PASSAGE (dir. Chel White, Portland, OR)
11 minutes, 35mm
Haunting underwater portraits of people are juxtaposed with archival films of war and atrocities in this stylized film collage that premiered in 2001 as a silent film with live orchestral accompaniment performed by the Oregon Symphony.

EXPOSED (dir. Seigfried A. Fruhauf, Austria)
9 minutes, 16mm
Multiple exposures of one scene from a feature film - a man observing a dancing woman through a keyhole - but seen through the perforations of a black strip of film create an entirely new "peeping tom" motif, and a hypnotic visual effect.

PLAIN ENGLISH (dir. John Standiford, Baltimore, MD)
9 minutes,16mm
A conversation using samples from Speak Another Language albums is brought to life through very simple animation made up of images of Ayako Wakao, Akira Kurosawa (with the eyes of Toshiro Mifune), a mask of the Kyyogen deamon Be-Aku, and set before a background from Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon.

SOUNDINGS (dir. Sandra Gibson, NY, NY)
5.5 minutes,16mm
An eclectic collage of colors, rhythms and sounds interwoven with images of film icons that takes you to a place somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. Images fly by in pulsating directions, often a frame at a time. A subterranean dissection of the film medium.

NO SUNSHINE (dir. Bjorn Melhus, Germany)
6.5 minutes, BetaSP
Two floating bodies lip-synch samples from old soul recordings, while watching their own relationship play out over their shoulders. Festival director, Jed Dietz, describes this as "Devo meets Teletubbies".

YA PRIVATE SKY (dir. Stom Sogo, SF, CA)
3 minutes, BetaSP
Hypnotizing flashing colors, shapes and images.

KEN BURNS GIVE YOU SOMETHING (dir. Kent Lambert, Chicago, IL)
4 minutes, BetaSP
Documentarian Ken Burns is given the appropriation treatment, his sentences dissected and rearranged like a Max Headroom speech.

SILVER PLAY (dir. Stom Sogo, SF, CA)
15 minutes, BetaSP
Random footage from Asian media, home video footage and manipulated video are cut together to ask the question, "Does America see Mexico in the same way Japan sees Indonesia?"

A BOY AND HIS BREAKFAST (dir. Kent Lambert & Mark Wright, Chicago, IL)
6 minutes, VHS
Preparing a grapefruit has never been so meaningful.

For more avant-garde shorts, be sure not to miss the Black Maria shorts program.

(films are not necessarily listed in the order they will shown)