteur. As well as being a unique and powerful cinematic voice, Johnson’s festival The Octopus Marquee Independent Film Festival is a major inspiration for CineSalon.
David Matthew Johnson, also known as The Octopus, is the award winning director of Ode to The Whale of Christ and The Sublime Hubris. As a filmmaker, The Octopus focuses on creating unique passion projects that allegorically express himself and also cinematic meditations to contemplate on. As a producer, The Octopus strives to work with Auteurs to share their vision. As a festival director (of the Octopus Marquee Independent Film Festival), The Octopus focuses on shining a spotlight on underground artists and oddballs who create one of a kind art pieces.
Cicada, I Love You – Cicada’s Too Late; the Wind and Other Things
The Sublime Hubris
David Matthew Johnson in Conversation with Benjamin Burns & Maximilian Le Cain
Jeremy Brubacher opens Cinesalon Online 1, one of the festival’s most visceral programmes, with a hypnotic light mandala in KALEIDOSCOPIC, followed by the haunted colour textures of Sapphire Goss’ Revenants: Compound Horizons. Carleen Maur combines humour, anger and gorgeous film textures in showing What We Swallow, and Darja-Kazimira Zimina leads us on an extreme ritual in Fuck my black holes, they are bottomless that is both horrifying and transformative. Algae by Jesed Moreno is an ecstatic blast of transcendent cine-psychedelia. The programme concludes with Green Scream, an elaborate experimental ‘documentary’ about the art and process of artist Nádia Duvall that exists in a universe of its own creation.
KALEIDOSCOPIC (Jeremy Brubacher)
Revenants: Compound Horizons (Sapphire Goss)
Things We Swallow (Carleen Maur)
Fuck my black holes, they are bottomless (Darja-Kazimira Zimina)
Algae (Jesed Francis Abiera Moreno)
Green Scream (Nádia Duvall aka EVA MAE)
CineSalon Online 2 interfaces perceptions, bodies and technologies. A Lapointe’s MetaData draws us into a humorously diseased condition of digital imagery. Retina: A Journey Through Photophobia by Elaine Crowe uses the textures of the image to evoke the experience of photophobia. Karen Akerman and Miguel Seabra Lopes’ guarda vieja 3458 timbre 3/6 shows an exiled Brazilian child coming to grips with the world through scratchy video while Kevin Casciani Nolan’s Bandia na Míle Brón (Goddess Of A Thousand Sorrows) constructs a visionary trip at the very edge of pure audio-visual noise. Cinegraffic Score by iloobia celebrates the vanishing beauty of 35mm projection. The programme culminates in the extraordinary, truly radical � by Xamil Citna, a pseudonym that reflects the state between the climax and anticlimax of constructive narratives. This excavation of the ‘noisy silence’ of the medium reflects obliquely on a catastrophic crowd crush in Seoul that left 159 people dead and 196 injured.
MetaData (A Lapointe)
Retina: A Journey Through Photophobia (Elaine Crowe)
guarda vieja 3458 timbre 3/6 (Karen Akerman / Miguel Seabra Lopes)
Bandia na Míle Brón (Goddess Of A Thousand Sorrows) (Kevin Casciani Nolan)
Cinegraffic Score (iloobia)
� (Xamil Citna)
CineSalon Online 3 is a wild ride through presence and absence, place and displacement. Dan Sokolowski’s Tourist Town documents restored buildings from the Yukon Gold Rush – or does it? Francisco Rojas abolishes space in favour of light in A Sense of Nothing. Sofia Theodore-Pierce’s mastery of intimate diaristic collage shines through Desire Path, snatches of personal archives compiled during a convalescence. Katy Shepherd confronts the demons of insomnia with animation in Bedroom Scenes while Kent Tate’s Vanishing Heat collides documentary and science fiction in envisaging the deliberate and accidental energy given off by one system affecting another. Samy Benammar’s kauaʻi ʻōʻō is a simple celebration of a vanishing bird species while Roger Horn’s Questioning the Existence of Alec questions distinctions between past and present, fantasy and reality, document and fiction. giroscopio by John Muse and Brendamaris Rodriguez is a dizzying dialogue between two artists in lockdown in different countries who seem controlled by objects. Bhavini Joshi’s mysterious Landscape of Worship i & ii explores internal landscapes mirrored in the outside world. Rebecca Weisman’s Mother Island (Part 1) shows a mother and two children transforming lockdown into a fantasy shipwreck and Marko Gutić Mižimakov’s Dragon Hunt employs hallucinatory animation effects in a queer road trip through the weirding landscape of the Dalmatian Hinterland.
