Monday | Oct 20 | 6pm
Screening @ Deluge
The Other Side
From the Cold War to the culture wars—lived experience as the displaced, the other.
Watch Online Free: Tuesday, Oct 21 (24hrs)
The Other Side
Caroline Rumley | 2025 | Germany/USA | 15 min | World Premiere
One border. Two friends. Curiosity. Naïveté. Control.
Caroline Rumley is an Atlanta-based filmmaker and visual artist. She uses solo-shot film with found and archival footage to process a public or personal experience. Her films have screened internationally at varied venues—from Sundance to Melbourne’s Biennial of Video Art. Caroline holds an MFA in Theatrical Design from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in Film, Video and Digital Imaging from Georgia State University and has studied at the Schule Friedl Kubelka for Independent Film in Vienna.
Hollowgram
Laura Iancu | 2025 | Romania/USA | 7 min | Cdn Premiere
Hollowgram conjures varicoloured clusters of swirling images and sounds from places real and not 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. The soundscapes are crafted from wild sound captured in Romania and are core components of the film’s emotional space. Conceptually layered over, a defiant authorial selfhood responds to the outside interrogations that punch in, “Who do you think you are?” After all, who is a person that exists in parallel cultural and geographical timelines; one bound in professional career development and another where one can move freely with the joy of being alone, unknown and unpressed.
Laura Iancu is a visual artist working primarily in experimental video forms and immersive 3D animation and gaming, with an expanded practice of installation and photography. Originally from Romania, she has been teaching and making films in the US for more than a decade. Currently, Laura is an assistant professor of cinema at Virginia Tech, School of Performing Arts. Iancu’s films and games have been showcased at venues across the world including Trinidad+Tobago Film Festival, Mimesis Documentary Festival, Experiments in Cinema, Indie Grits, Bogotá Experimental Film Festival, Antimatter, Montreal Underground, Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival, Festival ECRÃ, South Carolina Underground, Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, CÓDEC Festival of Experimental Film and Video, Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, International Video Poetry Festival Athens, San Diego Underground, Feminist Border Art Film Festival. Her work originates from puzzling together all the hints of the world, the gestural intertextuality, the perceptive and surface qualities of objects, geographical mappings, aspects of sound art, critical theory, poetry, magic realism, pop/internet culture, dance, gardening and the myriad mutations of emerging moving image technologies, including the rise in Generative AI technologies.
Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air
Sam Drake | 2025 | USA | 9 min | Cdn Premiere
Fragmented records reveal a concealed history of Cold War-era human radiation experiments, surfacing through a haze of manipulation and embedded studies. Desert dust settles into teeth, inscribing a residual record. Contaminated images conjure the unseen.
Sam Drake is a filmmaker born in Dayton, Ohio. Her films have been described as “a collage of sequences that combine the tradition of the cine-journal (filming everyday life) and visual music (thinking of the film as a musical composition where the frames are notes), immersing us in critical meditation on urban space. The poetry of her editing is undeniable and is built around changes of scale” (Samy Benammar). She received an MFA from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her previous films, including Baby Gator Dreams of Britney (2018), Body Legato (2022), and Test Objects (2023) have screened at festivals and venues worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, CROSSROADS, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Museum of the Moving Image, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Collectif Jeune Cinéma, Non-Syntax Experimental Image Festival, Milwaukee Film Festival, Media City, Transient Visions Festival of the Moving Image, No Name Cinema and Antimatter. She was a programmer for The Mini Microcinema in Cincinnati (2016–20), and lead programmer of Union Cinema in Milwaukee (2022–24). She has received a Princess Grace Foundation Award Honoraria (2024) and a Flaherty Film Seminar Sponsorship (2023). She lives and works in Milwaukee where she is a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
space_invaders.exe
Malaz Usta | 2024 | Netherlands | 11 min | Cdn Premiere
Exiles are asked questions concerning their life, plans and reasons for their choices. The film tries to communicate the feelings of the displaced when being confronted with such questions which are drawn from the director’s memory. A parody of misinformation and of broken systems, and an exploration of feelings of confusion, loneliness and uncertainty.
Malaz Usta is a filmmaker, a designer and a visual artist, working with film, graphics, animation, editing and sound. Born in Damascus, Usta studied TV and cinema in Istanbul, and is currently a researcher at the Netherlands Film Academy. His works deal with different issues of displacement and ideas of belonging, identity and home. His first short film A Year in Exile (2020) premiered at Ji.hlava IDFF.
apocalipsis
Lauren Vick | 2025 | USA | 9 min | World Premiere
A tracing of memory, debris and definition found in the shadows of an ending and an exploration of what lingers in the leftover spaces between.
