Seven Films

This collection of experimental shorts showcases work made by members of the local film collective and nonprofit, Process Reversal. This program will offer a glimpse into the creative backgrounds of the organization’s seven members who have long histories as multimedia artists, educators, archivists, and researchers. As filmmakers, their artistic practices are deeply rooted in experimental film and they share upbringings from institutions including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The New School, and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where they all met and co-founded Process Reversal. They have a shared passion for handmade aesthetics, working with analog processes, and creating work in a variety of facets from installation, performance, and much more.

AT HAND – Andrew Busti
16mm, 9.5min, b&w, sound, 2005

An exorcism, an exploration, and an unveiling.
The subconscious landscape of a withered relationship.

I SWIM NOW – Sarah Biagini
16mm, 8.5min, b&w, sound, 2011

Challenges the visual intelligibility of landscape aesthetics by imagining the experiences of one Violet Jessop, a steward on-board all three sister ships of the White Star Line – the Olympic, the Titanic, and the Britannic – while each suffered varying degrees of collision and wreckage at sea. I SWIM NOW evokes the intense brutality and repetition of Violet’s unique physical interactions with nature through an expansive accumulation of optical printing techniques and manipulations.

QUAKER CITY HOME MOVIES: PRESSING CIDER – Taylor Dunne
Super 8 blow-up to 16mm, 3min, b&w, sound, 2015

Pressing cider on the Quaker City Land Trust in late fall 2009. Film processed on location, in a root cellar, with hand carried water and sunlight. Print and optical track made by hand. Soundtrack from The Ethnic Folkways Library, Music of the Ukraine.

LIMITED SIGHT DISTANCE – Curt Heiner
16mm, 4.5min, b&w, silent, 2016

On a path; an exploration of latitude through exposure and location.

WAKE – Eric Stewart
16mm, 8min, b&w, silent, 2015

“Wake” is a dirge in celluloid. It is a celebration of my fathers life, a meditation on his body and a visual record of mourning. When my father died, there was never a chance to see his body after life had left it. This film was made by placing his ashes directly on 35mm film in a dark room and moving the film a frame at a time. What we see in this process of photograming is not the object in the photographic sense, but instead a representation of the space surrounding an object. The photogram is a shadow charting the distance between things.

PLAY FOR GLORY – Eric Coombs Esmail
16mm transferred to video, 10min, color, 2013

The persistence of ritual and the spiritual connection of a family constitute a volatile realm for disparate traditions, faiths, and lifestyles. A Christmas blues on Ektachrome.

SANCTUARY – Kevin Rice
16mm, 3min, color, silent, 2008