Tourist Town (Dan Sokolowski)
A Sense of Nothing (Francisco Rojas)
Desire Path (Sofia Theodore-Pierce)
Bedroom Scenes (Katy Shepherd)
Vanishing Heat (Kent Tate)
kauaʻi ʻōʻō (Samy Benammar)
Questioning the Existence of Alec (Roger Horn)
giroscopio (John Muse / Brendamaris Rodriguez)
Landscape of Worship i & ii (Bhavini Joshi)
Mother Island (Part 1) (Rebecca Weisman)
Dragon Hunt (Marko Gutić Mižimakov)
CineSalon Online 4 finds the festival in a thoughtful, contemplative mode. Matthew Wolkow’s Minutes takes a bureaucratic look at bird flight with surrealistically charming results. Ioanna Filippopoulou compellingly imagines the rituals of Three Mystics while Katie Gerardine O’Neill plunges us into the dream life of a cat in Le Rêve éveillé des Nouilles. Quilt Frame documents a mother-daughter dialogue around the washing of an antique heirloom quilt while Tan.Vatan embodies an intimate visual dialogue between two artists, Homa Sarabi and Meenakshi Garodia, from two cultures. Damon Mohl’s Memoria Oblitus achieves a searing visual and chromatic density in meditating on forgotten memories. Magdalena Bermudez’s Parallel Botany looks at when still lives of real fruit meet botanical illustrations of plant galls to expose the paradox of dissection. Sofia Theodore-Pierce’s typically exquisite Exterior Turbulence recalls a year of stormy weather and temporal rupture in fragments. And Francisco Rojas’ gloriously luminous Sea of Glass reshapes time and light through a liquid lens.
Minutes (Matthew Wolkow)
Three Mystics (Ioanna Filippopoulou)
Le Rêve éveillé des Nouilles (Katie Gerardine O’Neill)
Quilt Frame (Anna Hogg)
Tan.Vatan (Homa Sarabi / Meenakshi Garodia)
Memoria Oblitus (Damon Mohl)
Parallel Botany (Magdalena Bermudez)
Exterior Turbulence (Sofia Theodore-Pierce)
Sea of Glass (Francisco Rojas)
CineSalon Online 5 shatters images, identities, fictions and preconceptions. Julia Rose Petrocelli’s I-80 takes a path of dirt and debris down the American highway – literally. That I Have Broken Into Two by Ellery Bryan uses 16mm split screen and double exposure to explore the feeling of removal, division and loss. Niamh Hughes’ Small Seeds to Grow, Large Pots to Fill is a musical like no other that follows a large-eyed woman lamenting her dying plants through song. Autojektor’s blistering everything is ok | an ASMR to help you sleep at night unleashes magnificent demons from the celluloid textures of forgotten pornography. Damon Conway’s In Tantum Clamor takes a unique approach to illustrating a historical incident in which Pope Innocent III launches a crusade against the people of Languedoc. Cosmic Rage by Emilia Izquierdo uses hand drawn animation and archival footage to explore dance and music as forms of resistance, powers of liberation and cosmic communion. And in Worm Pornography, Ian Haig submerges us in a graphic satire replete with Virtual Reality worm simulations, AI censorship parasites, programmable dark matter, slime TV game shows, parasite pornography and mutant YouTube cat videos.
I-80 (Julia Rose Petrocelli)
That I Have Broken Into Two (Ellery Bryan)
Small Seeds to Grow, Large Pots to Fill (Niamh Hughes)
everything is ok | an ASMR to help you sleep at night (Autojektor)
In Tantum Clamor (In So Much as a Cry) (Damon Spike Conway)
Cosmic Rage (Emilia Izquierdo)
Worm Pornography (Ian Haig)
CineSalon Online 6 is a curious form of archive. In A Message from Humboldt Matt Feldman uses in-camera experiments and fractured imagery to inquire into the hauntings and mysteries of the everyday. Equally mysterious is Valentín Caso Rosendi’s fragmented but haunting message of farewell Adios Por Ahora. Marcelo Cugliari offers a very personal response to the overflowing of the Uruguay River in Argentina in El enojo del rio Uruguay which leans into the experience of time. Melli Müller’s For Seven Minutes I Am Yours creates a reflection on anonymous projections onto a female body. In it’s called round like a head, Molly Pattison and Andrew Wood offer a film about two people shooting the same horizon and the staccato experience by which we piece together knowledge of place. David Sherman’s DiElectric Drift creates a charged meditation on impermanence and entropy explored through Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and early video art while John Winn’s document of solitude Landskip, taken from a winter spent watching the home of an old professor, evokes an environment always enframed, already an image on the precipice of its obsolescence. Memories of places suspended between past and present are also the subject of Sébastien Berlendis’ aethereal and the sea is ashen. A sense memory of the archive presents itself in Anna Hogg’s The Archive is On Fire only for fire to flicker through glass, water, and finally consume the frame. Scratchy 16mm textures take us on a complicated journey in David Šourek’s Blíževedl, where we venture through fragments of light into forests and cliffs getting closer to its destination but increasingly off course.