Lauren Vick is a filmmaker and writer based in New York City.
Para M [to M]
Patricia Werneck Ribas | 2023 | Brazil/Netherlands | 12 min | Cdn Premiere
A woman’s voice passionately addresses the enigmatic figure “M” in a narrative that initially portrays a positive shift as one colonial ruler replaces another. However, the story ultimately exposes the persistent and oppressive nature of the colonial enterprise within an enduring framework. The initial “M” refers to Maurits in Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, a seventeenth-century governor sent to Brazil as a representative of the Dutch West Indies Company. Despite the prevailing positive perception of this governmental change and idealized views of Maurits’s presence in Brazil, recent research uncovers the dark legacy of his dictatorship. The letter “M” emerges as a symbol branded on the skin of enslaved Africans under his possession. Through a creative juxtaposition of images featuring women and reappropriated colonial artifacts in and around Recife, Brazil—an outpost of Dutch occupation—the essay film intricately weaves a poetic letter. It seeks to discern the potential for the subaltern voice to articulate itself. The film powerfully underscores that, while the articulation of truth may demand time, its revelation remains an inevitable prospect.
Patricia Werneck Ribas is a Brazilian-born artist based in Amsterdam, working mainly with moving and still images. Questions regarding identity and power relations in a post-colonial society form the basis of her research. Her work is often elusive, but never removed from a particular historical moment. It always belongs to and expands on the complexity of memory, time and location. She takes what is familiar and makes it strange and compelling through creating unexpected juxtapositions and collaging ideas from often very distinct sources. She invites a gaze that is quietly unsettling, but her work always remains suggestive and elusive. She has an Audio Visual Arts degree from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and has participated in several group exhibitions and screenings in The Netherlands and abroad including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL); Museum DE Pont, Tilburg (NL); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (NL); Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle (NL); Museum Hilversum (NL); Reykjavik International Film Festival (IS); National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik (IS); Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts (CN); Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam (NL); dokumentART, Neubrandenburg (DE); Tampere Film Festival (FI); Gstaad film (CH); Leiden Shorts, Leiden (NL); Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden (NL); Cannes Short Film Festival, Cannes (FR); Bideodromo, Bilbao (ES); Kansk Video Festival, Kansk (RU); Strangelove Time-Based Media Festival, Folkestone (EN); Video and Experimental Film Festival Ecrã, RJ (BR).
Monday | Oct 20 | 8pm
Screening @ Deluge
Species of Analogy
Maritime missives of hope: messages from the frontlines of climate consciousness.
Watch Online Free: Tuesday, Oct 21 (24hrs)
Serene Hues
Rita Tse | 2024 | Canada | 4 min | W Cdn Premiere
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.
Rita Tse, born and raised in Hong Kong, received a BFA in Film with a minor in Art & Culture Studies from Simon Fraser University, and an MFA in Film Production from York University. She is an experimental filmmaker based in Toronto, with specific interests in gender, ethnicity and memory. Her latest works have mainly explored artisanal manipulation techniques on celluloid.
In the Maritime Frequencies
Greta Snider | 2025 | USA | 15 min | Cdn Premiere
We'll remember the earth as if it were a dream.
For the past year, I have been working on a project exploring the coastal landscapes of San Francisco, using darkroom developers made from the solutions of our times—bay water, hand sanitizer and “safe” detergent. The resultant movie is a conversation about how we internalize our climate emergency, letting mortalities large and small emerge only when the night puts our guard down. Inspired by the San Francisco Bay, dreams and novelist Octavia Butler’s vision of a future California. This film embraces the aesthetics of a crumbling society—expired and cast off film, backyard developing, hand cranked camera—because it is a premonition, a goodbye and a last look over the shoulder. Featuring Bill Basquin, Ivy McClelland, Juan Aguirre, Annalise Velasquez, Valerie Soe, Mark Klatte and Mayuran Tiruchelvam
Greta Snider is an independent filmmaker known for her experimental nonfiction work. She began making films in 1989, and went on to teach in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University. Her earlier work on 16mm includes a collection of audio and visual experiences that combines photography, found footage and her own experiences of the San Francisco punk scene in the early 1990s.
sonic salt
Felix Dierich | 2024 | Germany | 3 min | NA Premiere
Look closely and immerse yourself in a microscopic world. Grains of salt become rocks and boulders, quarries and caves. But don't expect them to stay solid when music comes into play... Shot with micrographic techniques, polarization interference and D’n’B beats.
