Light Matter 2024, Experimental Film East Coast Festival, Announces Lineup for Fourth Edition
Curated by occasional Filmmaker Magazine contributor James Hansen, the experimental film festival Light Matter has announced the lineup for its fourth edition, being held this November, including the opening of a new gallery exhibition by Jodie Mack. From the press release:
Recognized as “a major East coast showcase for experimental film and video” (Michael Sicinski, In Review Online), the Light Matter Film Festival returns with its fourth annual showcase dedicated to emerging and established international artists in experimental film, video, and media art. The 2024 edition also celebrates the expansion of Light Matter into an international co-production across two continents. From November 1-3 in Alfred, NY, Light Matter will present seven programs over three days, including the opening of Ultraviolet, a major gallery exhibition by Jodie Mack, four short film programs, a special presentation of Jennifer Reeves’s new feature film The Gloria of Your Imagination, and live film/sound/media performances by Rebekkah Palov, K/S/R, and Carrier Band. Then, on December 6-7, Light Matter will present two additional short film programs at the Kino Palais in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In total, Light Matter will showcase 80 short films from 25 countries, including numerous World, North American, South American, USA, and New York premieres. Film descriptions and additional information available at www.lightmatterfilmfestival.com.
Light Matter 2024
Schedule
NOVEMBER 1, Alfred NY
5 PM – Program 1 -Jodie Mack, “Matter Matters”: Growing is Grieving
Animators are gardeners. The very definition of animation illuminates the medium’s capacity to bring things to life. These films use plants and other natural materials to center the animation as a site through which to consider grief, constant change, and transformation: a site that resists taxonomical classification and the rigidity of natural history in favor of illuminating the ineffable. -JM
6-8 PM – Exhibition Opening, Jodie Mack Ultraviolet
Jodie Mack’s Ultraviolet is the culmination of a body of work (collage, 16mm and digital animation, and pre-cinematic optical toys) that glows under blacklight, emanating from a fascination with natural and synthetic applications of UV light. Mack’s Ultraviolet encounters the subjects of mourning and the unseen Falling somewhere between psychedelic posters and neon stained glass windows, each quilt mourns a loved one who dealt with addiction before their death. Made during a time of unfathomable loss (2020-24), the flat quilts and screens seek impossible comfort.
From fluorescent rocks in Franklin, New Jersey to the glow décor of aesthetics of Party City, Ultraviolet unites Mack’s previous work in posters and textiles with her ongoing sublimation of art and craft.The patterning of collages echo the [de]formation of habit, central to the experience of addiction, not just to substance but labor itself. The repetition of the circular discs (phenakistoscopes) and looping animations relapse on repeat. Unearthed from a basement, the still works are made from materials (scrap Masonite; painted neon poster board stenciled with heating grates; salad spinners; pieces of lace; plant trays; inherited tools) that cite domesticity and, in turn, provide the basis for “animation”: a bringing to life. Intricately unifying the foundational, cinematic elements of light, color, and motion, the moving images are exuberant yet mournful in pace, animating life and also grief. Their color profiles mismatch the initial subjects, establishing a nuanced relationship between glow-in-the-dark, neon, and fluorescent entities within analog and computational photography, printmaking, and digital imagery. A collision of the real and replica, illuminated by blacklight, Ultraviolet reveals the vast unseen complexities of the human experience, what is invisible to the sun.
NOVEMBER 2, Alfred NY
12 PM –
Program 2: Flash! (64 minutes)
Waves of abstraction with something or nothing to say. Light writing ineffable texts. Traces of mark making.
Cloud Film, Tristen Ives, USA, 10 minutes, 16mm
Consider, Ж, Brazil, 3 minutes
Poem for Three Voices, Lananh Chu, Vietnam, 3 minutes
Echo Plant Needle Point, Linnea Nugent, USA, 3 minutes
Silence IV, Anna Grigorian, Armenia, 2 minutes,
A Sense of Nothing, Francisco Rojas, Chile, 4 minutes
Two Sides of the Tortoise, Oscar Illingworth, Ecuador, 12 minutes
Untitled (A Study in Refraction), Michael Maraden, USA, 7 minutes
Moth Glitch, Eryk Salvaggio, USA, 3 minutes
OilMoonNight, Anna Zemlianski, Germany, 6 minutes
Traces of the Unreal, Jeremy Newman, USA, 1 minute
PAULISPER BLUE CRASTINUS RED, France, Przemyslaw Sanecki, 8 minutes
1:45 PM
Program 3: “The Best Medium for a Project is Usually the Wrong One” (77 minutes)
How are things made? What are they made of? Doubting Thomas. Can I touch this? I want to touch it while it is still here. (It’s not going anywhere).
Infravision, Joris Guibert, France, 3 minutes
Tape-estry, Rennie Taylor, Canada, 2 minutes
ESP, Laura Kraning, USA, 3 minutes
Go Between, Chris Kennedy, Canada, 6.5 minutes
Trees on Sand, Minhyeong Kil, South Korea, 6 minutes
Cada Gesto, Valentina Matos, Spain, 11 minutes
When the Plug Is Pulled Out and The Set Is Cold, Alex Broadwell, USA, 5.5 minutes
O/S, Max Hattler,, Germany, 5 minutes
WILLIAMBABE, Tianjiao Wang, USA, 10.5 minutes
It’s called round like a head, Molly Pattison & Andrew Wood, USA, 7 minutes
Braided Sand, Tracy Szatan, USA, 17 minutes
3:30 PM
Program 4: When Was I (68 minutes)
Everyday life lived every day. Absorbed into bodies and spaces. Remembered how? Forget me not.
