Automat 2024

Magdalena Bermudez

Magdalena Bermudez (USA) is a filmmaker and educator whose practice examines the entangled relations between humans, nonhuman animals and technologies through essayistic film and video works. Her practice is research-based, often recontextualizing scientific or operational images to interrogate their formal merits.

Magda received a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA in Cinematic Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her work has screened internationally at film festivals such as Ann Arbor Film Festival, Antimatter [Media Art], Athens International Film + Video Festival, Mimesis Documentary Festival, Kasseler DokFest, İstanbul International Experimental Film Festival, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, and Science New Wave Festival. She is an Assistant Professor of Cinema at Binghamton University.

Parallel Botany screens on Wed, Oct 23 in the 8pm program.

Chanasorn Chaikitiporn

Chanasorn Chaikitiporn is a filmmaker and moving image artist whose interest lies in the exploration and interrogation of socio-political histories of Thailand. His works examine questions on culture, political thought, identity and personal historical memory through the lens of semi-coloniality. In combining fiction film with the documentary film genre, he investigates archival, found footage and declassified documents. Chanasorn is a member of ELSE, a moving image screening series based in Bangkok, Thailand.

Here We Are screens on Sun, Oct 20 in the 8pm program.

Charles-André Coderre

Charles-André Coderre lives and works in Montreal, making films and working on 16mm live projections for film and musical performances. His films are distributed by Light Cone (Paris), CFMDC (Toronto) and Vidéographe (Montréal). Since 2017, Coderre has co-organized the OK LÀ! music and expanded cinema series in Verdun (Canada). 

Fractures Chimiques – ON/OFF screens on Tues, Oct 22 in the 6pm program.

Marisa Hoicka

Marisa Hoicka (Canada) creates films, choreographs dancers, performs installations and paints. Her film Teen Girl Fantasy was included in International Film Festival Rotterdam’s 2024 Tiger Short Competition (Netherlands), Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (Argentina), Palm Springs International Short Film Festival (USA), Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Czechia), Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival (Portugal), Guanajuato International Film Festival (Mexico), Concorto Film Festival (Italy) and SFMediatheque’s Crossroads (USA). She has also exhibited in major festivals and museums including Uppsala Short Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, Images Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, San Francisco MoMA and the Power Plant.

Teen Girl Fantasy screens on Fri, Oct 25 in the 8pm program.

Arjuna Keshvani-Ham

Arjuna Keshvani-Ham is a British-Canadian filmmaker, artist and writer. She received her BA in English and German at the University of Oxford (2021) and MA in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art (2023). Her multi-part documentary/artistic project Radicle City (2024) premiered at Artcore Gallery, Derby, UK, as part of the exhibition The Silence of Growing Things (2024). In 2023, Arjuna’s film I cannot wash away the blue premiered at the Tate Modern. Over the past three years she has worked on a number of documentaries in the framework of transnational, collaborative educational projects. She is currently producing a documentary On the Banks of Democracy, on the potential for community participation systems in Albania to make green development systems just. Arjuna also works as a freelance video producer at Times Radio.

Radicle City: Snapshots of Bangalore screens on Sat, Oct 26 in the 8pm program.

Rachel Makana’aloha O Kauikeolani Nakawatase

Rachel Makana’aloha O Kauikeolani Nakawatase is an Indigenous artist and filmmaker from Los Angeles. By day, she works at the Universal Studios prop house and by night, she makes weird movies and organizes the San Diego Underground Film Festival—an annual showcase for experimental/independent films, music and performances. She currently resides and works in Los Angeles during weekdays, and San Diego on the weekends with Ryan, her husband and creative partner with whom she founded and codirects SDUFF.

kāua – we (you & I) screens on Thurs, Oct 17 in the 6pm program.

Laura Ohio

Laura Ohio is a Canadian visual artist working across sculpture, video and performance. Her work engages the physical body, personal archives and metaphorical architectures to examine the psychic and material pressures of late-stage capitalism. Recent films trace the affective lines between marriage, immigration, prostitution and the desire for undetermined self-authorship.

No Moon Tonight screens on Thurs, Oct 24 in the 6pm program.

Charlie Tweed

Charlie Tweed (UK) works in video, text and performance. His recent works have drawn attention to the complex impacts of global capitalism in terms of resource extraction, ecological destruction and the deployment of digital technologies to manage populations and environment. He employ strategies of re-appropriation and speculative fiction to outline subversive plans for enhancing and escaping control mechanisms and renegotiating relations with the non human.

His films have been screened internationally at venues including: ICA, London; CCA, Glasgow; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Watershed, Bristol; Plymouth Arts Centre; CAFA, Beijing; Quad, Derby; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; Castlefield, Manchester; WRO Media Art Biennale; Aesthetica Film Festival; Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Berlin).

How Can We Escape? screens on Sun, Oct 20 in the 6pm program. Umwelt/4470 – Part 1 screens on Mon, Oct 21 in the 6pm program.