A Message from Humboldt (Matt Feldman)
Adios Por Ahora (Valentín Caso Rosendi)
El enojo del rio Uruguay (Marcelo Cugliari)
For Seven Minutes I Am Yours (Melli Müller)
it’s called round like a head (Molly Pattison / Andrew Wood)
DiElectric Drift (David Sherman)
Landskip (John Winn)
and the sea is ashen (Sébastien Berlendis)
The Archive is On Fire (Anna Hogg)
Blíževedle (David Šourek)
CineSalon Online 7 dissolves into landscapes, be they physical, mental or textural – and sometimes the body dissolves as well. Ellery Bryan’s Unfounding is a double 8 film shot in a former quarry - meditating on being surrounded by extraction and burial, the type that uncovers the silver necessary to make film, attempting to engage with a wounded landscape through ritual and adornment as opposed to removal. Blue Skin by Garance Rigoni and Manon Tagand follows a thread of feeling between image and void. Karel Doing’s Babbler, Fairy and Thrush throws certainties of near and far, detail and overview, inside and outside into confusion while focusing on the plants, flowers, trees and ferns that grow around him. Billy Palumbo’s Her Backyard / My Front Window explores the thresholds and portals of memory where spaces and time blur and shatter. Kaiwen Ren’s Swells looks at three waterside habitats become tourist attractions as pseudo travelogues. Ciana Fitzgerald’s Ex Animo, a title which translates to ‘from the heart’ in Latin, intuitively explores the bittersweet ache that comes with reconnecting with your inner child. Charles Jiminez's describes Candle as a 'personal mental garden project' representing the spiritual and mental life cycles we inhabit when confronted with our stagnancy in existing. Inspired by images seen in flames, What I Saw in the Rye Grass is a collaboration between painter Lydia Freier and experimental filmmaker Tristan Turner that features layered imagery of rye grass, direct animation, and footage of loved ones. Mélissa Faivre’s Under the Midnight Sun is a dance of light and shadows, textured grayscale expanding across the landscape of an apocalyptic city. Anima # 1-4 is a mash up of four different experimental animations that finish a cycle of creative work by Vasco Diogo. It explores interior sensations and emotions. Daniel Zander’s Sol Alegria Del Mare Alias Yume Nikki is a film poem that resolves into a genuine cinematographic dream starring Parisian actress Marilena Netzker. Gitte Le Bruyn’s animation Gyrograph describes conditions when a newspaper reader dissolves into the randomness of events.
Unfounding (Ellery Bryan)
Blue Skin (Garance Rigoni / Manon Tagand)
Babbler, Fairy and Thrush (Karel Doing)
Her Backyard / My Front Window (Billy Palumbo)
Swells (Kaiwen Ren)
Ex Animo (Ciana Fitzgerald)
Candle (Charles Jimenez)
What I Saw in the Rye Grass (Tristan Turner / Lydia Freier)
Under the Midnight Sun (Mélissa Faivre)
Slipped Grasp (Maya Gulin / Kevin Mnz)
Anima # 1-4 (Vasco Diogo)
Sol Alegria Del Mare Alias Yume Nikki (Daniel Zander)
Gyrograph (Gitte Le Bruyn)
CineSalon Online 8 begins with Federica Foglia’s handmade tattoo film Glitter for Girls that uses camera-less techniques to create a joyful abstract animation inspired by the playful legacy of Evelyn Lambart and Norman McLaren. In Charlie Jimenez’s alchemically gorgeous Keratin, two bodies grieve over a lost third: a child separated from their womb. The three bodies regain connection in a journey of movement through spirit and body. Conchobhar Ó invites us to a party at the end of the world in Anois, sa teach that just won't end. This tone film explores the feeling of being trapped in a self-destructing cycle, unable to break free. Esperanza Collado’s Trágame nube consists of two twin, complementary films that explore the fact that in the running of any analogue film, the camera’s shutter is closed half of the time. Any given film therefore only captures half of what took place, so there is always 'another cinema’ of equal length that could have been made during the intervals between frames. The programme culminates in a mini-feature, Joey Huertas’ ferocious, hilarious and disturbing I Need You, an underground freak-out from the late ‘90s which nevertheless holds a serious centre concerning the theme of mental illness.
Glitter for Girls (Federica Foglia)
Keratin (Charles Jimenez)
Anois, sa teach (Conchobhar Ó)
Trágame nube (Esperanza Collado)
I Need You (Joey Huertas)