Felix Dierich was born and grew up in Lübeck. He studied computer science as well as arts and media at the University of Oldenburg. His short films and video installations are experimental documentaries, providing new (in)sights and unseen points of view in an unusual, hypnotic or playful way, combined with an immersive sound.
Waters that sculpt fire
Victoria Ioudina | 2024 | Spain | 13 min | Cdn Premiere
In the middle of a beach, the film follows an introspective and sensorial journey, from the farthest point to the deepest place, from the external world to the emotional system. Upon contact with the sea water, the skin and body transform into a gateway to an inner fissure, revealing a complex emotional portrait manifested as fragments of sharp, broken glass, submerged in the sea. As the shards continue their descent, images blur into progressive patterns that expand and contract culminating in a visceral and cathartic transformation.
Victoria Ioudina is a director and producer living and working in Barcelona, Catalonia. A graduate of ESCAC University with a specialization in film production, their artistic practice aims to establish a dialogue between the moving image and matter while exploring humanistic and critical themes. Currently, they focus on analyzing and questioning gender binarism through cinema from a biological, social, and political perspective. They made their debut with the video installation Hitomi (2022), fusing immersive scenography with a video piece. Exploring cinema from an artisanal and intimate perspective they examine how nature not only surrounds us as a stage but also acts as a material that constructs and deconstructs us—politically, spiritually and physiologically.
Rain
Vasilios Papaioannu | 2024 | Greece/Italy/USA | 6 min | Cdn Premiere
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.
Vasilios Papaioannu is a filmmaker, photographer and mixed media artist currently based in Washington DC. In his work Papaioannu explores the fleeting dreamscapes of reality using noise, movement and disturbance. He hybridizes different modes of filmmaking, unifying variegated media, primarily 16mm film, digital video and archival footage. His works have been shown in various venues around the world, such as Crossroads at SFMOMA, Anthology Film Archives, Athens International Film + Video Festival, Cork International Film Festival, Festifreak, Analogica, Cámara Lúcida, Engauge, EXiS, L’Alternativa, Antimatter [media art], Montreal Underground, Revelation Perth Film Festival and Sharjah Film Platform. Papaioannu holds an MA in Communication, Text Semiotics and Cinema from the University of Siena in Italy and an MFA in Film and Cinematography from Syracuse University in New York. Papaioannu is currently an Assistant Professor at the Cathy Hughes School of Communications, Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard University.
La Colle Falls
Mike Rollo | 2025 | Canada | 11 min | W Cdn Premiere
At the turn 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.
Mike Rollo’s photochemical practice explores alternative approaches to non-fiction cinema. His films are place-based, focusing on landscapes, rural industries and communication cultures, incorporating ecological thinking and mindfulness regarding shifts, conflicts and negotiations related to themes of obsolescence, age and decay. Rollo has exhibited films at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao, International Film Festival Oberhausen, Los Angeles Film Forum, San Francisco Cinematheque and Rotterdam International Film Festival. Mike teaches film production at the University of Regina.
[sun]film
Derek Taylor | 2025 | USA | 3 min | BC Premiere
An arrangement of found image sources from the 16th Century onward, the film looks at the changing representations of the giant star at the centre 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.
Derek Taylor creates films that explore the intersection of documentary and experimental filmmaking, with a particular emphasis on themes of history and landscape. He often examines the tension between the temporary and the enduring aspects of lived experience, using formal and textural elements to explore this dynamic. His films, frequently created using analog and photochemical techniques, have screened at festivals around the world and invite viewers to reflect on how we observe and remember the world around us. Taylor holds a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently based in Connecticut.
Species of Analogy
J.M. Martinez | 2024 | USA | 13 min | Cdn Premiere
A field guide: Flora evolving with environmental changes and pollinators utilizing biomimicry. Natural objects are gathered, and sculptures of and from the landscape cast reflections of nature being infinite, self-knowing and alive. Extinct species and stages of evolution are suggested, accompanied by field recordings capturing the underground soundscape of soil. Bird calls and wingbeats offer greetings and warnings. A rock, a tree, a human—each dissolving into matter and transmuting into new forms.
J.M. Martínez is a Cuban-American artist based in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California working with photography, film, video and sculpture. Works of his have been exhibited at the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, SFMoMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, CROSSROADS, Exploratorium Museum, Chicago Underground, Festival ECRÃ, EXiS, Crater-Lab, Cámara Lúcida, Kinoskop, RPM, Cosmic Rays, Antimatter and the San Francisco Cinematheque.