Between your eye and mine, Sofia Tudela, Spain, 4 minutes
Here are some images, Yannick Mossimann, Norway, 6 minutes
Happy Ending, Tiago Madaleno & Joana Patrão, Portugal, 5.5 minutes
Things We Swallow, Carleen Maur, USA, 4 minutes
POND, Kate Solar, Canada, 3 minutes
The Year, Grace Mitchell, USA, 10 minutes
An inimitable place called home, Jolene Mok, Hong Kong, 6 minutes
Monolithic tenderness, Kyle Petty, USA, 7 minutes
Nomadism, Maria Herrera, Venezuela 5 minutes
Midsummer, Masha Vlasova, USA, 3 minutes
Slideshow, Janie Geiser, USA, 8 minutes
Half Light, Ryan Marino, USA, 10 minutes
5:15 PM
Program 5: Material Worlds (83 minutes)
We do not share the same landscapes. Rock and stream and stone and surface. Geologic machines making machines cry. Common ground?
The Interior Frontier, Justin Rhody, USA, 20 minutes
Assis (Seated), Pierre Yves Clouin, France, 1 minute
Niagara, Michael Betancourt, USA, 3 minutes
Reporting from the Ghosts Cities of the Metaverse, Sub Net, Internet, 5 minutes
Deep Time of Latent Space, Eric Souther, USA, 10 minutes
Back to the Garden of Eden, Jan Schekauski, Kenya/Germany, 11 minutes
Katpar, Shoya Group, Kazakhstan, 8 minutes
To Discipline a Rock #2, Jiayi Chen, China, 1 minutes
Study for Three Streams, Kyujae Park, South Korea, 5 minutes
Triple Loaders, Max Van Loan, USA, 4 minutes
Semi-precious, Kara Hansen, Canada, 15 minutes
8 PM
Program 6: The Gloria of Your Imagination (96 minutes)
“No human being is ever free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality…” DW Winnicott
Jennifer Reeves, THE GLORIA OF YOUR IMAGINATION, 96 minutes
NOVEMBER 3, Alfred NY
1:00 PM
Program 7 – Film / Sonic / Media Performances
Rebekkah Palov
K/S/R
Carrier Band
DECEMBER 6, BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
Program 8: Bajo de superficie (75 minutes)
Looking out, looking in, within yourself, under the skin.
To open a window, craig scheihing, USA, 2 minutes
The Blob, Mahda Purmehdi & Cesar Herrejon, USA, 3 minutes
The Parrot, Sofia Krasnopolsky, Argentina, 12 minutes
Digital Light Leak, Zoe Chronis, Iceland, 3 minutes
Mmm, Chiemi Shimdada, UK/Japan, 7 minutes
It’s under the flesh, Agnes Hayden, Spain, 3 minutes
Trace of my Body, Yue Hua, China, 3 minutes
Tan/Vatan, Homa Sarabi & Meenakshi Garodia, Iran/India, 8 minutes
Parangole, Abinadi Meza, USA, 3 minutes
Holographic Will, Mike Stoltz, USA, 5 minutes
Arder en deseo, Eszter Katalin & Camila Tellez, Chile, 4 minutes
The Deers, Emiliano Grassi, Uruguay, 11 minutes
Adrift Potentials, Leonardo Pirondi, Brazil 12 minutes
DECEMBER 7, BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
Program 9 : Ambiente Senoro (71 minutes)
Afterimages burning across eyes and ears. Legacies of environment, transposed.
A Shifting Pattern, Isaac Sherman, USA, 6 minutes
in place of a hollow tree, Eislow Johnson, USA, 8 minutes
Kauai’o ‘o’o, Samy Benammar, Canada, 4 minutes
The Trace of the Box – Technicalized Good People, Moojin Brothers, South Korea, 7 minutes
Fear of Floating, Dianna Barrie, Australia, 8 minutes
Brume of the Billows, Rodgrigo Gaustini, Brazil, 4 minutes
Vibrant Matter, Pablo Marin, Argentina, 7 minutes
What humans see as blood, jaguars see as chica, Luciana Decker, Bolivia, 29 minutes
GALLERY PRESENTATIONS
OCTOBER 30 – NOVEMBER 5
ALFRED, NY
TSI / Harland Snodgrass Gallery – 28 minutes
#47 Mountain Fort, Lorelei d’Andriole, USA, 2 minutes
Heat Mark, Kacie Lees, USA, 12 minutes
Moon Moth Bed, VLM, USA, 6 minutes
Bot3quim, s4ra, Portugal, 5 minutes
Fragmented Signals 24, Matthew Pell, UK, 2 minutes
Exo Gestus, Yvette Granada, USA, 3 minutes
Expansion, Joanna Valkenburg, USA, 5 minutes
Immersive Gallery – 36 minutes
Pyrotechnics, 11 minutes
Simonsong, Valentin Sissman, France, 4 minutes
Dreams from the Past, Coderc, UK, 7 minutes
Chroma Culture, Sam Meech, UK, 8 minutes
Part-Time Moon, San Kit Li, Hong Kong, 6 minutes